Gardenstown

Gardenstown clings to the cliffs between Macduff and Fraserburgh, a proper cling too, as if it might slide into the sea on a bad day. Alexander Garden of Troup founded it in 1720, and yet hardly anyone calls it Gardenstown at all. Locals stick with Gamrie, the old parish name, borrowed straight from the bay itself¹GARDENSTOWN. Buchan Observer and East Aberdeenshire Advertiser. 4 August 1992. Page 28..

The village is stacked rather than spread, built in tiers up the slope, with the newest houses from the last century perched high above the old ones by the shore. Walk from the top of the village to the harbour and you drop 140 metres in barely half a kilometre. Stand on one level and you are practically peering down the chimney pots of the house below. It does something odd to your sense of balance.

The harbour itself is now mostly pleasure boats bobbing about, yet somehow thirteen registered fishing vessels still work out of it, busy enough to catch you off guard²Information board, Gardenstown, viewed 2 September 2026..

One puzzle remains unsolved, at least by me: why did Alexander Garden bother founding the place at all? Pure concern for his tenants, or something more calculating? The family fortune came first, made by the elder Alexander Garden, or Gordon, of Banchory-Devenick, who served under Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and bought Troup with the proceeds in 1654. It fell to his successor, the second Alexander Garden, to found the village itself in 1720, and his reasons have gone rather quiet with him.

• 1
  GARDENSTOWN. Buchan Observer and East Aberdeenshire Advertiser. 4 August 1992. Page 28. ↩︎
• 2
  Information board, Gardenstown, viewed 2 September 2026. ↩︎