County town: Nairn
Nairnshire was one of Scotland's smallest counties, established as a sheriffdom from the medieval period around the fishing burgh of Nairn on the Moray Firth.
Nairnshire is a small county on the Moray Firth coast, straddling the ancient cultural boundary between the Highlands and the Lowlands. Nairn itself sits on this linguistic divide — historically the east side of the town was Scots-speaking and the west side Gaelic-speaking. The county is perhaps most famous for Culloden Moor, technically within Inverness-shire but close to Nairn, site of the 1746 battle. Cawdor Castle, associated — erroneously — with Shakespeare's Macbeth, lies a few miles south of Nairn and remains one of the best-preserved medieval castles in Scotland, still inhabited by the Campbells of Cawdor. The county's coastline has some of the finest beaches on the Moray Firth.
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 Nairnshire 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.
An Aubrey report for a specific location in Nairnshire 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.
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