Court battle looms over Royal High decision - John McLellan

To the deep disappointment of some, the delight of quite a few, the indifference of thousands more but the surprise of no-one, the controversial dream of turning the old Royal High School into an elite hotel has finally been shattered.

The future of the Royal High School building is still up in the air

Following Tuesday’s announcement that Scottish ministers have rejected the plan, Calton Hill will not be the home for Scotland’s first six-star Rosewood Hotel or a posthumous memorial to one of Edinburgh’s great modern architects Gareth Hoskins.

Instead plans will be cranked up to turn it into a new home for St Mary’s Music School, with designs by another big Edinburgh design name, Richard Murphy, already having permission even though the school’s backers do not control the council-owned building.

The Murphy scheme envisages new entrances along Regent Road into a small theatre in what was the assembly hall, with new low-rise classrooms and boarding rooms behind, instead of the two drums of bedrooms the hotel would have involved.

The re-modelled frontage looks remarkably similar to the alterations to the National Museum on Chambers Street which was designed by the Hoskins practice. Ironically that design was criticised by none other than Richard Murphy in a 2011 article for Architects’ Journal, particularly the doorways. “The way that the new entrances have been punched through the rusticated base is questionable,” he wrote. Or maybe not so much.

Having been chosen by the council to develop the hotel plan, Duddingston House Properties and Urbanist Hotels are unlikely to just go away, not having spent the best part of £2m just to keep the buildings weatherproof. Another court battle looms.