Highland Council moves to safeguard Grantown's history
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A Common Good Asset Register is in the process of being completed for Grantown and includes eight items and a small fund of £250.
There were just two responses to the public consultation which took place over 14 weeks last year on the proposed inclusions.
However, they have led to the removal of Inverallan Church, Seafield Park and Ian Charles Hospital from the final list of items to come officially under the auspices of the local authority.
Included on the list are:
• The Square and also the area of ornamental garden by the Garth Hotel;
• the High Street toilets and car park also includes an area of adjacent amenity land.
• Mossie Road play park. The deed specifies that the land is to be used only as a children’s play park.
• Grantown War Memorial which was designed by Alexander Marshall MacKenzie and unveiled by the Countess of Seafield on 18 September 1921.
• The Regality Cross in The Square. The original monument erected in Grantown in 1766 went missing without trace. In 2015, the current Regality Cross was erected to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the town being founded.
• Grantown Clock and Bell by Grantown Museum. The town clock and bell were purchased using money raised locally originally intended for relief for soldiers wounded in the Napoleonic War but never sent. In 1824 a tower was built to house the clock and bell at Speyside House.
The bell was removed in1980s when Speyside House was converted into flats. In 2006, Grantown Museum restored the clock and built a campanile to house the bell.
• A desk stand at Grantown Museum. The ornate desk stand was presented by the Right Honourable Nina Caroline Ogilvie Grant, Countess of
Seafield in 1966 to mark the 200th anniversary of the founding of the town.
• The Provost's chair also kept at the town's museum.
A number of the title deeds were signed over by the Right Honourable Nina Caroline Ogilvie Grant, Countess of Seafield to the provost, magistrates and councillors of the Burgh of Grantown in the late 1960s.
The move will ensure that the community assets are protected into the future.
Another aim to is to look at generating income from the assets to the benefit of the town but that will not be possible given the nature of the items on Grantown's register.
It in fact commits the council to continue to look after the items and pick up any costs.
Officials stated in their report: "The proposed Common Good Asset Register for Grantown contains few, if any, assets with potential for income generation...
"Given the present and potential financial circumstances, it is likely that the council will need to continue to retain substantial responsibility for expenditure incurred in connection with any Grantown Common Good assets.
Grantown was erected into a Burgh of Regality for Ludovick Grant by King William and Queen Mary in 1694. It then became a Police Burgh in 1898.
