A former Inverness secondary school has been destroyed, marking the climax of one of the city’s biggest demolition projects for years.
The last remaining structure of the old Inverness Royal Academy in Culduthel was pulled down on Saturday.
Piles of steel work and rubble will now be cleared from the site to make way for a new playground, car parking and part of two new all-weather sports pitches.
The work began at the end of November and initially focused on the removal of fixed furnishings and asbestos from inside the building.
The asbestos removal team had to wear full protective suits and accessed the building via a decontamination chamber while wrapping, bagging and sealing all of the hazardous material.
A new, replacement £34million secondary school next door opened last summer.
It can accommodate 1,420 pupils and has 171,824sq ft of floor space featuring 39 practical, 40 non-practical and five tutorial classrooms plus six rooms for Gaelic teaching.
The project was beset by delays. Three contractors were served with improvement notices by the Health and Safety Executive after the wrong material was used while fitting gas pipes.
Safety inspectors were subsequently called in and the gas turned off to classrooms where home economics, science, and craft, design and technology are taught.
Some of the issues will not be fully resolved until this summer – a year after pupils moved into the new building.
Other problems at the academy included power outages and computer cabling problems.
The school was founded in 1792 when it replaced the town grammar school. A year later, a royal charter was obtained from King George III and, as Inverness Royal Academy, the school operated on Academy Street until 1895 when it moved to Midmills Road in the Crown area.
This building housed the academy until August 1977 when part of the school moved to the current site and, two years later, the school completed its switch to Culduthel.