On your right, look for a high, curving wall of pale, rough stone blocks that rounds a corner like the side of a fortress.
This is HM Prison Inverness, often called Porterfield Prison, and it sits here in the Crown area doing a very unglamorous job: holding people for courts across the Highlands and Islands, from places as far-flung as the Western Isles, Fort William, Wick, and Elgin. It takes in adults and young people on remand, convicted adults serving up to four years, and also prisoners in transit or needing extra management support. It’s designed for 103 people, but it has often been fuller than that, with an average population around 117-like a small, tense village, squeezed inside these walls.
One of its most infamous inmates was gangster Jimmy Boyle, so disruptive he spent time in stark “cages” with little more than a concrete block to sleep on-until a later transfer helped turn his life toward art and rehabilitation.
When you’re set, Siege of Inverness (1649) is a 7-minute walk heading west.
