page_title: Nairn
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Nairn / History
caption_attribution_description: Seal of the Burgh of Nairn
context_page_description: Nairn is a town and former burgh in the Highland council area of Scotland. It is an ancient fishing port and market town around 17 miles east of Inverness. It is the traditional county town of the Nairnshire.
  As of the 2011 Census, Nairn had a population of 9,773, making it the third-largest settlement in the Highland council area, behind Inverness and Fort William. Nairn is best known as a seaside resort, with two golf courses, award-winning beaches, a community centre/mid-scale arts venue, a small theatre and one small museum, providing information on the local area and incorporating the collection of the former Fishertown museum.
context_section_description: King James VI of Scotland visited the town in 1589 and is said to have later remarked that the High Street was so long that the people at either end spoke different languages, Scots and Gaelic. The landward farmers and the fishing families at the harbour end spoke Doric, and the highlanders spoke Gaelic.  Nairn, formerly split into Scottish Gaelic- and Scots-speaking communities, was a town of two halves in other ways. The narrow-streeted fishertown surrounds  a harbour built by Thomas Telford while Victorian villas stand in the 'West End'. It is believed that the Duke of Cumberland stayed in Nairn the night before the battle of Culloden.
  In 1645, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the battle of Auldearn was fought near the town, between Royalists and Covenanters.
  It was not until the 1860s that Nairn became a respectable and popular holiday town. Dr John Grigor (a statue of whom is located at Viewfield) was gifted a house in this coastal town and spent his retirement there. He valued its warm climate and advised his wealthy clients to holiday there. Following the opening of the Nairn railway station in 1855, new houses and hotels were built in the elegant West End. The station is on the Aberdeen to Inverness Line. Originally this was the last stop on the line from London due to the inhospitable terrain on what is now the main Dava branch line to Inverness.
  Nairn has an expanse of sand beaches that were used extensively in training exercises for the Normandy landings during World War 2. The beaches around Nairn had landmines planted, during clearance operations in 1945 by 11th Company, Bomb Disposal, Royal Engineers. High pressure water jetting was used to displace shingle on top of mines to make clearance easier.  Notably during this period two German spies who had been dropped by U-boat in the Moray Firth were arrested at Nairn railway station attempting to board a train to Inverness.
caption: Seal of the Burgh of Nairn, depicting Saint Ninian (from a 1906 book)
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