The chronicles of Nairn-ia

By Steven McKenzie
Highlands and Islands reporter, BBC Scotland news website

Charlie Chaplin and his family in Nairn. Picture courtesy of Nairn Museum

The Ballerina Ballroom has had almost as many regenerations as Dr Who.

Built during a period of development in Nairn led by Dr John Grigor in the 1800s, it sits in an area in Nairn High Street known as Constabulary Garden.

It started life as the town hall, but over the years it has housed a museum, a music venue, a clothes shop and latterly a social club and bingo hall.

Now it is being transformed into the venue for Scotland's newest film festival.

Actress Tilda Swinton, who played the White Witch in the film adaptation of CS Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, is spearheading the ballroom's latest regeneration.

For Mark Cousins, another of the festival organisers, Nairn has an "atmosphere" suited to hosting the kind of event they want to achieve.

Results came back showing we were all Celtic and could be traced back to what is now the Basque region of Spain Alan Barron Nairn Museum

The town's unusual past has a large part to play in creating that atmosphere.

Some of today's residents can trace their ancestry to the last Ice Age.

Alan Barron, of Nairn Museum, was one of 23 volunteers who had their DNA analysed three years ago.

He said: "Some of those descended from Nairn's fishing community believed their ancestors were Vikings.

"But the results came back showing we were all Celtic and could be traced back to what is now the Basque region of Spain.

"The people crossed the North Sea when it was dry land at that time and went up the east coast. There could have been people fishing here for nine millennia."

Fishing and farming proved to be the source of a language divide in the Highlands town, with the fisher families speaking Scots and farmers Gaelic.

Mr Barron said: "When King James VI took to the throne in England he tried to impress the English courts, telling them there was a town in Scotland so big that one end could not understand the language of the other."

Fishing reached its peak in the 1870s, but World War I brought to an end to the market for herring in eastern Europe.

Silent films

However, like the ballroom, the town under went another transformation.

In the 1880s it became a seaside resort with visitors flooding in on the Victorian railway network.

Nairn's popularity with holidaymakers earned it the nickname the Brighton of the North.

It would later become a regular holiday destination for Charlie Chaplin, the star of black and white silent films.

Mr Barron said: "We have a picture at the museum of Charlie Chaplin and his family putting in the grounds of the Newton Hotel, where they stayed while on holiday.

"I'm not sure what attracted him to Nairn in the first place, but he and his family were able to enjoy themselves without being hounded by people running after him with autograph books."