Inverness-shire

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County of Inverness

Geography
Area - Total	Ranked 1st 2,695,037 acres (10,906 km²)
County town	Inverness
Chapman code	INV

Inverness-shire or the County of Inverness (Siorrachd Inbhir Nis in Gaelic) is one of the registration counties of Scotland. Until 1975 it was a local government county.

The registration county is made up of the historic districts of Inverness (without Nairn), parts of Lochaber and Badenoch. The Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889, established a uniform system of county councils and burgh councils in Scotland and restructured many of Scotland’s counties. (See: History of local government in the United Kingdom).

The former county covered a large mainland area and various island areas off the west coast. The mainland area had coastline in both the east and the west and included the towns of Kingussie, Fort William and Mallaig. The island areas included North Uist, South Uist, and Harris in the Outer Hebrides, and Skye and Eigg in the Small Isles in the Inner Hebrides. Until 1891 the mainland area was somewhat fragmented (but much less so than some other county areas in Scotland). In that year changes were made following recommendations of the boundary commissioners appointed under the 1889 Act. From 1891 onwards Inverness-shire had neighbouring counties as follow: Ross and Cromarty to the north, Nairnshire, Moray, Banffshire and Aberdeenshire to the east, and Perthshire and Argyll to the south. The county town was Inverness.

Today the former county area is divided between the unitary council areas of Highland, Na h-Eileanan Siar (the Western Isles) and Moray.

In 1972, the Isle of Rockall Act was passed, formally incorporating the tiny island of Rockall into Scotland as part of the Isle of Harris, Inverness-shire (Harris is not part of the modern registration county).

There was an Inverness-shire constituency of the Parliament of Great Britain from 1708 to 1801 and of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1918. The constituency represented the county of Inverness-shire minus the parliamentary burgh of Inverness, which was represented as a component of Inverness District of Burghs.

In 1918 the county constituency was divided between the Inverness constituency and the Western Isles constituency, which were both then new constituencies. The Inverness constituency included the burgh of Inverness, other components of the district of burghs being divided between the Moray and Nairn constituency and the Ross and Cromarty constituency.

In 1983, eight years after the local government county of Inverness-shire had been divided between the Highland and Grampian regions and the Western Isles council area, the Inverness constituency was replaced, largely by the Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber constituency.