Inverness Castle

A castle is said to have stood on this cliff above the River Ness since 1057, traditionally linked to Malcolm III of Scotland. In 1163 Malcolm IV is said to have appointed Shaw Macduff, first chief of Clan Mackintosh, as constable of the castle in reward for help suppressing a rebellion in Moray, tying the site from its earliest recorded history to the politics of the Highland clans.

The castle's medieval fortunes were violent. In 1307 Robert I razed its battlements during his campaign to deny fortified strongholds to his enemies, and the castle was occupied again during the Raid on Ross in 1491. Walter Ogilvy was paid in 1498 for repairing its twin towers, and in 1509 James IV made Alexander Gordon, 3rd Earl of Huntly, hereditary keeper and sheriff of Inverness, binding the castle to one of the north's most powerful families.

In 1428 James I summoned fifty Highland clan chiefs to a parley at Inverness Castle as part of his effort to bring the region under royal control. One by one the chiefs were arrested, shackled and imprisoned in separate rooms, cut off from communication with each other or their followers, and several were executed on the spot. Among those held was Alexander, 3rd Lord of the Isles, who returned within the year with 10,000 men and burned the town, though the castle itself held.

In 1548 George Gordon, 4th Earl of Huntly, completed a new castle and tower on the site, having earlier been obliged by James V to build a hall and chapel there. When Mary, Queen of Scots arrived in August 1562, the Gordons refused her entry, and the clans Chattan, Munro and Fraser rallied to her side, retaking the castle and driving the Gordons out. The governor who had barred the gates was hanged on the Queen's orders, and George Munro of Davochgartie, who had helped organise her journey, was made keeper in the aftermath.

The castle changed keepers repeatedly through the later sixteenth century as royal favour shifted — from George Munro to John Ross, Provost of Inverness, in 1562, then to Hucheon Rose of Kilravock in 1565 following the Chaseabout Raid, before reverting to the Earl of Huntly. Further sieges struck Inverness in 1649, 1650, 1689, 1715 and 1746, and by 1619 the castle was reported to be in such poor repair that a great part of it had fallen down; King James VI ordered its rebuilding but the work was never carried out in his lifetime.

The present castle was built new on the old site in the 19th century. William Burn designed the main southern block, completed in 1836 in red sandstone with an early castellated style and a symmetrical seven-bay front; Thomas Brown II added the north block, used as a prison and courthouse, in 1848; and Joseph Mitchell designed the bastioned walls enclosing the whole complex, replacing the medieval fortress with a working seat of justice.

In 1920 four captured field guns were installed at the castle frontage, including pieces taken at the Battle of Loos in 1915 and a pair of Russian guns seized at the Siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War and gifted to the town in 1857. Most were sold for scrap during the Second World War, one by administrative error, leaving a single Sevastopol gun which was later moved inside the castle; only the Loos gun survives today, held at the Clan Cameron Museum in Achnacarry.

The castle served Inverness-shire County Council after 1889 and continued to host sheriff and justice of the peace courts even after the council relocated in 1963, until the Inverness Sheriff Court finally moved to a new justice centre in 2020. The castle and grounds closed to the public in 2021 for extensive renovation, with reopening scheduled for 2025.