Fort George

In 1726 the first fortification to bear the name Fort George was completed in Inverness on the orders of General George Wade, standing on a hillock beside the River Ness. It incorporated portions of a medieval castle begun there by Malcolm III of Scotland in the late 11th century, and in the 17th century Oliver Cromwell had further strengthened the site with an added citadel, though by the early 18th century that stronghold had fallen out of use.

During the Jacobite rising of 1745, Wade's Fort George was besieged by some three thousand Jacobite troops. Cut off and with no prospect of relief from Crown forces, the garrison surrendered in February 1746 once mines had been driven under the outer walls. The victorious Jacobites then destroyed Old Fort George themselves, to deny the British Army any chance of using it again as a base.

In 1747, in the aftermath of the Crown victory at Culloden, Colonel William Skinner, the King's Military Engineer for North Britain, was contracted to rebuild Fort George entirely. Rather than reoccupy the old site, the decision was taken to build the new fortress some ten miles from Inverness at the mouth of the Moray Firth, where it could dominate the sea approach and be resupplied by ship if besieged.

Work at the new site began in 1748 under Skinner's direction, with the Adam family of architects, John, Robert and later James, acting as contractors and overseeing around a thousand soldiers who supplied the labour and defended the site as they built. The main defences were in place by 1757 and the fort was finally finished in 1769, its final cost of more than £200,000 running well over twice the original budget of £92,673.

Meanwhile the abandoned site of Old Fort George in Inverness lay derelict for almost seventy years, until the mid-19th century saw a red sandstone castellated building, Inverness Castle, erected in its place. Despite its towers and battlements, the new building had no military function and instead served as a prison and courthouse behind bastioned enclosing walls that echoed its predecessor.

Following the Childers Reforms, the 72nd and 78th Highland regiments amalgamated in 1881 to form the Seaforth Highlanders, who established their depot in the barracks. In 1961 that regiment merged with the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders to form the Queen's Own Highlanders, which made Fort George its new depot, and in 2007 the barracks became home to the Black Watch, 3rd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Scotland.

In November 2016 the Ministry of Defence announced that the site would close in 2032, with the Defence Minister commenting that it was no longer needed since the era of Highland rebellions had passed; the closure was later pushed back to 2033. In the meantime the barracks stay in active military use while much of the site remains open to the public, drawing 76,169 visitors in 2019 alone.