Charles Bannerman

Devil's Advocate question - how would this thread have read three or four months ago?

This thread is a great read, especially the OP (which interestingly enough seems to have escaped the attention of the mods)! The case actually rather reminds me of how Clach managed not to pay rent for Grant Street for four years! :) :D

Sorry folks, only saw this when I got back home. Let me explain. Outwith Saturday afternoon, football is normally only broadcast on Radio Scotland on 810MW. (You will also get exactly the same transmission simultaneously on 103.5-105 when Radio nan Gaidheal is not on air. That's why when there were SPL Sunday games the football would suddenly be ousted by Gaelic Psalms.) On Saturday afternoons there is Open All Mics on 103.5-105 and different commentaries on 92-95FM and 810MW - unless Six Nations Rugby takes 94FM. Apart from possible rugby, it's solid football everywhere from around noon until 7pm with frequencies splitting betwen 3 and 3:45 and for the second half. The other SPL games have online commentary. With only 810MW avaliable at other times, midweek coverage tends to involve a production decision as to what best suits the programme of matches on offer on any evening. That MIGHT be open all mics but it could be a commentary with either updates live from other grounds with reporters or, as was the case tonight, a commentary (Rangers - Killie) with score updates from the commentator and half and full time reports from the other grounds. Radio Scotland's capacity to cover football on Saturdays is actually quite formidable since apart from the three main frequencies there are also local opt outs which enable Aberdeen games to be covered in that area and also ICT and Gretna when they were in the SPL. However the schedule is only completely given over to football on Saturday afternoons since it's not realistic to withdraw other programming at other times but 810 on its own can deliver a lot of football as well. Since I'm on the subject, I might as well mention other BBC football services relevant to ICT fans. The Results Programme on BBC1 at 4:30 on Saturdays includes a match report on any occasion there is also an Open All Mics reporter at any ICT game. Then there is BBC online which is just on the point of extending its coverage of ICT and indeed also Ross County. Starting on Friday I will be providing brief written previews with manager quotes for matches involving both Highland teams and also on Saturday evenings from just after six a match report with quotes from whichever of the Highland teams is at home. Away games are often covered already, I understand. Also don't forget BBC local news bulletins on 92-95 FM in the Highlands and Islands but also obtainable online, especially at 0750 on weekdays where there's a sports report every Monday and Friday plus other midweek coverage as and when. Lots of ICT from your BBC!

This has been public knowledge for over five years. Maybe not widely known but public knowledge all the same.

I think the "end of March" rule was blown out of the water with a lot else by Caley Thistle in 2004-05 when they firstly groundshared at Aberdeen and secondly then moved back to Inverness in the January. Yes, County DO have, and indeed have had for a little over five years, a plan to extend to 6000 seats. In fact planning permission has been in the process of renewal since it expires after five years. I think the view was that they might as well have this in place even if it was never used. The extension work could be done in something like 12 weeks. What is NOT clear is how this would be financed but Ross County are very well organised in terms of potential stadium expansion. How big a problem the railway bridge would be is also not clear but they have dealt with capacity crowds v Rangers, ICT etc on a number of occasions.

It seems there were as whole lot of these guys who came through the Aberdeen juvenile set up roughly at the same time.

Yes it is very good and although there's not a lot in it that would be news to a Highland or an ICT readership, this is a good deal further flung so I think it's very useful PR both for Ross and for Caley Thistle.

No bull fro me either AM... I thoroughly enjoyed the read. Oh and by the look of the wifie that I remember used to teach P7 at Crown I thought you were going to say you were taught BY Gen Wolfe at Crown Primary except that the said wifie had short grey hair circumscribing the most fierce expression I have ever seen. Rumour had it that she taught with the bible in one hand and the belt in the other. By the way you could add two further facts about Quebec - Wolfe was killed and the opposing French general was called Montcalm. PMF's colour image of the Town Hall, the Forbes Fountain and the Three Graces is intriguing. It is VERY VERY similar to and taken from exactly the same place as quite a well known black and white image which I got from Am Baile and used in my latest ROYAL Academy book. Given that colour technology wasn't available in the late 19th century I am wondering if PMF's image is either a colour drawing based on that photo or reprocessed using computer. The Forbes Fountain may well have been relocated to Bellfield for H and S reasons but it hasn't had a lot of luck there. It keeps getting filled with washing up liquid by pranksters and frequently gushes bubbles!

