Benholm, a coast parish of Kincardineshire, traversed by the Montrose and Bervie section of the North British railway, and containing the fishing village of Johnshaven, with postal, money order, savings' bank, and telegraph office under Fordoun, and with a station 9 miles NNE of Montrose and 4¼ SSE of Bervie. Bounded NW by Garvock, N and NE by Bervie, SE by the German Ocean, and SW by St Cyrus, it has an extreme length from N to S of 3¾ miles, a width from E to W of 31/8. miles, and a land area of 4891 acres. The shore, about 1½ mile long, is low but rocky; has been the scene of many shipwrecks; and seems to be touched by a northward ocean current, the bodies of persons drowned in the Firth of Forth having been cast up here. Along it runs a former sea-bottom, 300 yards broad on an average and almost level with the sea, which, partly consisting of shingle but chiefly of sea sand mixed with pebbles or small boulders, has all, except at Johnshaven, been artificially covered with soil, and made either arable or pastoral, one portion of it having been thus reclaimed as late as 1863. Beyond, the ancient sea margin, steep in some places, in others sloping, is very distinctly marked; and thence the ground inland ascends unequally towards the NW. A chain of little heather-capped hills rise to 452, 495, and 415 feet on the SW border, and to 563 feet in the westermost corner of the parish; on the Bervie boundary are Gourdon Hill (436 feet), Knox Hill (523), and Kenshot Hill (618). The rocks are Devonian and eruptive-sandstone, conglomerate, and trap; and wherever exposed, their surfaces are found to be grooved and striated by glacial action towards the SW by W. Sandstone is worked on the Brotherton and Benholm estates, and that on the former is the best building stone in the county. The soil for 1½ mile from the shore is early, productive, and well adapted for all sorts of crops; but in the upper district is later and less fertile, and much here that formerly was moor and waste has been reclaimed only within the last half century. Antiquities are an oblong beacon cairn on Gourdon Hill, Kenshot and Philla Cairns in the NW, and the square Tower of Benholm to the N of the church, supposed to have been founded early in the 15th century, and still entire, though uninhabited. A seat of the Keiths, Earls Marischal, this was the scene in 1623 of a theft by the fifth earl's widowed countess of money and jewels to a great amount (Chambers's Dom. Ann., i. 530). Brotherton House, a fine mansion rebuilt in the Baronial style in 1866, stands near the shore a little above Johnshaven, and is the seat of Hercules Scott, Esq., whose ancestors have held the estate for 200 years and more, and who himself is owner of 3912 acres in the shire of £5388 annual value. One other proprietor holds a yearly value of £500 and upwards, and 1 of from £50 to £100, while 5 hold each between £20 and £50. Benholm is in the presbytery of Fordoun and synod of Angus and Mearns;its minister's income is £349. The parish church (1832; 768 sittings) is 1¾ mile NNE of Johnshaven, and near it is a public school, with accommodation for 76 children, an average attendance (1879) of 24, and a grant of £26, 13s. 4d.; while at Johnshaven are a Free church, a U.P. church, and another school. Valuation (1881) £8520,13s. 11d., including £423 for the railway. Pop. (1801) 1412, (1841) 1648, (1871) 1569, (1881) 1525.—Ord. Sur., shs. 57,57a, 66,67,1863-74.
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