Pricing Change
New pricing for orders of material from this site will come into place shortly. Charges for supply of digital images, digitisation on demand, prints and licensing will be altered.
Field Visit
Date April 1989
Event ID 1083067
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1083067
No. 200 The Topography of Inveraray Town
The new town of Inveraray was established by the 3rd Duke of Argyll on the low headland then known as Gallows Foreland, 0.6km S of the old town and castle (Nos. 184, 199).The site was bounded on the WNW by the 17th-century beech avenue (see No. 185), where a high wall was built in 1757, and on the other sides by Loch Fyne. It measures about 250m from NNE to SSW by 150m in maximum width, narrowing at the S to a point where the avenue wall bounds the A83 as it runs along the shore. It rises to a maximum height of about7m OD at Church Square, and substantial breastworks front Loch Fyne to N and E. Some land has been reclaimed from the foreshore as public recreation ground N of the W half of Front Street, and the bastioned court-house enclosure of 1816-21 (No. 205) extends into the Loch.
The first proposal of 1744, drawn up by the Duke and Lord Milton, envisaged the transfer of the old town with its churches, tolbooth, substantial tacksmens' houses set on long leases, and tenants' dwellings, and the addition of a great inn and industrial buildings. This scheme showed the inn, with commercial and industrial buildings, ranged along the sea-front looking N up Loch Fyne, and an axial N-S street, set parallel to the avenue, with a central market-place. William Adam's design of about 1747 brought the double church into the central square, and proposed to introduce bastions fronting Loch Fyne to the E, but John Adam's drawings of 1750, recording his own proposals and those of the Duke, show that there was still no fixed plan for that area although the inn (No. 203) was already under construction on the estate side of the avenue, soon to be followed by the Town House (No. 209). The first private tack, granted in 1753, was for a house which is now the Fernpoint Hotel (No. 207), buil near Loch Fyne on the oblique street-alignment shown on John Adam's drawings, but in 1756 the first tack was granted on the axial main street (No. 202), and the subsequent construction of Factory Land and Ferry Land (No. 206) fronting E to Loch Fyne was parallel to that axis. A pier (No.208) was also built in 1759 to Adam's design, at the E end of Front Street.
At this period building was being carried out according to a feuing plan prepared by John Adam, which does not survive, but progress was slow until the succession of the 5thDuke in 1770. Thereafter the tacksmens' houses and two manses in Front Street (No. 201) and further private houses in North Main Street were completed, and South Main Street was formed by two tenement blocks designed by Robert Mylne. During the 1780s Mylne prepared several schemes for unifying the NNE front of the town, the view which greeted travellers arriving by the military road and approaching over his Aray Bridge (Nos. 255, 264). These schemes included proposed alterations to existing houses and an ornamental gateway to Main Street, but the parts completed were an arcaded screen and lodge at the avenue, and a single arch at the entrance to the Dalmally road. The double church (No.37) was built to Mylne's design in Church Square, in the position first proposed by William Adam, in 1795-1802. Anew court-house and jail were under discussion from 1807, to be built on the loch side at the E side of Church Square, and they were completed in 1821 (No. 205).
Thereafter there were few substantial alterations to the fabric of the town, although individual mid-19th-centuryhouses were built in Church Square and at the NE loch side. The most substantial addition, significantly altering the visual balance of the N front, was the tall bell-tower built near All Saints' Episcopal Church (No. 3) in 1923-32, and in1941 the parish church spire, the original focal point of the town, was demolished. The need for extensive repairs to the houses in the burgh in the 1950s led to their transfer by the Argyll Trustees to the ownership of the Town Council and the then Ministry of Works. A thorough programme of renovation was carried out, funded by the Scottish Development Department and supervised by lan G Lindsay and Partners, architects. The town remained a royal burgh until 1975 (en.1). Except where stated below, the buildings of the town are two-storeyed, varying considerably in height, with walls of harled and whitewashed rubble, sash-and-case windows, and roofs covered with Easdale slates. Many of the windows have black-painted margins, and the window-dressings commonly have round arrises. Few internal features remain, and references below to former stairs and furnishings are derived mainly from Lindsay's survey-drawings (en.2). There is no uniform system of house-numbering, the existing means of identification combining present and former owners, and the letters used below for individual blocks are intended merely as a key to the accompanying elevation-drawings (en.3*).
The following descriptions cover all secular buildings earlier than about 1820 in the town and the suburb of Newton (No. 210), except for some granite garden-walls and stables in the back-lands. The principal streets (Front Street and Main Street) are described first, followed by public buildings(Argyll Arms Hotel, Court-house and jail, Pier, and Town House) and detached blocks (Crombie's Land, Factory Land with Ferry Land, and Fernpoint Hotel) in alphabetical order, and then the suburb of Newton. All Saints' Episcopal Church (No. 3), the Parish Church (No. 37) and the Inveraray Cross (No. 36) are described separately. A full historical narrative is given in I G Lindsay and M Cosh, lnveraray and the Dukes of Argyll, to which reference should be made in conjunction with the descriptions.
RCAHMS 1992, visited April 1989
