Culbin Sands

A historical perspective, drawn from the Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland: A Survey of Scottish Topography, Statistical, Biographical and Historical, edited by Francis H. Groome and originally published in parts by Thomas C. Jack, Grange Publishing Works, Edinburgh between 1882 and 1885.

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Culbin, a sandy desert on the southern coast of the Moray Firth, extending across the entire breadth of Dyke and Moy parish, Elginshire, into Kinloss parish, Elginshire, and Anldearn parish, Nairnshire. Comprising some 9500 acres of what was once the very-garden of Moray, it began to be overwhelmed with sand as far back as 1100, according to Boece; but the barony itself of Culbin was not destroyed till 1670-95, ` the which was mainly occasioned by the pulling up by the roots of bent, juniper, and broom bushes, which did loose and break the surface and scroof of the sand-hills.' Now all is covered with sand or sand-hills, to a depth in places of 100 feet. The worst parts lie immediately west of the lagoon and mouth of the Findhorn river, and these underwent so great a change as to shift the river's month nearly 2 miles eastward, and to overwhelm the ancient town and harbour of Findhorn.—Ord. Sur., shs. 84, 94, 1876-78. See vol. iii., pp. 119, 120, of Chambers's -Domestic Annals of Scotland (1861).

An accompanying 19th C. Ordnance Survey map is available, or use the map tab to the right of this page.

Note: This text has been made available using a process of scanning and optical character recognition. Despite manual checking, some typographical errors may remain. Please remember this description dates from the 1880s; names may have changed, administrative divisions will certainly be different and there are known to be occasional errors of fact in the original text, which we have not corrected because we wish to maintain its integrity. This information is provided subject to our standard disclaimer

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