Or not, depending on my mood
Yay! I’ve found one benefit of the quiet streets of lockdown – I really love these vibrant church doors, but the particular church in question is right on a busy city centre street that is usually congested with traffic during the day, so I never manage to find a moment when the street is empty enough to get a clear shot. But look! A beautiful triptych of purple doors! 🙂
The base of the tower of the Old High Church dates to around the 15th Century, making the lower tower the oldest structure in Inverness – I wonder if that includes this lovely little wooden door inserted half way up the wall?
The rest of the current church itself was built in the late 1700s, but apparently there have been multiple churches on this hilly spot since the times of St Columba, who reputedly brought Christianity to the Pictish peoples who lived at that time in what is now Inverness, preaching from St Michael’s Mount here on the banks of the River Ness in AD565.
Since the early 1700s there has been a curfew bell rung every evening – originally at 5pm but nowadays at 8pm – as when Inverness was built mainly of timber structures, walking with an open flame would have been a definite fire hazard and without a lamp it was deemed too dangerous to be out and about in the dark.
From our house we can actually hear the curfew bell ringing in the distance but it’s quickly become one of those everyday background noises you just seem to filter out because it’s just always there. Obviously there’s no actual legal curfew due to fire risk any more, just a stay at home strategy due to coronavirus, but 300 years on it’s nice to have that continuity of tradition.
When I was young I used to think it was called the High Church simply because it was on a high hill, and I was almost right – apparently in the days when the church steeple would easily have been the highest building around, it literally was the high church! 🙂
For this year’s A-Z I’m going to take you on a photographic tour of My Inverness, Past and Present. I grew up in the local area, I went to school here and brought up my three children here, but I moved away to London for 18 years before returning home for good at the end of last summer.
P.S. My initial plan for my A-Z posts has necessarily been curtailed somewhat due to the current coronavirus pandemic, but we’ll get through the alphabet one way or another, however creative my use of subjects may have to be – so thank you for visiting Inverness with me, and I hope you enjoy our trip!
I’ve not done at all well with my Thursday Door posts during 2019, so next year I’m determined to try harder! Norm has suggested a review of our favourite doors of the year for this week, but with very few to choose from I’m just going to join in with a standard door post today:-)
Not at all sure what the original purpose of this rusty old lock box was, but it’s not exactly secure any more! 🙂
I’m sure this poor old door has featured on Thursday Doors at least once at some point in the past, and here it is again, looking more and more shabby as time passes and less and less chic. But I still like it, it looks like it has lots of interesting stories to tell of a far busier and exciting time long before it became relegated to being an unloved and unused back garden door set into an equally unloved rendered back wall… 🙂
Not-so-pretty doors in the underbelly of a grimy railway bridge at London Bridge Station for this week’s Thursday Doors 🙂
A selection box of Thurday Doors taken at Borough Market at London Bridge yesterday 🙂
I saw these grey painted doors set into a grey brick wall built onto grey concrete and thought yup, these dull doors are for me today! And then I thought – hmmmm… a letter box and flap is kind of a door-within-a-door just for letters, isn’t it? 🙂
Check out lots of other Thursday Doors over at Norm’s place
Not really a door to nowhere of course, but instead an urban road tunnel maintenance access door presumably leading straight down into the automotive abyss zooming along below. What caught my eye most was the depth of the shadows caused by the afternoon sunshine, the faded peeling paint and the non-descript half-hearted attempt at grafitti decorating the total ensemble… 🙂
Ruth Blogs Here 