Dufftown

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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Dufftown, a small police burgh in Mortlach parish, Banffshire, 1 mile S of a station on the Great North of Scotland railway, this being 4 miles SE of Craigellachie Junction, 10¾ SW of Keith, and 64 NW of Aberdeen. With Conval and Ben Rinnes to the SW, Auchendoun Castle to the SE, and Balvenie Castle to the N, it stands, 600 feet above sea-level, within ½ mile of the Fiddich's left bank; and founded in 1817 by James Duff, fourth Earl of Fife, it is laid out in the form of a crooked-armed cross, with a square and a tower in the centre. At it are a post office, with money order, savings' bank, and railway telegraph departments, branches of the North of Scotland and the Aberdeen Town and County Banks (the latter rebuilt in 1880), 7 insurance agencies, an hotel, a distillery, and lime-works. Cattle fairs are held on the third Thursday of May and September, and the fourth Thursday of all the other ten months; feeing fairs on the Wednesday before 26 May, the third Wednesday of July, and the Wednesday before 22 November. Mortlach parish church stands 3½ furlongs to the S; and at the village itself are a Free church, the Roman Catholic church of Our Lady of the Assumption (1825; 200 sittings), and St Michael's Episcopal church (1880; 130 sittings), a pretty little Gothic building this. Queen Victoria drove through Dufftown in the summer of 1867. Its municipal constituency numbered 230 in 1882, when the annual value of real property was £2300. Pop. (1841) 770, (1851) 998, (1861) 1249, (1871) 1250, (1881) 1252.—Ord. Sur., sh. 85,1876.

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