I have just read this and it is an absolutely excellent overview of the history of Inverness. I was interested to see the dates quoted for the construction of the castle as 1834-46. The date I had been familiar with is 1836 which would have just made it pre Victorian but this suggests that Inverness Castle is, in fact, a Victorian Folly. I note that the prison etc inside the grounds to which I referred earlier also seems to date from that period. I don't know if you are aware but you have split hairs with brilliant accuracy in referring to "Inverness Academy" as having been founded in 1792 because the school was indeed founded in that year under that name and did not acquire its "Royal" tag until 1793. It is regarded as the natural successor of the 16th century Grammar School which began life in Bank Lane which was hence known as School Vennel and then moved to Dunbar's Hospital where it was attended for maths lessons by Major (later General) Wolfe who was on Cumberland's staff at Culloden and who in 1759 captured Quebec from the French during the Seven Years War. The Grammar School was itself a successor of the Monastic School in Friars Street which was founded in the 1230s. Hence Inverness Royal Academy today represents an educational tradition of almost 800 years in the Highland Captial. So get it right up yiz all youse Tecky and Millburn Junior Secondary plebs and even worse all youse Johnny Come Latelies from Charleston and Culloden! :P (Note - until the first half of the 20th century the most reliable means of getting into Inverness Royal Academy was to have well heeled parents who could pay your way in irrespective of brainpower! The school made a transition into comprehensive status like the rest between 1973 and 1980. :) ) Can I conclude by pointing out one small error in an otherwise admirable tract. You quote the population of Inverness as 12,509 at the 1861 Census. It was actually 12,510. You appear top have omitted Caley100. :D :D :D

Yes as far as I am aware it was but the buildings shown would presumably have been farm buildings and Scotty's overlay actually places them adjacent to the Dalneighy school edge of the Manse grounds as I remember them which seems absolutely spot on and logical. Was the Militia Depot a bakery for a long bnumber of years?

So there's a "significant birthday" coming up in a couple of months then? Just a bit too late to conicide with what you hope will be the Dark Blues' Div 1 title and return to the SPL?

Yes, I was looking at the Dalneigh bit with great interest as well. I reckon the buildings marked "Dalneich" were probably the buildings for Dalneigh Farm. Before I saw Scotty's overlaid maps I guesstimated they were round about where the right angle between St. Valery Ave and St Ninian Drive now is. It seems I was about 150 yards out since they seem to be between the St Ninian cul de sac and St Mungo Rd. Interestingly enough "Dalneich" was how my granny (born on Shore Street in 1899) pronounced it. At leisure I must zoom in on other part of the town.

A closer look at that map has revealed rather a lot. Obviously it predates 1936 when the Baths moved to Friars Street but it apparently even predates the First World War. My reason for believing that is that what is now the front part of the Highland Council HQ on the corner of Ardross St and Glenurquhart Rd is labelled "Collegiate School". This refers to the Boys' College which was there until certainly no later than 1921 and I suspect it ceased to have that designation earlier than that. Indeed I have a vague recollection that the Navy may have been in there after the College closed, possibly during the war when Inverness was a significant British and American minesweeper base. After the war, Inverness Royal Academy raised enough cash and shares to acquire the building as a War Memorial girls' hostel with the school playing fields behind it and the premises were reopened as such in October 1921. When the IRA girls' hostel moved to Hedgefield and the playing fields to where the new Millburn Academy now is in the 1930s, Inverness County Council moved into Ardross Street - hence the term County Buildings which evolved into HC HQ. I also note from the map that half way down Castle Hill towards the Haugh is a building marked "County Buildings" which presumably performed that function before Ardross St. That building and the one marked "Prison" are long gone and were probably demolished as part of the radical changes in that area following the Castle Street landslip of 1932. PMF - where on the net did you find this little treasure because it would be good to have a look at the whole town? Glen Mhor... the post above briongs back more wonderful memories. I suspect you must be a rough contemporary of mine. What a great thread this is turning into!

Are you sure about there being a swimming pool there Charles? I remember hearing about my Granny and Aunty working there and taking my baby cousin to work with them. They left her in a laundry basket sleeping while the worked. She died a few years ago but would have been about 70 now so that would make you what? Were you in school with Johndo? (EDIT - PMF's extremely interesting map of old Inverness appeared as I was writing the original of this.) The baths in Montague Row closed in about 1936 when the new ones at Friars Street opened so there wouldn't be too many people these days who remember them. I (obviously) only heard about them by repute but one man who will certainly remember them clearly will be that legend of Inverness swimming Alex Sutherland. Alex is well into his 80s now (he served in Bomber Command during the war) and has possibly taught more kids to swim even than the legendary Donnie Ross. He was also a competitive swimmer right through to a very mature age and if he has now stopped doing the Veterans' competitions, it will only be relatively recently. Was I at school with Johndo? :D When I was a prefect at the Royal Academy Johndo was the most irritating little hyperactive nyaff of a Second Year that anybody could imagine. The standard way of dealing with Johndo was to grab him by the scruff of the neck, bend him over the arm of the sofa we had in the Prefects' Room and serially and seriously set about his backside with an Adidas Rom training shoe. Nowadays that would see the front page of The Sun but then it was quite normal. Normal perhaps, but in Johndo's case it may have given us prefects a sense that justice had been done but, as Thistle, Elgin etc fans will testify, it was totally ineffective.

