Place:Ellon, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

NameEllon
Alt namesEllon (burgh)source: from redirect
Ellonsource: town or burgh within parish
Arnagesource: estate in parish
Bairniesource: village in parish
Birnesssource: village in parish
Drumwhindlesource: school in parish
Dudwicksource: estate in parish
Esslemontsource: estate in parish
Tillydesksource: village in parish
Turnerhallsource: estate in parish
TypeParish, Burgh
Coordinates57.365°N 2.086°W
Located inAberdeenshire, Scotland     ( - 1975)
Also located inGrampian Region, Scotland     (1975 - 1996)
Aberdeenshire (council area), Scotland     (1996 - )

Scottish Record Office Number: 192
(used by ScotlandsPeople, see Research tips, below)

Churches: St Mary on the Rock, Ellon, Scottish Episcopal
Ellon Parish Church, Ellon, Church of Scotland
Our Lady and St John the Baptist, Ellon, Roman Catholic

Cemeteries: St Mary on the Rock, Ellon, Scottish Episcopal
More cemeteries may be listed by the Aberdeen & NE Scotland FHS (link under Research tips)

Old Parish Register Availabilty (within FamilySearch):
Baptisms: 1650-1854
Marriages: 1638-1854
Deaths: 1638-1854

NOTE: Civil registration of vital statistics was introduced to Scotland in 1855. Prior to that date births, marriages and deaths had been recorded in local churches in the Old Parish Registers (OPRs). The OPRs were collected by the Registrar for Scotland in Edinburgh as civil registration started. Although local churches continued to record bmd after 1855, these registers were not collected and stored by the Registrar for Scotland. Some may have found their way into local archives. FamilySearch and ScotlandsPeople both keep records prior to 1855, but only ScotlandsPeople retains microfilms of the original parish books.

Missing intervals in OPRs dates may be due to non-collection of volumes (possibly through loss or damage), or the events being recorded in another book held in the parish.

The following description is based on an article in Wikipedia

Ellon (Scottish Gaelic: Eilean) is a parish in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, approximately 16 miles (26 km) north of Aberdeen, lying on the River Ythan which has one of the few undeveloped river estuaries on the eastern coast of Scotland. It is in the ancient region of Formartine. Its name is believed to derive from the Gaelic term Eilean, an island, on account of the presence of an island in the River Ythan which offered a convenient fording point for the former burgh of Ellon, the principal settlement within the parish.

Places of interest within the town include the ruins of Ellon Castle, surrounded by walls known as the Deer Dyke, and the Auld Brig, a category A listed bridge across the Ythan, built in 1793 and still in use as a pedestrian bridge.

Ellon is bypassed by the A90 road, which offers convenient access to Aberdeen to the south and Peterhead and Fraserburgh to the north. Other major road links are the A920 west to Oldmeldrum and Huntly, and the A948 north to New Deer.

end of Wikipedia contribution

Ellon town is on the left [northeast] bank of the Ythan, 5 furlongs (0.625 mi) east-southeast of Ellon station on the Formartine and Buchan section of the Great North of Scotland railway (now closed).

Image:Ellon area at 3x3 inches.png

[Condensed from A New History of Aberdeenshire by Alexander Smith (Ed), 1875 and provided online by GENUKI]

It is bounded on the north by the parishes of Old Deer and New Deer, on the east by Cruden, on the southeast and south by Logie Buchan, and on the west by Udny, Tarves, and Methlick. The greatest length of the parish, measured in a direct line from south to north, is 8½ miles; and the greatest breadth from east to west, also in a direct line, is 5½ miles; and the whole area is estimated to be 18,568 acres.

The general appearance of the surface is undulating. North of the Ythan it is hilly, and owing to the level character of the country between the parish and the German Ocean [North Sea], the hills appear to be of greater altitude than they really are.

[[Condensed from F. H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1882-4) and provided online by Gazetteer for Scotland]

Ellon was the ancient seat of jurisdiction for the earldom of Buchan. It belonged, in pre-Reformation times, to Kinloss Abbey in Elginshire, and thence was often called Kinloss-Ellon. In the 19th century it was a thriving centre of local trade, retaining the site of its ancient open-air courts [market] in the Mote or Earl's Hill, a small mound which long was occupied by the stables of the New Inn. The Ythan is spanned here by a handsome three-arch bridge; and the newer part of the village, to the west of this bridge, comprises a number of well-built houses, in rows or detached, with pretty gardens, fringing the water-side; the older portion, to the east, is much less regular. Its salubrious climate and the Ythan's good trout-fishing attract a fair number of summer visitors to Ellon, which possesses a post office, with money order, savings' bank, insurance, and railway telegraph departments. Cattle and grain markets are held on the first and third Mondays of every month; hiring markets on the Tuesday after 11 April and the Wednesday after 12 November.

