Look to your left for a sturdy old stone church sitting slightly above the River Ness, its tall tower and grey walls standing out against the riverside greenery.
This is Old High St Stephen’s, and it carries Inverness’s church story like a well-thumbed family album. The “Old High” part is the real elder of the city’s congregations, the historic town church, mostly built in the eighteenth century-solid, practical, and quietly confident. But the plot twist is the ground beneath your feet: people have come to worship on this spot since Celtic times. Local tradition even claims the roots go back to Saint Columba, the Irish monk who brought early Christianity to the Highlands. Imagine the river air damp on your face, a small crowd gathering where there were no streetlights, no traffic-just water, wind, and belief.
In 2003, the congregation joined forces with St Stephen’s (a younger “daughter” church founded in 1897), forming one united parish. And in a move that’s a bit unusual for Church of Scotland mergers, they kept both buildings in use-two homes, one family. Old High later fell quiet in January 2022 when regular services ended here, with Sundays moving to St Stephen’s.
Inside, one pride-and-joy is a Father Willis organ-restored in 2010-which, when it’s played, can make the whole place feel like it’s breathing. The building’s Category A listing tells you Scotland considers this a top-tier treasure. Even so, it was once put up for offers over £150,000-serious money for a church, and in today’s terms still about that in pounds, roughly around $190,000. In August 2025, a charity called Save Old High Inverness bought it, basically saying: not on our watch.
When you’re set, Rose Street Foundry is a 3-minute walk heading northeast.
