Royal High critics should learn from the past

How predictable, and so wearisome, that before we could even begin to absorb the latest proposal to do something significant with the former Royal High School building, the critics, ever ready to sneer, claim space (your report, 3 February) to belittle the latest, still in embryonic form, proposal.

It was back in 1968 that the Royal High School pupils were transferred to their then new home at Barnton. In the 40-plus years that have followed we have agonised over whether it could be home to a Scottish parliament, Scottish local government, the European youth parliament, a Scottish cultural centre celebrating the genius of the Scottish Enlightenment or more recently, a photography exhibition. All of these ideas had considerable merit, but they and others have perished because of lukewarm support from some and sneering criticism from others.

Result: an architectural gem, a school which served its pupils for 140 years and became an A-listed building – the construction of which was to give substance and tangible expression to Edinburgh adopting the sobriquet, "the Athens of the North" – has lain redundant in a state of deteriorating limbo, an embarrassment to all who care about our heritage and understand the imperative that buildings have life only if they are put to use. If not they become mere monuments and a considerable drain on council resources.

Those who lament the proposal as unworthy of such an iconic building would do well to recall that back in 1829 in the time of its construction, the columns of The Scotsman were full of woe, with comments such as: "It would seem as if our civic rulers were under a double anathema to be always wrong and to be wrong in the worst possible way"; and: "If Edinburgh had been surveyed to find the spot which was the least accessible from the greatest number of points, the spot chosen was that on which they would have pitched. The grandeur and beauty of our most magnificent parade, the pride of the citizens and the admiration of strangers, will be deeply injured." On that occasion the toun council got it right and the critics were confounded.

I hope this new proposal is given a fair wind. It is surely right that proper, thoughtful consideration be given to it because doing nothing is surely not an option.

The toun council, in giving proper consideration to the proposal, would do well to recall the stoical words from the Royal High's most famous ex-pupil, Sir Walter Scott: "I make it a rule never to read the attacks made upon me," and his timeless truth that "the ae half of the warld thinks the tither daft".

CLLR ERIC MILLIGAN

City of Edinburgh Council