Inverness Sheriff Court

Inverness Sheriff Court is a castellated courthouse and prison complex constructed in two primary phases. The courthouse was designed by William Burn and built between 1833 and 1836. Thomas Brown II designed the police station and district court (formerly a prison), which were added between 1846 and 1848. Further alterations and connections to the county offices were made in 1904 by Ross and Macbeth, with additional changes in 1911 by R J Macbeth. The remains of the medieval castle well, restored in 1909, lie between the two buildings.

The courthouse is a two-storey building with a seven-bay ashlar front elevation, with the central three bays advanced and raised. A round tower is on the left (west) side, and a square tower is on the right (east) side. A central round-arched doorpiece is set beneath a gable, flanked by heavy buttresses. Most windows have round arches linked by a continuous hoodmould. First-floor windows at the second and sixth bays are tripartite. The building is topped with a crenellated parapet, with machicolations at the towers and decorative crosslets along the parapet. This design reflects group value and contributes to the building's architectural significance.

When inspected in 2014, the interior of the courthouse comprised a large central hall with a colonnade and an imperial stair rising beneath a coffered barrel vault. The ground floor contains the court, public offices, a faculty library, and the main courtroom, all accessed from this hall. The principal courtroom, located north of the stair, features a coffered ceiling and a semi-circular gallery accessed from the first floor. Large round-arched tripartite windows provide light, and the courtroom has timber pew seating arranged in a semi-circle around a timber bench with a Tudor Gothic sounding board canopy above. The well furniture, dock, and witness box were replaced in the 1980s in a style appropriate to the original design. Colonnades on the ground and first floors are groin and barrel-vaulted, springing from heavy pilasters. A timber-panelled hall connects the main courtroom to other ground-floor rooms, including the faculty room, while the faculty library has a large bay window to the east and a groin-vaulted ceiling, with largely intact furnishings including a break-front bookcase and library table. Decorative cornicing and panelled doors are found throughout the secondary rooms, offices, and passages, along with numerous fireplaces.

The police station and former prison is a three-storey building with a four-bay principal elevation, constructed from snecked rubble with ashlar dressings. It features a square tower at the southwest and an octagonal tower at the northwest, with a tall, slim circular turret at one angle. A crenellated and machicolated parapet tops the building. The interior of the police station was not inspected in 2014.

The courthouse and police station are linked at the east by a fortified enclosing wall with towers and bartizans, designed by Joseph Mitchell in 1839. Coped, squared, and coursed rubble boundary walls enclose the site to the west, north, and east.