Nairn

Nairn

ID: QZP40_3443_P047 DESCRIPTION: 'Nairn with the site of its ancient castle between the church and bridge in 1804.' The town of Nairn is situated on the southern edge of the Moray Firth approximately 16 miles from Inverness. The most recent part of Nairn is the Victorian resort town which grew up around the existing Fishertown with the arrival of the Inverness and Nairn Railway in 1855. The town became a popular Victorian health spa due to the medicinal properties of the local seawater. Before the coming of the railway, Nairn had been a market and farming town inland of the Fishertown. The Fishertown had probably been a fishing village settled by the Norse before 1000 AD. Nairn had a mixture of Gaelic speaking Highlanders and English speaking North Easterners. James VI was reported to have remarked that in no other town in his Kingdom did people at one end of the street speak a different language to those at the other end. Nairn had a castle which was built in the 1100s and demolished in 1585. The site of the castle is only marked today by the name of the square in the town centre. This illustration is one of a set bound with an anonymous manuscript entitled 'The Ancient and Honourable Family of Calder', from the Fraser-Mackintosh Collection at Inverness Library PLACENAME: Nairn OLD COUNTY/PARISH: NAIRN: Nairn DATE OF IMAGE: 1804 PERIOD: 1800s SOURCE: Highland Libraries COLLECTION: Fraser Mackintosh Collection (illustrations) Asset ID: 31766 KEYWORDS: