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Dunain House


Kingsmills

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What a great photo, my guess is Torvean where the golf course is now taken from Tomnahurich hill but don't know if there was ever any houses there!  Is that washing drying on the canal bank?

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What a great photo, my guess is Torvean where the golf course is now taken from Tomnahurich hill but don't know if there was ever any houses there!  Is that washing drying on the canal bank?

Given the distance that Craig Phadrig is from that watercourse, is it not more likely to be the river and its west bank from the Castle Hill or more likely nearer Godsmans Brae? I've done a bit of Googlemapping and it's by no means obvious exactly where this is. In addition, this could well be quite an old photo and a lot of buildings, including the one in the foreground may no longer be there. I wonder if this could be just before the Bught Park begins where the Mormon church and the Free Presbyterian Old Folks Home (some great late night parties in there on Sundays by the way:lol:) now are.

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What a great photo, my guess is Torvean where the golf course is now taken from Tomnahurich hill but don't know if there was ever any houses there!  Is that washing drying on the canal bank?

Given the distance that Craig Phadrig is from that watercourse, is it not more likely to be the river and its west bank from the Castle Hill or more likely nearer Godsmans Brae? I've done a bit of Googlemapping and it's by no means obvious exactly where this is. In addition, this could well be quite an old photo and a lot of buildings, including the one in the foreground may no longer be there. I wonder if this could be just before the Bught Park begins where the Mormon church and the Free Presbyterian Old Folks Home (some great late night parties in there on Sundays by the way:lol:) now are.

What a strange photograph, the background looks early 50's, the foreground ???....well isn't that a very modern lamppost on the right as you face it and on the left what looks like a bollard also very modern.....could be my eyes but something looks very wrong!!!

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What a great photo, my guess is Torvean where the golf course is now taken from Tomnahurich hill but don't know if there was ever any houses there!  Is that washing drying on the canal bank?

Given the distance that Craig Phadrig is from that watercourse, is it not more likely to be the river and its west bank from the Castle Hill or more likely nearer Godsmans Brae? I've done a bit of Googlemapping and it's by no means obvious exactly where this is. In addition, this could well be quite an old photo and a lot of buildings, including the one in the foreground may no longer be there. I wonder if this could be just before the Bught Park begins where the Mormon church and the Free Presbyterian Old Folks Home (some great late night parties in there on Sundays by the way:lol:) now are.

What a strange photograph, the background looks early 50's, the foreground ???....well isn't that a very modern lamppost on the right as you face it and on the left what looks like a bollard also very modern.....could be my eyes but something looks very wrong!!!

Is it the very tall slender structure on the right you mean? I'm not sure that isn't a flagpole but if you look closely just to the right of that, there appears to be a much shorter gas lamp which would tend to date this earlier. Also, might what looks like a bollard be something to tie boats to in days gone by?

Regarding the background, you can see that Dalneigh isn't there, apart from what I take to be Dalneigh Farm (now the Manse) just above and left of centre. Most of Dalneigh was put up in the late 40s/early 50s but I'm not even sure if parts like Dochfour Drive and Columba Road are there and they were pre-war. In fact there is so little development between the river and Craig Phadrig that I am wondering if this photo may be quite old indeed. I am guessing that the line of the canal may be left to right about three quarters of the way up.

But yes, between one thing and another, I just can't get much at all from that photo that gives a definite fix as to where it might be so again I am drifting towards the conclusion that it may be old enough for a great deal indeed to have changed since it was taken.

I think this is another photo which is intriguing enough for me to get out there and check angles in an attempt to fix the point.

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Having now gone back to the Google satellite view, I can throw another suggestion into the melting pot. Strange though it may seem, a view from Castle Hill across the river towards the canal appears to fit. What you do have to assume is that the photo predates the construction of Ness Walk and Ardross Terrace and that the house in the foreground was demolished to make way for the Palace Hotel etc.

That makes what would be the suspension bridge just off to the right and the Cathedral (if there by then) just off to the left. This also squares with the buildings going slightly diagonally across the middle of the photo being Tomnahurich St and Young St in such state of development as they were at the time. In fact I could argue that the aged looking cottages may be what eventually became the current Tomnahurich St in around the 1880s. From that you can just see where Bruce Gardens and Dalneigh Road would head off towards the future Dalneigh, of which there is only the farm in this photo.

Yup. The more I think about it, the more I buy into that theory!

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You have cracked it Charles!  What was confusing me was where the canal was but now I see, I think the steps going down the river bank are still there today just outside the Columba Hotel.

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I've now been for a look and I'm absolutely sure the photo was taken from Castle Hill (probably round about the corner of the castle itself) looking across the river with the suspension bridge just out of shot bottom right and Criag Dunain out of shot top left. IBM is also correct about the stone steps which are still there. The house in the foreground is just about where the Palace Hotel is now. I could find no indication on the Palace of date of construction but I do know that the former Rendezvous (Rocpool now) was in place by the early 1890s since it is present on a drawing of Inverness by the Royal Academy art master Pierre Delavault which appears on the front cover of school magazines of that era. Since that building is not in the photo we can take it that the photo predates the 1890s. It is not clear how much of Tomnahurich St is the original cottages and how much is late 19th century stone buildings but the Tomnahurich Street post office on the corner of Montague Row has the date 1888 on it and I recollect that there is at least one other building in Young St/Tomnahurich St with a similar date. I would hazard a guess that this photo was taken during the 1880s when that part of Inverness was in the process of development. Interestingly the Columba Hotel next to the Palace has the date 1938 on it - later than I expected.

I also think that if you could go back to Inverness in about 1880, it would be a very different town indeed from what we currently know because there seems to have been a huge amount of building in the last 20 years of the 19th century. In addition to Tomnahurich St etc, much of the Crown also dates from that period.

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Where you could go before the Craig opened 

image.jpg

Or at least you could go there if you had the money. In days gone by it wasn't unusual for well off families to have their "embarrassments" committed to one of these places simply to get them out of the way. It even happened to errant daughters who found themselves "in a certain condition" outwith wedlock and this used to be regarded as so morally degenerate as to amount to insanity. I believe that the practice of institutionalising unmarried mothers lasted rather longer in Ireland.

Even as recently as the 1960s, well after the days of "Commissioners In Lunacy", my uncle was Physician Superintendent at Dykebar psychiatric hospital near Paisley and we used to go to visit them (my aunt, uncle and cousin!) for the holidays. I recollect this guy who wasn't quite the full shilling and who simply lived at the hospital, paid for by his family.

Edited by Charles Bannerman
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