Drawings recall old Inverness streetscapes

AN intriguing glimpse into how an Inverness street looked almost 100 years ago is being showcased in a new exhibition.

Intricate line drawings of buildings in Academy Street have gone on show at the city’s museum and art gallery.

They have been created following painstaking research by civil engineer Gordon Lynn who has sifted through old photographs and documents held by places such as the Highland Archive Centre, the Royal Commission for Ancient and Historical Monuments in Edinburgh and High Life Highland’s Am Baile collection.

The exhibition is being held as part of the Inverness Townscape Heritage Project, which aims to regenerate the Academy Street area. It is a prelude to the launch of a website in autumn highlighting the street’s heritage and culture.

The individual drawings also feature in a much bigger panoramic view showing both sides of Academy Street as it appeared in 1920. The bigger picture is part of a series of entire Inverness streetscapes evoking a bygone era and depicting long-lost buildings.

Mr Lynn, who works for GF Job of Nairn, said the panoramas are up to 2.5m long and produced to scale to give a true reflection of how places such as Castle Street and Bank Street once appeared. They each took up to two years to create.

"It is like putting together a big jigsaw," he explained. "It takes time to do it properly but it is worth it.

"I am not trying to live in the past but learn from it. Seeing what was there before, it would be nice to incorporate old designs into modern buildings.

"A lot of old buildings have a lot of features which are there to be admired. It would be nice to see more detail in modern buildings and give local people a sense of pride."