It is only a small exaggeration to say the Banff’s caravan parks owe their existence to one Dr William Gordon Stables, born in 1837 at nearby Aberchirder, or Foggie as it is called locally. Dr Stables had a career as a surgeon in the Royal Navy and when retired wrote over 100 books, mainly tales […]
James Grant, (1789-1858), born at Banff made a name for himself as a soldier, administrator and historian in India with the East India Company. He first arrived in India as a cadet at the age of sixteen. Graduating from the cadet academy he distinguished himself in many military campaigns while also mastering the Marathi, Urdu, […]
Just as the photo of Turriff’s Feein Fair in 1890 above shows, imagine Low Street Banff is packed with farm servants, both male and female, standing around in twos and threes hoping for a fee. The farmers wearing wide-brimmed tall hats push their way through the groups sizing up the women’s capacity for hard work […]
Alexandria Thom, better known as ‘Sandi Thom’, born and raised in Banff, became widely known in 2006 after her debut single, “I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Flowers in My Hair)”, topped the UK Singles Chart in June of that year. Surely you remember? I was born too late into a world that […]
From 1702 until 1815, the French and British were involved in six wars. In the wars, merchant ships suffered heavy losses off of the North East coast. The merchant ships were attacked by privateers of mainly French origin, although privateers of American and Dutch origin were active too. Privateers were privately owned ships, commissioned by […]
Turnpike Trusts were established in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a way of creating and maintaining a decent road network. The individual Trusts were established by Acts of Parliament. Turnpikes or Toll bars were points on the roads where people had to pay to use the road. The first Scottish Turnpike Act was in […]
Aberdeenshire council fills 31.000 potholes in three years. On reading Dr James McIntosh’s thesis “Roads in the Vale of Deveron from 1750 to 1850” I realised that the state of the roads has always been an issue. As early as 1555, the need for road maintenance was recognised – highways connecting market towns and ports […]
This is one of my favourite places. It is beautiful of course and it has seen so many wondrous, historically important and sometimes terrible things. There are stone circles and Bronze Age cairns dotted around the countryside. There have been people here for a very long time indeed. The Celtic Mormaers, it is thought, ruled […]
Earl Fife’s birthday – James, the fourth Earl.
When visitors hear a Banffer mention ‘Strait Path’, they hear ‘Straight Path’. When they look up or down the path this spelling is confirmed; the path which leads from the High Street to the Low Street, is indeed (more or less) straight. However, straightness was not the most salient feature in the naming of the […]