Inverness

From Metapedia

Inverness is a city in northern Scotland. The city is the administrative centre for the Highland council area, and it is promoted as the capital of the Highlands of Scotland. Inverness is unusual in that although there are letters patent, dating from 2001, the city has no statutory boundaries. Tourism is important to the city's economy, as are service industries and healthcare.

The city lies where the River Ness enters the Moray Firth and is a natural hub for various transport links. A settlement was established by sixth century AD, the first royal charter being granted in the thirteenth century. It lies near the site of the eighteenth century Battle of Culloden.

Inverness has a population of 55,000 and is represented in both the Holyrood and Westminster parliaments and is also twinned with three other European cities. The city is home to numerous sporting and cultural groups and events, including the annual Highland Games and football club Inverness Caledonian Thistle F.C., who play in the Scottish Premier League as well as Clachnacuddin F.C. who play in the Highland League. Inverness College is the hub campus for the UHI Millennium Institute. City status was granted in 2001.

Scottish Gaelic appears on a large number of road signs around Inverness but only around 3,555 (5.47%) of the population can speak the language.

[edit] History

Inverness was one of the chief strongholds of the Picts, and in AD 565 was visited by St Columba with the intention of converting the Pictish king Brude, who is supposed to have resided in the vitrified fort on Craig Phadrig (168 m), 2.4 km west of the city. A church or a monk's cell is thought to have been established by early Celtic monks on St Michael's Mount, a mound close to the river, now the site of the Old High Church and graveyard. The castle is said to have been built by Máel Coluim III of Scotland, after he had razed to the ground the castle in which Mac Bethad mac Findláich had, according to much later tradition, murdered Máel Coluim's father Donnchad, and which stood on a hill around 1 km to the north-east.

Inverness had four traditional fairs, one of them being Legavrik (leth-gheamradh).

William the Lion (d. 1214) granted Inverness four charters, by one of which it was created a royal burgh. Of the Dominican friary founded by Alexander III in 1233, only one pillar and a worn knight's effigy survive in a secluded graveyard near the town centre. On his way to the Battle of Harlaw in 1411, Donald, Lord of the Isles, harried the city, and sixteen years later James I held a parliament in the castle to which the northern chieftains were summoned, of whom three were executed for asserting an independent sovereignty.

In 1562, during the progress undertaken to suppress Huntly's insurrection, Queen Mary was denied admittance into Inverness Castle by the governor, who belonged to the earl's faction, and whom she afterwards therefore caused to be hanged. The Clan Fraser and Clan Munro took the castle for her. The house in which she lived meanwhile stood in Bridge Street until the 1970s, when it was demolished to make way for the second Bridge Street development. The city's Marymass Fair, on the Saturday nearest August 15th, (a tradition revived in 1986) is said to commemorate Queen Mary as well as the Virgin Mary.

Beyond the then northern limits of the town, Oliver Cromwell built a citadel capable of accommodating 1000 men, but with the exception of a portion of the ramparts it was demolished at the Restoration. The only surviving modern remnant is a clock tower. In 1715 the Jacobites occupied the royal fortress as a barracks. In 1727 the government built the first Fort George here, but in 1746 it surrendered to the Jacobites and they blew it up.

Culloden Moor lies nearby, and was the site of the Battle of Culloden in 1746, which ended the Jacobite Rising of 1745-1746.

On September 7, 1921, the only UK Cabinet meeting to be held outside London took place in the Town House, when David Lloyd George, on holiday in Gairloch, called an emergency meeting to discuss the situation in Ireland. The Inverness Formula composed at this meeting was the basis of the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

[edit] Buildings

Important buildings in Inverness include Inverness Castle, Inverness College and various churches.

The castle was built in 1835 on the site of its medieval predecessor. It is now a sheriff court.

Inverness Cathedral, dedicated to St Andrew, is a cathedral of the Scottish Episcopal Church and seat of the ordinary of the Diocese of Moray, Ross and Caithness. The cathedral has a curiously square-topped look to its spires, as funds ran out before they could be completed.

The oldest church is the Old High Church, on St Michael's Mount by the riverside, a site perhaps used for worship since Celtic times. The church tower dates from mediaeval times, making it the oldest surviving building in Inverness. It is used by the Church of Scotland congregation of Old High St Stephen's, Inverness, and it is the venue for the annual Kirking of the Council, which is attended by local councillors.

Inverness College is the hub campus for the UHI Millennium Institute.

Porterfield Prison, officially HMP Inverness, serves the courts of the Highlands, Western Isles, Orkney Isles and Moray, providing secure custody for all remand prisoners and short term adult prisoners, both male and female (segregated).