Priosn and boundary walls, Former Court House, High Street, Nairn

The Former Court House in Nairn, built in 1818, includes a prison at the rear designed by Thomas Brown II between 1842 and 1844, with later additions and alterations by A and W Reid from 1868 to 1870. This building is a two-storey, five-bay structure in an L-shape, featuring a central square entrance tower that rises in three stages. The tower is flanked by shallow and recessed bays, topped with a parapet and hipped roofs. It is constructed from coursed and stugged rubble, accented with polished ashlar dressings and rusticated quoins.

The entrance door of the tower is adorned with a segmental panel above it, set within a moulded architrave. A bipartite window on the first floor has round-headed lights and a hoodmould, with a string course above. The second stage of the tower features a round-headed central niche flanked by narrow windows. The tower culminates in a corbelled and crenellated parapet with gargoyles at each corner, topped by an ornate two-stage pyramidal leaded spire from 1868-70, which has clock faces on all four sides, a small glazed arcade above, and a cast iron weathervane. The belfry houses a bell cast by Thomas Mears in 1843.

At the rear, there is a two-storey, nine-bay rectangular range that originally housed prison cells on the ground floor, featuring high-set windows, and offices on the first floor. An external exercise yard is located to the southwest, enclosed by a tall coped boundary wall.

The interior was last seen in 2015. The main courtroom on the first floor boasts a coved ceiling with a dentilled cornice and some decorative plasterwork. A staircase in the first-floor hallway leads to a vaulted storeroom and the tower above. The former prison range and cells remain largely intact, with vaulted ceilings in the corridor and cells, flagstone floors, and studded cell doors that still retain their original door furniture.