Nairn is a town in the Highland council area of Scotland. It is an ancient fishing port and market town. King James VI, when he travelled to London to become King of England, boasted that in his kingdom he had a town whose only street was so long that the people living at one end of it could not understand the language of the people living at the other end. He was speaking of Nairn, formerly split into Scottish Gaelic- and Scots-speaking communities. A town of two halves in other ways, the narrow-streeted fishertown surrounds a harbour built by Thomas Telford while Victorian villas stand in the 'West End'. It is believed that the Duke of Cumberland stayed in Nairn the night before the Battle of Culloden.