Next week councillors on the Inverness area committee of the Highland Council will be asked to approve spending of £4m repairing Inverness Town House, that wonderful ornate ‘Flemish-Baronial’ purpose-built civic building which sits in the centre of the Highland Capital.

It is owned by the Inverness Common Good Fund which is administered by councillors. They must surely agree to loosening the purse strings to carry out the comprehensive fabric restoration that is now required.

It follows a fall of loose masonry which led to emergency repairs and a subsequent condition survey.  This revealed the need for full stone repairs and replacement, mortar re-pointing, roof repairs, something called “rainwater goods renewal”, window repairs and replacements.

It is hardly surprising that some masonry was falling given that the last major repairs to be undertaken to the stonework were carried out in 1956.

What is surprising is that the masonry didn’t hit anyone in the busy thoroughfare below at corner of Castle Street and High Street.

Work on the Town House began in 1878 and on January 21 1882 the building was formally opened by the second son of Queen Victoria, Alfred, who was then known as the Duke of Edinburgh.

Eleven years later he succeeded his paternal uncle Ernest II as the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in Germany.

Not much is made of this particular royal connection in Inverness these days. But great pride is still taken in another historical event.

In 1921 the Town House was the scene of the first cabinet meeting of the British Government ever held outside London, and the only one until Gordon Brown took his Labour cabinet to Birmingham in 2008.

But 87 years earlier the then Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, was on holiday at Gairloch in Wester Ross when he discovered that Ireland was turning its back on the king and the British Empire.

He decided to call the cabinet at Inverness, rather than travel back to London, as other cabinet ministers were in the Highlands and King George V was at Moy Hall, home of the clan chief  Mackintosh of Mackintosh, 12 miles south of  Inverness.

Lloyd George went down to Moy that September morning for a breakfast meeting to brief the king before the cabinet gathered. But he was held up on his return journey because a steamroller had broken down on the road - not many people know that!

At the meeting the 'Inverness Formula' was agreed which provided the basis of the discussions which were to develop into the treaty creating the Irish Free State.

The names and some offices of those who attended the Inverness meeting read like pages from a dusty old school book- David Lloyd George (Prime Minister), Austen Chamberlain (Lord Privy Seal), Viscount Birkenhead (Lord Chancellor), Sir Robert S. Horne (Chancellor of the Exchequer), Edward Shortt (Home Secretary), Edward S. Montague (Secretary for India), Viscount Derwent (Lord Lieutenant of Ireland), Sir Hamar Greenwood (Irish Secretary), Sir Eric Geddes (Minister of Transport), Stanley Baldwin (Secretary of the Board of Trade), Sir Alfred Mond (Health Minister), Sir Laming Worthington-Evans (Secretary for War), Sir Arthur Griffiths-Boscawen (Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries), Robert Munro (Scottish Secretary), Dr. T. J. Macnamara (Minister of Labour) and Winston S. Churchill (Colonial Secretary).

The Council Officer, William Bain, passed round a blank sheet of paper which each member of the cabinet signed. This is still in the Highland Council's possession, and a facsimile of it is on display in the Town House in the council chamber which at that time was used by Inverness Town Council.

When Alex Salmond took his cabinet there in August 2008, the council again got ministers to sign a paper.

So it is a pretty safe bet that the Town House is and will be the only building in the land which will ever be able to boast that it hosted both the British and Scottish cabinets.

But it could claim a lot more than that for Inverness.

Some years ago a report on the way ahead for Inverness suggested that thought should be given to pulling down the concrete structures on Bridge Street that stand between the Town House and the River Ness. They were built in the 1960s replacing older rather more impressive stone buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries.

The idea of taking down the 50 year old lumps of concrete should be revisited, as should the idea replacing them with 21st century public park providing Inverness with a green heart.

It wouldn’t have to be anything remotely like the scale of Sir Ian Wood’s £40m vision for Aberdeen’s Union Terrace Gardens. Grass, trees, flowers, benches with a spot of public sculpture would do,  because the real assets are already in place.
It would have the Town House at one end, then above would be the imposing red sandstone Inverness Castle, with the River Ness flowing through the foreground. Meanwhile there would be views across to the Black Isle, Ben Wyvis and the mountains of the west.

The castle is currently used as Inverness Sheriff Court and the High Court when it is in town, although looks like ceasing. But it has long been argued that it is far from ideal for that purpose given the physical constraints of its hilltop position.
A new prison for Inverness on a suitable site, with the courts next door has already been mooted.

Meanwhile the Victorian Castle with its commanding location should be the focus of tourism activity in the city.  Part of it could possibly be adapted to house Inverness’s museum and art gallery which is currently tucked away out of sight in the anonymous concrete beside the Town House.

Such a development could bring the river into the centre of Inverness – metaphorically speaking of course. The Ness is an enormous natural asset which could contribute far more to the physical character of the Highland Capital.

There has talk of encouraging continental style cafe society development along its banks and the creation of an artistic quarter whatever that might mean.

So repairing the Town House should just be the first step towards unlocking the potential of Inverness’s centre.