Peterhead is
Aberdeenshire's largest settlement and the most easterly on the Scottish mainland. It once had a railway station that was a terminus of the Great North of Scotland Railway, which opened in 1862 but fell victim the Beeching cuts and finally closed in 1970. The town is served by the A90 trunk road, which now bypasses it to the west.
The estates of George, 10th Earl Marischal and descendant of the founder of Peterhead, were forfeited to the Crown following the first Jacobite Rising. In exile he became a noted general in the service of Frederick the Great of Prussia, eventually meeting his death at the Battle of Hochkirchen. In 1868 King William I of Prussia presented to Peterhead a statue of Field-Marshal
George Keith which had stood in Potsdam.
Born here were the actor and film director Peter Mullan (1959) and another film director Jon S. Baird (1972).
Peterhead reached its peak as the capital of the British whaling industry in the 1820s and later became a leading port during the herring boom. Its huge Harbour of Refuge, formed by the construction of two great breakwaters, was the first major public work of its kind in Scotland. The town benefited from the
North Sea oil boom of the 1970s and the construction of the nearby
St. Fergus Gas Terminal in 1977. Peterhead was to suffer in the 1990s and early 2000s as fishing boats were decommissioned due to reducing whitefish stocks, and the Crosse & Blackwell factory which employed 170 and produced
Branston Pickle closed in 1998. Today the burgh is Britain's leading fishing port (with 18% of the UK national fish landings in 2013, or 113,00 tonnes, valued at £112 million). Other significant source of employment include food and fish processing, woollen products, tourism and oil and marine-related industries. The town remains the home of
The Buchan Observer newspaper, founded in 1863.The so-called Peterhead granite, valued for its rich red colour, was quarried at Stirling Hill and Longhaven to the southwest.
(1990) Banff and Buchan: An Illustrated Architectural Guide.