DATING back to 1128, the Royal High School moved into the building on Calton Hill designed by Thomas Hamilton and opened in 1829. It was immediately recognised as a classical wonder and influenced generations of architects.
Ceasing to be a school in 1968, the building was converted to host the Scottish Assembly which didn’t happen after English MPs fixed the 1979 referendum so that democracy was disallowed.
Edinburgh District Council bought it back in 1994 and for a while it looked as though the building would host the Scottish Parliament, but Donald Dewar bought the “nationalist shibboleth” line and insisted on Enrico Miralles’s design at Holyrood at a cost of £414 million.
READ MORE: Plan to turn Edinburgh's Royal High School into hotel firmly rejected by councillors
In 2004 a plan to turn the building into the Scottish National Photographic Centre failed when the Heritage Lottery Fund turned it down.
In 2010, Edinburgh Council put forward the idea of an “arts hotel” and Duddingston House Properties (DHP) were awarded a lease conditional on them bringing forward a successful plan, effectively by 2022.
December 2015 saw DHP’s controversial plan for extensions to the building to accommodate a luxury hotel defeated by just one vote. DHP appealed to the Scottish Government but that was put on hold while another plan was brought forward.
A genuine alternative use was proposed by St Mary’s Music School which was given planning permission last year even though DHP still had the option on the site.
Working with Urbanist Hotels and pledging to build a six-star Rosewood Hotel, DHP lodged notice of their latest planning application in September last year. The number of bedrooms was reduced from 147 to 127, but the “wing” remained. The objections poured in.
August 31, 2017: The application is unanimously refused by the Development Management Sub-Committee. No-one expects that to be the end of the saga.
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