Down Memory Lane by Bill McAllister: Old High Church in Inverness should be given respect and a just solution
This year is the 850th anniversary of King William The Lion granting "a ploughgate of arable land" to Thomas the Priest of St Mary’s Parish Church of "Inuuirnys" – or Inverness.
No prior written records exist of the building on whose footprint today’s Old High Church stands.
It is believed there had been a church on that wee hill, known as St Michael’s Mound, for centuries before then. However far back it stretches in history’s mists, it is all the more important that the currently imperilled Old High is preserved as an integral part of our city’s heritage.
Some historians maintain that it makes more sense that Columba, having sailed up the Ness, met King Brude and preached to the Picts there on the Mound, yards from the river, rather than at their Craig Phadrig hill fort. Brude is said to have given the Irishman the small hill on which to build his first church.
The first churches at the spot would have been wooden. After his "ploughgate" gift in 1171, William the Lion 28 years later granted the church to Arbroath Abbey, who passed it on to the Bishop of Moray.
The medieval building was much larger than the Old High and in the early 1300s it had a nave, north and south aisles, and choir space. The tower is the oldest part – and its base is thus Inverness’s oldest structure.
From being first a Celtic and then a Catholic church, after 1560 it became a Protestant one, and St Mary’s name vanished. The first minister, David Rag, having previously been a friar, was labelled a "pulpit flitter". John Knox’s son-in-law Robert Pont came north as superintendent for five years.
The Town Council began to march to the Kirk for morning service, returning to the Provost’s house for bread and cheese before a second procession for the afternoon service. Thus began what is now an annual tradition, the Kirking of the Council.
Councillors decreed in 1564 that every inhabitant of the burgh – "with their family and servants" – should attend the Parish Kirk at 10am and 3pm on Sundays. Absentees were fined a shilling, rising to ten shillings for a fourth offence.
Three years later, Minister Thomas Howstoun asked the council to appoint four officers to patrol the burgh each Sunday, with anyone caught not attending the Kirk being fined five shillings. He asked that the officers be fined 20 shillings each if they were lax in their duty!
The length of sermons was clearly a deterrent. In 1839, High Court judge Lord Cockburn listened to a sermon there and wrote: “There are few things more curious than the decorous appearance of patience with which sensible people can sit and hear a man roar out two-and-a-quarter hours of sheer absolute nonsense.”
In 1641, the congregation split, with Gaelic speakers having their own church where Leakey’s Bookshop now stands.
In 1691, the government had sent a regiment to Inverness to enforce Presbyterianism in the church, with Episcopal adherents, who had previously used it, being refused admission.
Before the Battle of Culloden, captured Hanoverian troops were held prisoner in the church, but were freed by the Duke of Cumberland. After the fatal conclave on Drumossie Moor, Jacobite prisoners were similarly confined there. When 36 former Royalists were found to be fighting for the Stuart cause, they were shot in the churchyard.
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Ross Martin, the long-serving Old High curator, once pulled aside ivy to show me the musket holes in the sandstone wall, left by these grim executions.
The present day church was built between 1770 and 1772, by Edinburgh architect George Fraser, for £1450 and later extended by Alexander Ross. The new premises were paid for by the Magistrates, to be repaid by renting out seats, and by 1882, the council had £1300 saved from such rents.
The name Old High only dates back to 1929, when the Church of Scotland merged with the United Free Church. Both had a High Church in the town – so the main Kirk became the Old High, with the United Free one becoming St Columba’s High.
What fate awaits the Old High, with its feast of detail and Cameron Highlanders war mementos? It commands respect and a just solution.
*Sponsored by Ness Castle Lodges.
Historic building with links to Battle of Culloden could be sold