Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for Aberdour

Aberdour, a village and a coast parish of N Aberdeenshire. The village, called commonly New Aberdour, having been founded in 1798 in lieu of an old kirk-hamlet, stands 7 furlongs inland, at an altitude of 337 feet, and is 8 miles W by S of its post-town Fraserburgh, 6¾ NW of Strichen station. It has a post office with money order and savings' bank departments, 2 inns, and fairs on Monday week before 26 May and on 22 Nov.: at it are the parish church (1818, 800 sittings) and a Free church. Pop. (1841) 376, (1871) 628.

The parish contains, too, the fishing village of Pennan, 3¾ miles WNW. It is bounded N by the Moray Firth, NE by Pitsligo, SE by Tyrie, S by New Deer, W by King Edward and by Gamrie in Banffshire. From N to S its greatest length is 6¾ miles: its width from E to W tapers southward from 55/8 miles to ¾ mile: and its land area is 15,508 acres, including a detached triangular portion (27/8 by 1½ mile) lying 1½ mile from the SE border. The seaboard, 6 miles long, is bold and rocky, especially to the W, presenting a wall of stupendous red sandstone cliffs, from 50 to 419 feet high, with only three openings where boats can land. Of numerous caverns, one, called Cowshaven, in the E, afforded a hiding-place after Culloden to Alexander Forbes, last Lord Pitsligo (1678-1762): another, in the bay of Nethermill of Auchmedden, was entered, according to legend, by a piper, who ' was heard playing Lochaber no more a mile farer ben, ' and himself was no more seen. Inland, the surface is level comparatively over the eastern portion of the parish, there attaining 124 feet at Quarry Head, 222 at Egypt, 194 at Dundarg, 248 at Coburty, and 443 at North Cowfords: but W of the Dour it is much more rugged, rising, from N to S, to 522 feet near Pennan Farm, 590 near West Mains, 670 near Tongue, 703 on Windyheads Hill, 612 near Glenhouses, 723 near Greens of Auchmedden, 487 near Bracklamore, and 524 at Mid Cowbog. This western portion is separated from Banffshire by the Torr Burn, and through it 3 deep ravines, the Dens of Troup, Auchmedden, and Aberdour, each with its headlong rivulet, run northward to the sea: but the drainage of the southern division is carried eastward, through Glasslaw Den, by Gonar Burn, the Ugie's northern headstream (Smiles' Scotch Naturalist,1877, ch. viii.). The prevailing rocks, red sandstone and its conglomerates, belong to the oldest Secondary formation, and are quarried for building material, as formerly at Pennan for millstones: the soils are various, ranging from fertile loamy clay in the north-eastern low lands to very deep peat earth on the south-western moors. Antiquities are ' Picts' houses, 'near Earls Seat: the Cairn of Coburty, said to commemorate a Danish defeat: the ruined pre-Reformation chapel of Chapelden: and on the coast to the NE of the village, crowning a sandstone peninsula 63 feet high, the scanty vestiges of Dundargue Castle, built by the Englishman, Henry de Beaumont, fifth Earl of Buchan in right of his wife, and captured from him by the regent, Sir Andrew Moray (1333). Some will have this to be the Aberdour of the ' grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spens; ' at least its church of St Drostan, at the mouth of the Dour, was certainly founded by St Columba in the latter half of the 6th century. ' With Drostan, his pupil, he came from Hi, or Iona, as God had shown to them, unto Abbordoboir, or Aberdon, and Bede the Cruithnech, or Pict, was Mormaer of Buchan before him: and it was he that gave them that cathair, or town, in freedom for ever from Mormaer and Toisech ' (vol. ii., p. 134, of Skene's Celt. Scot., 1877). The chief estates are Aberdour in the E and Auchmedden in the W, belonging to the Fordyces of Brucklay Castle in New Deer and the Bairds of Cambusdoon in Ayr, who own respectively 20,899 and 5979 acres in Aberdeenshire, valued at £12,744 and £2704 per annum: whilst 71 proprietors hold a yearly value in this parish of under £100. Purchased by the Gartsherrie Bairds in 1854, Auchmedden belonged from 1568 to 1750 to their more ancient namesakes, whose last male representative, Wm. Baird (1701-77), compiled the interesting Genealogical Collections concerning the Bairds of Auchmedden, Newbyth, and Saughtonhall (2d. ed., Lond. 1870). Parts of the civil parish (with 256 inhabitants in 1871) are included in the quoad sacra parishes of New Byth and New Pitsligo: the rest forms a quoad sacra parish in the presbytery of Deer and synod of Aberdeen, the living-being worth £393. Four public schools -Aberdour, Auchmedden, New Aberdour (junior), and Glasslaw-with respective accommodation for 150,130, 102, and 70 children, had (1879) an average attendance of 107,85,62, and 30, and grants of £65, 10s., £64, 11s., £43, 11s., and £20. Valuation (1881) £8671, 16s. 3d. Pop. (1801) 1304, (1841) 1645, (1861) 1997, (1871) 2176: of registration district (1871) 1945, (1881) 1931.—Ord. Sur., sh. 97, 1876.


(F.H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1882-4); © 2004 Gazetteer for Scotland)

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a village and a coast parish"   (ADL Feature Type: "populated places")
Administrative units: Aberdour ScoP       Aberdeenshire ScoCnty
Place: Aberdour

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