Inverness
Inverness
| |
|---|---|
| Population | Expression error: "55,000[1]" must be numeric |
| OS grid reference | NH665445 |
| Council area | |
| Lieutenancy area |
|
| Country | Scotland |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | INVERNESS |
| Postcode district | IV1-IV3, IV5, IV13, IV63 |
| Dialling code | 01463 |
| Police | Scotland |
| Fire | Scottish |
| Ambulance | Scottish |
| UK Parliament | |
| Scottish Parliament | |
| Website | www.inverness.org.uk/
 |
Inverness (Template:Lang-gd) is the only city in the Highland council area and the Highlands of Scotland (and is considered the unofficial capital). The name of the city is closely associated, however, with various other senses of place and area:
- a royal burgh
- a parish
- a chartered city
- a registration county, and former local government county (also known as Inverness-shire)
- a district of the former county
- a district of the Highland region (1975 to 1996)
- a committee area of the Highland Council (since 1996)
- a lieutenancy area, which covers three former districts of the Highland region, Inverness, Lochaber and Badenoch and Strathspey
- a district of burghs constituency (Inverness Burghs) (1708 to 1918)
- a county constituency (Inverness constituency) (1918 to 1983)
In 2001, the population of the city, or the urban area centred on the former burgh, was 51,832. Tourism is important to the city's economy, as are service industries and healthcare.
The city is the self-proclaimed "Capital of the Highlands", and the administrative centre for the Highland council area.
City status was conferred on Inverness in 2001, it being chosen as one of three "Millennium Cities" in the United Kingdom.
Geography
Inverness lies at the mouth of the River Ness as it flows into the Moray Firth in north-east Scotland. It is from this that the city derives its name: Inbhir Nis Scots Gaelic for "mouth (or confluence) of the Ness". The river flows from nearby Loch Ness and the Caledonian Canal connects Loch Ness, Loch Oich, and Loch Lochy.
Islands in the River Ness, the Bught and the river banks form a pleasant series of walks, as do the forested hills of Craig Phadraig and Craig Dunain. The city is well served with shops, as it is the main shopping centre for an area of nearly 26,000 km².
Economy
Most of the traditional industries such as distilling have been replaced by high-tech businesses, including the design and manufacture of diabetes diagnostic kits. Retailing is another big sector. It has recently gained the unwelcome soubriquet of "Tescotown" since the city boasts three branches of Tesco. Its importance as a retail centre outweighs the city's size since it acts as a retail centre for most of the Highlands.
Inverness is the new home for Scottish Natural Heritage following that body's relocation from Edinburgh under the auspices of the Scottish Executive's decentralisation strategy.
Inverness is linked to the Black Isle across the Moray Firth by the Kessock Bridge. It has a railway station[2] with services to Perth, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Aberdeen, Thurso, Wick and to Kyle of Lochalsh. Inverness Airport[3] is located 15 km east of the city and has scheduled flights to airports across the UK including London, Glasgow, Edinburgh and the islands to the north and west of Scotland. Some local controversy arose when British Airways sold off the landing slots at Heathrow for the flights to and from Inverness as part of the proposed link up with American Airlines which eventually failed. Three trunk roads (the A9, A82 and A96) provide access to Aberdeen, Perth, Elgin, Thurso, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Plans are being drafted to convert the A96 between Inverness and Nairn to a dual carriageway.
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,[4] 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,[5] 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.[6]
Culture & sports
Inverness is an important centre for bagpipe players and lovers. Every September the city hosts the Northern Meeting, the most prestigious solo piping competition in the world. The Inverness cape, a garment worn by pipers the world over in the rain, is not necessarily made in Inverness.
Another major event in calendar is the annual City of Inverness Highland Games. In 2006 Inverness hosted Scotland's biggest ever Highland Games over two days in July, featuring the Masters' World Championships, the showcase event for heavies aged over 40 years. 2006 was the first year that the Masters' World Championships had been held outside the United States, and it attracted many top heavies from around the world to the Inverness area.
Inverness has a blossoming music scene which offers lots of young, new bands exciting opportunities. The current music scene within Inverness generally leans towards an emo/punk style, but there are also bands who show features of different genres such as rock, metal, pop, classical, grunge, industrial and traditional Scottish music. There is also a small Hip Hop scene featuring unsigned artists. Inverness is currently celebrating its Highland Year of Culture, in which Inverness is displaying the wide range of talent around.
The city is home to two football clubs. Inverness Caledonian Thistle F.C. was formed in 1994 from the merger of two Highland League clubs, Caledonian F.C. and Inverness Thistle. 'Caley Thistle' play at The Tulloch Caledonian Stadium, and are currently in the Scottish Premier League and lay claim to have the longest name for any football club in the world. The other football club Clachnacuddin F.C., play in the Highland League. Inverness Citadel F.C. was another popular side which are now unfortuantely defunct. Bught Park, located in the centre of Inverness is the finishing point of the annual Loch Ness Marathon and home of Inverness Shinty Club.
In 2007, the city is set to play host to Highland 2007, a celebration of the culture of the Highlands.