The ultimate oxymoron - Gourmet Burgers!!! :D

My goodness this has become a thread you can't really leave for very long. Caley100 - yup, cue 't 'Orlicks music bah goom! Scotty - as far as I am aware Against All Odds is now officially out of print, so that would enable the extortionate Mr Leakey to pile on the price even more. We were looking for a copy in the club shop a month ago for a TV item we were doing in connection with the Celtic Park anniversary and there are none left. As it happens my first two Royal Academy books which went out of print in 2001 have just undergone a limited reprint but for a variety of reasons I can't see Against All Odds running to that. So Leakey can probably extract about ?20 for them. Donnie Ross! The man taught me, and thousands of others, to swim! Initially that was on dry land in a side room on the ladies' changing side. When you mention these cubicles, I always think of the ambient pong of sweaty feet which constantly seemed to permeate them. And I remember the "wrinkly hands" test too. I've often wondered what the old baths' "carbon footprint" was for keeping these hot showers on all the time. Different era though. I think the puff candies from the shop in the baths up top must have ruined my teeth. And the Baths Cards. Five to 4 bus from outside Dalneigh School and into the Baths. Present the card to save the 6d entry fee. On the subject of the walk back along to and over the Greig Street Bridge, I remember one occasion when we were assailed by the Neds from the top end of Laurel Avenue and had to leg it all the way to the safety of my mate's house in Huntly Street. SMEE - I dopn't remember any youth club opposite the baths but you may be thinking of the 5th BBs' Eddie MacGillivray Emeorial Hall which was very close by? PMF - now that's ringing bells. Did the very old baths on Montague Row first become a laundry (Ashgrove?) before the Cope moved in?

I'm about 2 years older than Mantis. :P

Laddie... stop demoralising me!! :P Although I have no recollection of the "swimming poo" (sic :D ) I do remember the swimming pool at Friars Street and when the Coop used to be in the former swimming pool (which I don't remember) in Montague Row. I remember when there used to be houses on Shore Street (my father was born in one of them) I remember Queen Mary's House and the rest of old Bridge Street. I remember the Museum, Old Library and Fire Station between the Castle and Bridge Street. I remember the Library being temporarily housed in a portakabin in King Street. I remember First Second, Third and Fourth Streets where you remember the Eastgate Car Park. I remember Stratton milk being delivered by a man driving a horse drawn vehicle. I remember Harry Barclay delivering paraffin round the houses from a tanker. I remember Jocky Lawson's van before there were shops in Dalneigh at St. Margaret's Road. I remember Bobby MacKay's butcher's van. I remember the Old Caley Hotel and the Northern Meeting Rooms. I remember when there were car parking spaces along Bank Street. I remember when Highland used to play rugby at the Queens Park. I remember old Eastgate. I remember MacKay's library and bookshop on High Street. I remember the old Post Office (Queensgate, not High Street!!!) I remember the suspension bridge and the temporarry bridge. I remember Castle Tolmie. I remember when Inverness only had three sets of traffic lights. There you go. I thought we hadn't had a "Memories of Olde Snecke" thread for a few Christmases! :D

