Friockhelm, a modern village in Kirkden parish, Forfarshire, on the right bank of Lunan Water, with a station on the Arbroath and Forfar section of the Caledonian railway, 6¼ miles NW by W of Arbroath and 1¾ mile ESE of Guthrie Junction. About the year 1830 operatives connected with textile manufactures were induced to feu houses at a cheap rate on the estate of Middleton; and Friockheim acquired material increase of importance, first by the Arbroath and Forfar railway (1839) placing it on a grand thoroughfare between these towns, next by the Aberdeen railway (1850) making it a centre of transit of all places N of the Tay. It has a post office, with money order, savings' bank, and telegraph departments, a branch of the North of Scotland Bank, 4 insurance agencies, a police station, gas-works, a cemetery, an assembly hall, a library and reading-room, a horticultural society, and cattle, sheep, and hiring fairs on 26 May or the Thursday after, on the Monday in July after Arbroath fair, and on 22 November or the Thursday after. The quoad sacra parish, constituted in 1870, is in the presbytery of Arbroath and synod of Angus and Mearns; the stipend is £120, with a manse. Its church, built in 1836 and enlarged in 1840, is a neat edifice, with a steeple and 500 sittings. There are also a Free church and an Evangelical Union chapel ; and a public school, with accommodation for 250 children, had (1881) an average attendance of 210, and a grant of £183, 15s. Pop. of village (1841) 805, (1861) 1239, (1871) 1119, (1881) 1098; of q. s. parish (1871) 1432, (1881) 1501, of whom 360 were in Inverkeilor and 1141 in Kirkden. - Ord. Sur., sh. 57, 1868.
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