Old Parish Church, Academy Street, Nairn

The Old Parish Church on Academy Street in Nairn was built between 1893 and 1897 by John Starforth. It is a large double cruciform church designed in the 1st pointed Gothic style. The church features a 100-foot high, four-stage tower with stepped angle buttresses on the east side. This tower contains the main entrance, which is divided by a central trumeau and enhanced with a carved tympanum beneath a gabled porch.

The second stage of the tower has a triple light window, while the third stage has paired light windows. Each face of the tower includes three louvred belfry lights and is topped with a crenellated parapet. The tower is flanked by two-storey circular stair towers, each capped with conical slate roofs. The body of the church is symmetrical, with wide buttressed and pinnacled canted gables, two bays, and a wide gable transept, along with a gabled west elevation. The windows include 1, 2, 3, and 5-light lancets, some of which are cusped, located on both the ground and gallery levels. The steeply pitched slate roof is adorned with tile cresting.

The exterior is constructed of bull-faced rubble with ashlar dressings.

Inside, the church has a near triangular plan with a horseshoe-shaped gallery on three sides. Original pine fittings are present, including a panelled front to the gallery, pews, bowed panelled doors, and an ornate pulpit. The roof features pine braced rafters that spring from stone corbels, which are decorated with stiff leaf motifs.

The font, sculpted by Andrew Davidson in Rome, is made of white Carrara and greenish Siena marble. It stands 3 feet 4 inches high, with an octagonal basin supported by pillarets on an octagonal base.

Stained glass windows in the west wall were created by John Hardman's studios in 1932 and 1942. The south transept features stained glass by Douglas Strachan, circa 1946, as a memorial to W R Pirie and his grandson.