Much-loved feature of Capital’s skyline finally has viable future

The landmark Royal High School building in the centre of Edinburgh at Calton Hill

We’ve heard this story before. It seems there is a plan in place for the former Royal High School. The difference this time is it looks like it could work.

The Royal High School Preservation Trust announced a project which should breathe new life into the old walls. More importantly, it appears they have significant funding in place. The plan is to create a National Centre for Music. This has the backing of the National Lottery Heritage Fund, which has awarded a development grant of £437,046 and ringfenced a further sum exceeding £4.5 million.

The proposed development will have a high degree of public access and will also include the biggest public garden to be created in Edinburgh for 200 years.

The A-listed building on Calton Hill is one of the most iconic features on the Edinburgh skyline, despite having lain empty and unused for over half a century. Or perhaps it owes this iconic status precisely because it has been empty for so long. All the failed plans and schemes for the site have become part of the city’s folklore.

There have been numerous plans to reuse the building ever since the school itself decamped to Barnton in 1968. It was originally the desired site for the Scottish Parliament. From 1992, a vigil was held outside the old Royal High School, campaigning for home rule for Scotland. However, when devolution was finally secured by the 1997 referendum, the then Scottish Executive decided that the reconvened parliament should be housed in a new building at Holyrood.

There were later plans for it to house a centre for photography, which never materialised. It was then controversially proposed to convert the building into a luxury hotel with several six-storey extensions. This was predictably met with strong local resistance, even though there was no golden lobby included in the architect’s plans.

I guess there are some people in their early seventies who still shudder when they walk past the old Royal High, triggered by their memories of beltings received in their school days in the sixties. That’s how I feel when I pass my old alma mater in Glasgow.

However, most will be delighted to hear that this much-loved feature of the capital’s cityscape finally has a viable future.