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[7] (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[1] 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 abbey founded by Alexander III in 1233 hardly a trace remains. 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 the castle by the governor, who belonged to the earl's faction, and whom she afterwards therefore caused to be hanged. 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 northern limits of the city, Oliver Cromwell built a fort capable of accommodating 1000 men, but with the exception of a portion of the ramparts it was demolished at the Restoration. 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.
Local Government
Inverness was an autonomous royal burgh, and county town for the county of Inverness (also known as Inverness-shire) until 1975, when local government counties and burghs were abolished, under the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973, in favour of two-tier regions and districts and unitary islands council areas. The royal burgh was then absorbed into a new district of Inverness, which was one of eight districts within the Highland region. The new district combined in one area the royal burgh, the Inverness district of the county and the Aird district of the county. The rest of the county was divided between other new districts within the Highland region, the Grampian region and the Western Isles. Therefore, although much larger than the royal burgh, the new Inverness district was much smaller than the county.
In 1996, under the Local Government etc (Scotland) Act 1994,[8] the districts were abolished and the region became a unitary council area. The new unitary Highland Council, however, adopted the areas of the former districts as council management areas, and created area committees to represent each. The Inverness committee represents 23 out of the 80 Highland Council wards, with each ward electing one councillor by the first past the post system of election. However, management area and committee area boundaries have been out of alighnment since 1999, as a result of changes to ward boundaries. Also, ward boundaries are changing again this year, 2007, and the council management areas are being replaced with three new corporate management areas.
In 2001 city status was granted to the Town of Inverness, and letters patent were taken into the possession of the Highland Council by the convener of the Inverness area committee.[9] The letters patent, however, do not refer to the Highland Council or to any management area or committee of the council. Nor do they refer to the former district or to the royal burgh. They seem instead to refer to nowhere in particular.
Ward boundary changes this year, 2007, under the Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004,[10] create 22 new Highland Council wards, each electing three or four councillors by the single transferable vote system of election, a system designed to produce a form of proportional representation. The total number of councillors remains the same. Also, the Inverness management area is being merged into the new Inverness, Nairn and Badenoch and Strathspey corporate management area, covering nine of the new wards and electing 34 of the 80 councillors. As well as the Inverness area, the new area includes the former Nairn management area and the former Badenoch and Strathspey management area. The corporate area name is also that of a constituency, but boundaries are different.
Within the corporate area there is a city management area covering seven of the nine wards, the Aird and Loch Ness ward, the Culloden and Ardersier ward, the Inverness Central ward, the Inverness Millburn ward, the Inverness Ness-side ward, the Inverness South ward and the Inverness West ward. The Nairn ward and the Badenoch and Strathspey ward complete the corporate area. Wards in the city management area are to be represented on a city committee as well as corporate area committees.
Parliamentary burgh and constituency
As a component of Inverness District of Burghs Inverness was a parliamentary burgh from 1708 to 1918. The other burghs of this district of burghs constituency were Forres, Fortrose and Nairn. It was a constituency of the Parliament of Great Britain from 1708 to 1801 and of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1918.
In 1918 the Inverness burgh was merged into the then new Inverness constituency. The other components of the district of burghs were divided between the Moray and Nairn constituency and the Ross and Cromarty constituency.
The rest of the new Inverness constituency consisted of the mainland and Inner Hebridean areas of the former Invernessshire constituency. The Outer Hebridean area of the Invernessshire constituency was merged into the Western Isles constituency.
In 1983, eight years after the local government county of Invernessshire had been divided between the Highland and Grampian regions and the Western Isles council area, the Inverness constituency was largely replaced by the Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber constituency. Since 1964 except for an 8 year period following the Labour landslide of 1997 it has returned a Liberal or Liberal Democrat MP before which Conservative predominated.
Former leader of the Liberal Democrats, Charles Kennedy was born in Inverness.
Health Services
The main hospital serving Inverness is Raigmore Hospital. This hospital comes under NHS Highland which controls many hospitals in the Highlands and Islands. There are however several other hospitals in the general area, notably New Craigs hospital which deals which mental health care. The current building occupied by New Craigs were opened in 2000
Inverness Prison
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).[11]
Areas of the city
Town twinning
Footnotes
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
- ^ Scottish Executive statistics
- ^ The Highland Main Line, the Aberdeen-Inverness Line and the Far North Line meet at Inverness (Ordnance Survey grid reference NH667454). Also, Kyle of Lochalsh services run to and from Inverness via the Far North Line to Dingwall.
- ^ Ordnance Survey grid reference for Inverness Airport (access from A96 road): NH776508.
- ^ OLD HIGH CHURCH, Riverside Churches Clergy Fraternal website
- ^ Old High St Stephen’s website
- ^ UHI Millennium Institute website
- ^ Craig Phadrig, Inverness, Walk in Scotland, Visitscotland
- ^ Local Government etc (Scotland) Act 1994, Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) website
- ^ Helen Liddell joins Inverness celebrations as Scotland’s Millennium City, Scotland Office press release 19 Mar 2001
- ^ Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004, Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) website
- ^ HMP Inverness, Scottish Prison Service website
Ordnance Survey grid reference: NH668449
==External links==link title http://www.aboutmyarea.co.uk/IV2
