Long Gone Newsagents of The Sneck

[old caley girl]

I don't know what happened to Eddie Davidson but he was a committee member at one time - hence the blue blazer.

[Charles Bannerman]

Was that not their magazine The Warcry?! Just wondering what kind of state you must have been in to confuse the two? :

I was just wondering the same thing myself. The SA (Salvation Army not Sturmabteilung!) don't seem to have sold the Warcry about Inverness pubs for years but i do remember their regular visits to the Hayloft in the 70s.

[Heilandee]

I was just wondering the same thing myself. The SA (Salvation Army not Sturmabteilung!) don't seem to have sold the Warcry about Inverness pubs for years but i do remember their regular visits to the Hayloft in the 70s.

Mind of my 17 year old sister (thats a lang time ago) in the a bar in Fort william, saw the tops of the hats going past the window outside and started rummaging in her bag for sixpence to give for the "warcry" ,she near keeched herself when she realised it was the Polis doing an underage raid and she was offering them sixpence no to charge her!!

Edited October 4, 2008 by Heilandee

[airgweilo]

I remember two of the news agencies mentioned, with crystal clarity: Ward's (of Eastgate) and Bowes (on Young Street).

They were (for a number of years) owned by my grandfather, F Gordon Harper, who was - at one time - a Baillie on the Inverness town council. As, indeed, was his older son, Frank Harper who famously won the MC in 1956 for bravery during the Mau Mau Campaign in Kenya.

My mother was Gordon Harper's daughter, and we lived in Surrey in the south of England, due to my father's job. But every year, we came north to Inverness to see our grandparents - Gordon & Ina - who lived in a house called 'Maybank' at no. 20 Island Bank Road. 

When my grandfather died in April 1965, my grandmother Ina sold Ward's, but kept Bowes, which went from strength to strength under her stewardship, doing far better than it had even when my grandfather was alive, surprising us all. I guess we'd somewhat underestimated my silver-haired gran!

As I got older, my uncle, Frank, would take me out on early-morning newspaper delivery runs whilst I was up on holiday in Inverness. This involved getting up at something like 4:00 am to get washed, dressed and breakfasted before going to the warehouse to pick up the newspapers. Then, it was off to Bowes for twenty minutes of frantic sorting and bundling, before the papers were loaded into the back of the Bowes small grey mini-van, and we departed on the first of two delivery routes, which saw newspapers on the customers' doorsteps in time for breakfast.

Delivery consisted of Frank slowing down to a walking pace, handing me the newspapers for a particular house, and grinning mischievously, as he would warn me about the particularly aggressive dog which guarded this particular customer's house ... I spent a lot of the delivery routes at high adrenaline levels. For the record, not a single dog ever attacked or even menaced me - indeed, I never so much as saw even one dog in all the deliveries I ever made.

From the time from when I was age of 16 to when I was 20, we didn't see much of Inverness, due to my father securing post-retirement jobs first in Africa, and then in the newly-independent Bangladesh. But we returned to the UK in 1976, and selling the house in England, and moving to Inverness - to a house on Island Bank Road, just 200 yards down the street from my grandmother who still lived in Maybank.

By this stage, Frank had moved down to Livingston, but I would now spend university holidays helping out in Bowes, behind the counter. But after graduation, I moved to California, and in 1979, my grandmother sold Bowes (and Maybank), and moved in with my parents, before she passed away in January 1980.

I visited Inverness for a week again  in 1982, but it wasn't the same for me anymore, and a year later, my parents sold their house on Island Bank Road and moved to Australia. 

I was back in Scotland in 1988, but never again visited Inverness until 1998, when I brought my wife to the UK to see the some of places where I'd grown up, which had been particularly important to me.

In 2005, I brought my daughter to Inverness, but Bowes was no longer there. I never did learn what happened to Bowes: did it fail? Was it again bought out, this time for its location and then turned into the Mexican bar & restaurant ('Mambo' ... ?) which (I think) now occupies the same premises?

Although Inverness has changed, all places do and it still appears to thrive. 

I miss the old Inverness, nonetheless. But then, we all miss our childhoods.

[Scarlet Pimple]

Man o' man, if that house was power-washed it certainly would look fine. Especially if some needed repairs were done--see above  left window where the gutter  is now sagging, But you could probably spend quite a lot of money on bringing it back to what it was in past years...…… has great style though.

In Canada we have little else than wooden framing over a box, then covered in plastic tiling and decent houses in Vancouver now starting at some $700,000 . Shocking! The incoming of thousands of Chinese has  turned the small hamlet of Richmond, on the Southern outskirts of Vancouver, where I bought my first little townhouse  for $45,000 when the population was about 5,000, into a population of  over 100,000 residents.    For the above reason we know that there will be utter devastation when the "Big One" hits us , sooner rather  than later I fear. Just reviewed and renewed my home insurance policy!!!

With no earthquakes to worry about in Inverness, homes like the one shown here, could probably be beautified and with care could continue to look good for many years.

 

[IMMORTAL HOWDEN ENDER]