Old High Kirk, Church Street, Inverness is a Grade A listed building in the Highland local planning authority area, Scotland. First listed on 21 May 1971. Church.
Old High Kirk, Church Street, Inverness
- WRENN ID
- floating-bonework-quill
- Grade
- A
- Local Planning Authority
- Highland
- Constituency
- Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire MP: Mr Angus MacDonald (LD)
- Country
- Scotland
- Date first listed
- 21 May 1971
- Type
- Church
- OS grid reference
- NH 664 455
- Coordinates
- 57.48012, -4.2288
- Source
- Historic Environment Scotland listing
Description
The Old High Kirk, located on Church Street in Inverness, features a late 16th century tower and a church built between 1769 and 1772. The interior underwent significant alterations by A & W Reid in 1877, followed by further additions and changes by W L Carruthers in 1899. The building is constructed of rubble, with a square-plan tower that is unbuttressed and has small openings. There is a projection for a stair at the southeast, and the top of the tower, likely from the late 17th century, includes a corbelled balustraded parapet and a small octagonal spire. An apsidal-ended vestry was added to the southeast of the tower in 1899.
The church itself consists of seven bays, with late 19th century porches at the end bays and a semi-octagonal apse from 1891 at the center bay. The southeast flank features tall round-arched windows, while the northwest flank has square-headed windows, with small dormers added in 1899.
Inside, the church was extensively remodeled in 1877 and 1899. It includes a demi-octagonal gallery and modified box-type pews introduced in 1877. The open timber roof has principals that spring from stone corbels, added in 1899. The stained glass windows are of various dates and were created by Ballantine & Gardiner, Douglas Strachan, and Gordon Webster.
Local climate
Old High Kirk, Church Street, Inverness sits in a wetter-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 990 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 80% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 60% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 54 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 94% of listed buildings. Of these, 36 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.2°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
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