This thread is a spin off from the Hotels one and I am wondering if anyone can supplement what I have gleaned about "Catch My Pal" in Inverness? In a sentence, Catch My Pal was a Temperance (ie Total Abstinence) organisation in the town, best now remembered for its football team. The Catch My Pal Temperance network was founded in Ireland in 1909 and the idea was that members would be dedicated to getting their friends off the drink. A branch was set up in Inverness in 1911 and the Catch My Pal Hall was at the Merkinch end of Academy Street, possibly at the acute angle where it meets Church Street. The site I have in mind now, I think, must belong to Brian MacGregor since in the fairly recent past I have seen displayed on it abusive signs about David Sutherland and Innes and MacKay the Solicitors. I believe that this hall in days gone by was part of the considerable property in that immediate area owned by the Anderson family who had Anderson's the Bakers (anyone over about 45-50 remember the red vans with "Been doing our best for you since 1892" on them?) whose shops and bakery were across Academy Street where Blythswood is now. The Andersons were, I believe, very much involved with Catch My Pal who also held rallies in the larger Dr. Black Hall on Bank Street, part of St. Columba High Church of which they were members. However a Google search of "Catch My Pal Inverness" principally yields a number of references to the Catch My Pal football team which won the North Caledonian League in 1924-25. All that can be said with certainty about that particular victory is that they would not have gone on the p!ss afterwards! The only other significant intelligible reference I can find is to the fact that when a faction split away from the Free Prebyterian Church (presumably because even it was not extreme enough :angry: ) it met in the Catch My Pal Hall before eventually moving into Greyfriars Church (now occupied by the extortionate Mr Leakey). The only other reference I can find is a potentially valuable one in Am Baile but annoyingly it is in Gaelic although there are further references to dated Courier articles which might be worth some further research. I have a feeling that Catch My Pal did not survive World War 2 so there is not likely to be anyone here who remembers it directly but some of our older subscribers (Scarlet, Jock, Canuck, Exgrover) may know more than I do by more immediate word of mouth. Any takers?

Disgrace, isn't it!

Where of course history was made on September 9th 1993 and Caley voted 55-50 and merge with Thistle. Meanwhile across the river in the Rannoch Lodge, Thistle went for it 33-12. The Rannoch Lodge of course became the Crown Court which I think needs to join this thread since it appears to have gone bust and is no longer honouring bookings. The Rannoch/ Crown Court scenario make me think that we should also add to this thread those venerable Inverness Hotels which are still in existence but which have had their names corrupted. The Station has become The Royal Highlander :( The Cummings has become The Highwayman :( The Caley has become the Ramada Jarvis :( BUT The Thistle is still The Thistle :D And they had the good sense to restore the Kingsmills, so it looks like 2-0 to Jags on that one. :angry: One other defunct Inverness Hotel which comes to mind is the Ness Castle which was a pretty dismal establishment about half a mile off the Dores Road where you had to turn left just out past Holm Hill. I'm not surprised it didn't last the pace and it was last heard of converted into rented flats. Very much against my better judgement I went to view one about 4 or 5 years ago and couldn't wait to get out of the place!

That's probably because they charge a lot less than Leakey does for manky old tomes! But you're right - I'm not obliged to shop there so, having tested the water once, I don't!!

But it wasn't a licensed premises, or at least I thought that was their particular "zero tolerance" interpretation of the word Temperance, despite the real meaning being "in moderation" as opposed to the Total Abstinence peddled by the Temperance Movement and the Band of Hope etc. Which reminds me - have we discussed Catch Ma Pal on this forum and did anybody know that they ran a Catch Ma Pal junior football team at one point many years ago. (Apologies for taking this off thread.)

And I remember some of the grumpy old storemen! Is that a reference to post #10? :thumb02:

I'd be interested to see what his percentage mark up is! It's not so much a case of finding the same book elsewhere as making a value judgement as to whether a couple of manky old tomes are worth the funny money he charges. I remember the situation so well. It was around 4:30 on a Saturday afternoon in September 2005 and I was in his shop just browsing. There were a couple of books that sort of took my fancy - somewhat festering hardbacks that might have been quite readable after a damn good fumigation - so I thought I'd take them. As it happens I was also wired into my wee radio, intent on ICT's sterling efforts at Celtic Park to convert a 1-2 scoreline into a great away point which were somewhat distracting me. When I plonked them on the desk I RECKONED I heard him say "eighty" and I thought "pretty decent bargain!" but said to him "did you say eighty". "No... eighteen" came the reply. "Bloody hell!" I thought as I searched in my pocket while Barry Wilson pinged in a very decent corner. "Even better prices than the School Fete!" Given that I needed to keep my pound coin for Safeways car park, I placed a ?2 on the counter, hoping he would be OK for change - whereupon Mr L looked at me disdainfully and said "Eighteen pounds!" "WHUTT!" I ejaculated (verbally) "Eighteen quid for a couple of old books!" And with all the dignity I could muster, as Ian Black blasted yet another speculative 30 yarder goalwards, I picked up my ?2 coin from which I had confidently expected ?1.82 change and marched out of the shop whose door I have never since darkened. One of the books actuially had 27 and sixpence on its original pricetag and this comedian was wanting about nine quid for it 30 odd years on!