County town: Inverness
Inverness-shire was Scotland's largest county by area, a vast Highland territory established as a sheriffdom from the 12th century. It stretched from the Moray Firth to the Western Isles.
Inverness-shire was Scotland's largest county by area, encompassing the Great Glen, Loch Ness, the Cairngorms, much of the western Highlands, and the Inner Hebrides including Skye. Inverness, the 'capital of the Highlands', guards the northern end of the Great Glen, the fault valley that splits the Scottish Highlands from coast to coast. Culloden Moor, a few miles east of Inverness, was the site of the last battle fought on British soil in 1746 — the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie's Jacobite army ending the Highland clan system. The county's landscape ranges from the spectacular Cuillins of Skye to the Cairngorm plateau, the highest mountain massif in Britain.
The Statistical Accounts of Scotland — the Old Statistical Account (1791–99) and the New Statistical Account (1834–45) — provide detailed parish-by-parish descriptions of Inverness-shire at two moments of transformation. Aubrey draws on these accounts when generating reports for Scottish locations, providing historical context specific to the parish and county.
Scotland's 33 traditional counties, established as sheriffdoms from the 12th century onward, were the administrative framework of the country until the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1975 replaced them with regional councils. They remain the reference framework for historical records, genealogy, and cultural identity.
This page introduces the historic county of Inverness-shire. A full Aubrey report for a location within it pulls together everything the record actually holds about that ground, from the geology beneath it to the last coin dropped in a field:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Read in-depth research reports on notable historical places across the UK — explore →
Inverness-shire contains 449 scheduled monuments — sites of national importance protected under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979.
Browse scheduled monuments in ScotlandAn Aubrey report for a specific location in Inverness-shire draws on historical maps, archaeological records, Domesday data, Statistical Account records, and landscape history to tell the full story of any site in the county.