The Bishop's Chapel Is Backstage Now

Here's what we've done at Eden Court in the last year: stood in the stalls for a Pink Floyd tribute night, laughed our heads off at a comedy fundraiser for Mikeysline, spent a lazy afternoon in the cinema seats, and watched a ballet company do things to that stage we didn't know were possible. Four completely different nights out. Same building. And not once — not once — could we get a spare seat.

That's the thing about Eden Court that's hard to explain until you've been a few times: it doesn't feel like one venue, it feels like several, stacked on top of each other. Which, as it turns out, is more or less literally true. The building is three separate structures from three different centuries, built around a Victorian bishop's old home that very nearly got knocked down to make way for the theatre.

Three Centuries Under One Roof

Start with the oldest bit, because it's the best story. Back in the 1870s, the good people of Inverness clubbed together and built their Bishop, Robert Eden, a proper Gothic mansion on Bishop's Road — twelve bedrooms, four reception rooms, and a private chapel he paid for out of his own pocket. Alexander Ross designed it, the same architect who did Inverness Cathedral next door, so the two buildings have always belonged together. It didn't stay grand for long, though. By the late 1940s it was too big and too cold for any bishop to want to live in, and after a stint training nurses it sat empty for the best part of a decade.

Then, in the 1970s, the council decided Inverness needed a proper theatre — and very nearly bulldozed the old Palace to build it. Somebody, thankfully, had a better idea. The Palace's bedrooms became dressing rooms. Its little chapel became the green room. Which means that when the Pink Floyd tribute band we saw were waiting to go on, they were standing more or less exactly where a Bishop of Moray, Ross and Caithness used to pray. The theatre itself opened on 15 April 1976 — Andrew Cruickshank did the honours, with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra playing the opening gala — after five years of council arguments and a budget that ballooned to more than three times what anyone first agreed to spend. It shut again in 2004 for a proper rebuild, reopening a few years later (2007, mostly, though you'll sometimes see 2008 quoted) with a second theatre, two cinema screens and new studios bolted on. Both buildings are listed now — the Palace, and the 1976 theatre itself, one of only around fifty post-war buildings in the whole of Scotland to get that status.

On the River, Next to the Cathedral

Walk along the river towards Eden Court and you'll see why the setting matters as much as anything on stage. It sits right on the River Ness, close enough to the Cathedral that the two buildings feel like they were always meant to be neighbours — which, sharing an architect, they were. Look up at the newer part of the building and you'll spot tall, oddly angled towers; they're not just decoration, they're part of how the building breathes, and they carry a piece of public art that changes look with the weather. On a still evening, with the doors open onto the water, it's a genuinely lovely spot for nothing more than a coffee — the Ness Walk runs right past, off towards the Ness Islands one way and the city centre the other. Turn up for a show, though, and the whole place shifts register: it properly feels like an occasion.

Whatever's On, It Tends to Be Full

What's kept surprising us, going back again and again for wildly different things, is how good everything is. The Pink Floyd night was loud and polished in all the right places. The comedy fundraiser for Mikeysline was warm and properly, unexpectedly funny. The cinema trip felt better than any multiplex we've been to. The ballet turned a stage that had been set up for a rock gig days earlier into something completely different. We're clearly not alone in noticing — people who go regularly often say the same thing, that they're surprised by just how much ground the programme covers. And every single time, the place has been packed. Eden Court will tell you it puts on over 400 live shows and more than 2,000 film screenings a year, and that's despite going through a genuinely tough patch — cuts to staff and opening hours back in 2022–23, when theatres everywhere were feeling the pinch. From what we've seen lately, the appetite for it clearly never went away.

The Comedy Night for Mikeysline

That comedy night deserves its own mention, because it wasn't just a good laugh — it was raising money for Mikeysline, the Highland charity that's been offering free, confidential mental health and suicide prevention support since 2015, right across the Highlands, Islands and Moray. It was staged in the smaller One Touch Theatre, with some of the best stand-up talent the region has to offer giving their time for the cause. Eden Court does this kind of thing well and often — lending its stage to the community, not just to whatever's touring. Nothing about the evening felt heavy or worthy. It just felt like a proper night of comedy that happened to be doing some good along the way, which might be the best kind there is.

Getting In, Parking, and When to Go

A few practical things, since you'll want to actually get there. It's about a ten-minute walk from the city centre along the river, or twenty minutes by car from the airport. Don't bank on the little on-site car park — it only holds about 75 cars, and part of it sometimes closes around Hogmanay — so if it's full, the Cathedral car park two minutes away is your best bet. Box office opens at 10am through the week; café and restaurant hours shift about a bit, so it's worth a quick check before you go, especially if you fancy eating beforehand rather than queuing at the interval. And if money's tight, ask about the £6 tickets going for cinema and some of the smaller shows — no questions asked. Honestly, though, the main thing we'd tell anyone: book ahead. We've never once managed to just turn up.

A bishop's old home, a theatre nobody was sure the town could afford, now selling out for Pink Floyd tributes and touring ballet in the same season. Odd history, or exactly the kind of place the Highlands deserved — we've come round to thinking it's both.