Aberdeenshire (historic)
Aberdeenshire or the County of Aberdeen is a historic county in Scotland. The county gives its name to the modern Aberdeenshire council area, which covers a larger area than the historic county. The historic county ceased to be used for local government purposes in 1975, but its boundaries are still used for certain functions, being a registration county. The area of the historic county excluding the Aberdeen City council area is also a lieutenancy area.
The area is generally hilly. The south-west of the county includes part of the Grampian Mountains. The historic county borders Kincardineshire, Angus and Perthshire to the south, Inverness-shire and Banffshire to the west, and the North Sea to the north and east.
History
Early history
The area which would become Aberdeenshire was anciently occupied by the Picts, whom Ptolemy, writing, called Taexali. There is some evidence of Roman activity in the area, notably with a camp at Normandykes near Peterculter. Weems or earth-houses were a common type of ancient dwelling in the west. Relics of crannogs or lake-dwellings exist at Loch Kinord and Bishops' Loch in the parish of New Machar and elsewhere. Duns or forts occur on hills at Dunecht, where the dun encloses an area of two acres, Barra near Oldmeldrum, Tap o' Noth, Dunnideer near Insch and other places. There are numerous monoliths, standing stones and stone circles in the area, along with many examples of the sculptured stones of the early Christian epoch.Missionaries aiming to convert the Picts to Christianity began with Teman in the 5th century, and continued with Columba, Machar, and Drostan, who founded a monastery at Old Deer. The Vikings and Danes periodically raided the coast. Macbeth, King of Scotland, was killed at the Battle of Lumphanan in 1057.
12th to 15th centuries
itself was made a royal burgh by David I. Its earliest surviving charter dates from 1179, by which date its burgesses had already combined with those of Banff, Elgin, Inverness and other trans-Grampian communities to form a hanse. The Diocese of Aberdeen was in existence by the 1150s.Like much of Scotland, the influence of clans led by powerful families was significant. Many such clans in Aberdeenshire came to prominence in the 12th and 13th centuries, including the clans of Mar, Leslie, Bissett, Comyn and Cheyne.
During the English invasion of 1296, the English army under Edward I took control of Aberdeen Castle. The following year, William Wallace surprised the English garrison in Aberdeen, but failed to capture the castle. In 1303 Edward again visited the county, halting at Kildrummy Castle, then in the possession of Robert the Bruce, who shortly afterwards became the acknowledged leader of the Scots and made Aberdeen his headquarters for several months. In 1308, he defeated John Comyn, Earl of Buchan, an opponent of his claim to the Scottish throne, at Inverurie.
For a hundred years after Bruce's death in 1329, there was intermittent conflict in the shire. The English burned Aberdeen itself in 1336. The dispossession and re-settlement of the districts of Buchan and Strathbogie caused numerous disputes. Moreover, the crown had embroiled itself with some of the Highland chieftains, whose independence it sought to abolish. This policy culminated in the invasion of Aberdeenshire by Donald of Islay, Lord of the Isles, who was defeated at the Battle of Harlaw in 1411 by the Scottish army under Alexander Stewart, Earl of Mar.
In the 15th century two further leading county families emerged: Sir Alexander Forbes becoming Lord Forbes about 1442, and Sir Alexander Seton, Lord Gordon in 1437 and Earl of Huntly in 1445. Bitter feuds raged between these families for a long period. The Gordons reached the height of their power in the first half of the 16th century, when their domains, already vast, were enhanced by the acquisition, through marriage, of the Earldom of Sutherland in 1514.
King's College, Aberdeen was founded in 1495, followed by Marischal College in 1593; the two colleges subsequently merged to become the University of Aberdeen in 1860. In 1592, the shortlived Fraserburgh University was founded, thus for a short time, Aberdeenshire hosted three universities.
16th to 19th centuries
The Reformation of the 16th century was slow to reach Aberdeenshire. Churches were still being built and decorated in the old Catholic style in Aberdeenshire for some years after southern Scotland had started moving away from such styles. Opposition to the changes to Protestant forms of worship and church leadership saw rioting in Aberdeen, with St Machar's Cathedral being damaged. George Gordon, 4th Earl of Huntly offered some resistance on behalf of the Catholics to the influence of James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray, who was regent during the reign of James VI, but was defeated and killed at the Battle of Corrichie on the Hill of Fare in 1562.As years passed it became apparent that Presbyterianism gained less support in Aberdeenshire than Episcopacy, of which system Aberdeenshire remained for generations the stronghold in Scotland.
Another crisis in ecclesiastical affairs arose in 1638, when the authorities ordered subscription to the National Covenant. The people of Aberdeenshire responded so grudgingly to this demand that James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose, visited the shire in the following year to enforce acceptance. The Cavaliers, not being disposed to yield, dispersed an armed gathering of Covenanters in the affair called the Trot of Turriff in 1639, one of the first skirmishes in the Civil Wars.