The ancient cruciform church of St Mary, bestowed on Kinloss in 1310, was superseded in 1777 by the present plain parish church, which, renovated and decorated in 1876, contains 1200 sittings. The Free church, built in 1825 as an Independent chapel, contains 350 sittings; a United Presbyterian church of 1827 contains 340; and a fine Episcopal church, St Mary of the Rock, was rebuilt (1870). Groome gives the parish area is 22,339½ acres, more than 3,700 greater than the figure quoted by Smith less than 10 years earlier. The Ythan is sufficently deep to take coal barges from the sea to all but the last mile from the town. Gneiss and granite are the prevailing rocks, and the soil of the valley is mainly fertile alluvium; elsewhere it is generally poor, either black and moorish or a very retentive clay. Thorough draining, however, and artificial manures have done much to increase its productiveness; and more than three-fourths of the entire area is now in tillage. Woods and plantations cover a small extent, the northern and eastern districts of the parish being bleak and bare. In the wall of the old church is a monument to the Annands of Auchterellon, with their arms and the date 1601. Waterton was a stately seat of Bannermans and Forbeses between 1560 and 1770. Of the Ellon Castle of 1780, built by the fourth Earl of Aberdeen, only one tower remains; its successor of 1851, with noble avenue and tasteful grounds, is the seat now of George John Robert Gordon, Esq. (b. 1812; suc. 1873), who holds 5556 acres in the shire, valued at £6195 per annum. Other mansions or estates are Arnage, Dudwick, Esslemont, and Turnerhall; and, in all, 8 proprietors hold each an annual value of £500 and upwards.

Settlements in the parish not linked to mansions are Birness and Drumwhindle.

Population Growth

Areaacressq mihectares
1801-190018,56829.017,514
1901-200123,137 36.159,363
YearPopulationDensity per sq miDensity per hectare
18012,02269.70.27
18513,324114.58 0.44
19014,123142.10.44
19513,41594.5 0.36
20019,973275.9 1.07

Populations 1801-1951 from A Vision of Britain through Time (http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk).
2001 population from Scotland’s Census (https://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk).

Research Tips

There was formerly a note on this page that the parish was linked to the Presbytery of Ellon, Synod of Aberdeen, Scotland. It would appear that since 1975 the organization of the presbyteries and synods has been revised. Readers are reminded that the Church of Scotland is Presbyterian in nature while in England the Church of England is Episcopalian. (See Wikipedia. )

  • official civil (from 1855) and parish registers (from when first produced) for births, marriages and deaths for all of Scotland
  • original census images for all years available (1841-1911).
  • references to wills and property taxes, and
  • an extensive collection of local maps.

This site is extremely easy to use. There are charges for parish register entries and censuses. The charges are reasonable and payable by online transfer.

  • The Statistical Accounts of Scotland Online provides access to digitised and fully searchable versions of both the Old Statistical Account (1791-99) and the New Statistical Account (1834-45). These uniquely rich and detailed parish reports, usually written by local Church of Scotland ministers, detail social conditions in Scotland and are an invaluable resource for anyone interested in Scottish history.
  • Scotlands Places
  • Gazetteer of Scotland includes descriptions of individual parishes from F. H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1882-4)
  • The FamilySearch Wiki
  • GENUKI which provides, amongst other data, complete quotations from A Topographical Dictionary of Scotland (1851) by Samuel Lewis, John Bartholomew's A Gazetteer of the British Isles (1877), and A New History of Aberdeenshire edited by Alexander Smith (1875)
  • A list of Burial Grounds in Scotland is now available on the website of the Scottish Association of Family History Societies.
  • Aberdeenshire and Moray Records. Town Council minutes, accounts, letters, plans and harbour records provided by Aberdeenshire Council plus other local records.
  • Aberdeen and North-East Scotland Family History Society is one of the largest and most reputable family history societies in Scotland and has a long list of publications referring to individual parishes.


This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Ellon, Aberdeenshire. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.