Former Court House, including prison and boundary walls to rear, High Street, Nairn

The building dates to 1818, with a prison to the rear designed by Thomas Brown II in 1842-1844, and additions and alterations by A and W Reid in 1868-70. It is a 2-storey, 5-bay, L-plan former court house with a central square entrance tower rising three stages and flanked by shallow and recessed bays with a parapet and hipped roofs. It is built in coursed and stugged rubble, with polished ashlar dressings and rusticated quoins.

The entrance door of the tower has a segmental panel above set in a moulded architrave. There is a bipartite window at the first floor with round-headed lights and a hoodmould with a string course above. There is a round-headed central niche in the second stage of the tower with flanking narrow windows. The tower has a corbelled and crenellated parapet with gargoyles at each corner and is surmounted by an ornate 2 stage pyramidal leaded spire (dating to 1868-70) with clock faces mounted on all four sides and a small glazed arcade above and a cast iron weathervane. The belfry has a bell cast by Thomas Mears in 1843.

There is a 2-storey, 9-bay rectangular range to the rear that comprise the former prison cells at the ground floor with high set windows and offices at the first floor. There is an external exercise yard to the southwest that is enclosed by a tall coped boundary wall.

The interior was seen in 2015. The main courtroom on the first floor has a coved ceiling with a dentilled cornice and some decorative plasterwork. A stair in the first floor hallway provides access to a vaulted store room and to the tower above. The former prison range and cells are largely intact. The ceilings to the prison corridor and cells are vaulted, and there are flagstones floors and studded cell doors which retain their door furniture.