On 6 September 1715 John Erskine, Earl of Mar initiated the Jacobite rising of 1715 at Braemar in support of the claim of James Francis Edward Stuart to the throne. Stuart arrived in Scotland from his exile in France, landing at Peterhead on 22 December 1715. The rising was unsuccessful and by February 1716 Stuart was back in France. The collapse of the 1715 rising ruined many of the lairds. In the subsequent Jacobite rising of 1745 there was much less support for the cause in the county, although the insurgents held Aberdeen for five months until February 1746.
In 1852 Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, bought the Balmoral Castle estate in the valley of the River Dee and subsequently rebuilt the castle there.
Administrative history
Aberdeenshire's origins as a shire are obscure. There is some evidence that it was a shire from the time of David I, but the earliest documented Sheriff of Aberdeen was in the 13th century. The sheriff's jurisdiction covered the older provinces of Buchan, Formartine, Garioch, and Marr.Over time, Scotland's shires became more significant than the old provinces, with more administrative functions being given to the sheriffs. In 1667 Commissioners of Supply were established for each shire, which would serve as the main administrative body for the area until the creation of county councils in 1890. Following the Acts of Union in 1707, the English term 'county' came to be used interchangeably with the older term 'shire'.
Elected county councils were established in 1890 under the Local Government Act 1889, taking most of the functions of the commissioners. The burgh of Aberdeen was deemed capable of providing its own county-level local government functions, and so it was excluded from the administrative area of the county council, although the county council still chose to base itself in the city. The first meeting of Aberdeenshire County Council was held on 22 May 1890 at Aberdeen Town House, which as well as being the headquarters of Aberdeen Corporation also served as the county's main courthouse and meeting place of the commissioners of supply. Alexander Morison Gordon of Newton House in the parish of Culsalmond was the first convener of the council.
The 1889 Act also led to a review of boundaries, with exclaves being transferred to a county they actually bordered, and parish and county boundaries being adjusted to eliminate cases where parishes straddled county boundaries. There were several such changes affecting the boundaries of Aberdeenshire. The city of Aberdeen, already independent for local government purposes, was subsequently also removed from Aberdeenshire for lieutenancy and other purposes in 1899, when the city was made a county of itself.
Shortly after its creation, the county council built itself County Buildings in Union Terrace, Aberdeen, to serve as its headquarters, which was completed in 1896.
In 1975 the Local Government Act 1973 reorganised local government in Scotland into a two-tier system of regions and districts. The administrative counties of Aberdeenshire, the City of Aberdeen, Banffshire, Kincardineshire and most of Moray were merged to form Grampian Region, with the pre-1975 area of Aberdeenshire being divided between the districts of City of Aberdeen, Banff and Buchan, Gordon and Kincardine and Deeside.
In 1996 the Scottish local government system was reorganised again, this time into single-tier council areas. One of the council areas is called Aberdeenshire, covering the combined area of the pre-1996 districts of Banff and Buchan, Gordon, and Kincardine and Deeside. The council area therefore has significantly different boundaries to the pre-1975 county, also including most of the historic county of Kincardineshire and eastern parts of Banffshire, but excluding Aberdeen City. The boundaries of the historic county are still used for some limited official purposes connected with land registration, being a registration county. The Aberdeenshire lieutenancy area covers the area of the pre-1975 county excluding the parts within the modern Aberdeen City council area.
Geography
The historic Aberdeenshire is traditionally divided into five districts:- Mar, mostly between the Dee and Don, which nearly covers the southern half of the county and contains Aberdeen. It is mountainous, especially Braemar, which contains the greatest mass of elevated land in the British Isles. The Dee valley has sandy soil, the Don valley loamy.
- Formartine, between the lower Don and Ythan, has a sandy coast, which is succeeded inland by a clayey, fertile, tilled tract, and then by low hills, moors, mosses and tilled land.
- Buchan lies north of the Ythan, and comprising the north-east of the county, is next in size to Mar, parts of the coast being bold and rocky, the interior bare, low, flat, undulating and in places peaty. On the coast, six miles south of Peterhead, are the Bullers of Buchan – a basin in which the sea, entering by a natural arch, boils up violently in stormy weather. Keith Inch is the most easterly point of mainland Scotland.
- Garioch, in the centre of the shire, comprises an undulating, loamy, fertile valley, formerly called the granary of Aberdeen.
- Strathbogie, occupying a considerable area south of the Deveron, mostly consists of hills, moors and mosses.
- Ben Macdhui,, the second highest mountain in the United Kingdom
- Braeriach
- Cairn Toul,
- Beinn a' Bhùird,
- Ben Avon,
- "Dark" Lochnagar,
- Cairn Eas,,
- Sgarsoch,
- Culardoch
The chief rivers are the Dee, long; the Don, ; the Ythan,, with mussel-beds at its mouth; the Ugie,, and the Deveron,, partly on the boundary of Banffshire. A pearl in the Scottish crown is said to be from the Ythan.
Loch Muick, the largest of the few lakes in the county, above the sea, long and broad, lies some southwest of Ballater. Loch Strathbeg, southeast of Fraserburgh, is only separated from the sea by a narrow strip of land. There are noted chalybeate springs at Peterhead, Fraserburgh, and Pannanich near Ballater. Other lochs of note are Loch Kinord, Loch Davan, Dubh Loch, Lochnagar, Loch Callater, Loch nan Eun and the Loch of Skene.