Place:Old Machar, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia where it is named Old Aberdeen

Old Machar or Old Aberdeen is part of the city of Aberdeen in Scotland. Old Machar was originally a separate burgh, which was erected (promoted) into a burgh of barony on 26 December 1489. It was incorporated into adjacent Aberdeen by Act of Parliament in 1891. It retains the status of a "community council area".

To the north of Aberdeen city centre, Old Machar was for a long time fairly isolated at the edge of the city. It reaches north to the River Don and includes Seaton Park and the small Brig o' Balgownie hamlet at its northern border. Since the 1960s, and the North Sea oil boom of the 1970s, however, housing development has surrounded the area, in particular with the nearby Tillydrone development.

Old Aberdeen was an important political, ecclesiastical and cultural center since the Late Middle Ages. In the 1630s the Covenanters challenged the Doctors of Aberdeen by holding a meeting in Muchalls Castle and responding to certain letters issued by the doctors, thus setting the stage for the first battle of the Bishops' Wars, when William Keith, 7th Earl Marischal (1610 – 1670 or 1671) and the Duke of Montrose (1612 – 1650) led a Covenanter army of 9000 men over the Causey Mounth to attack forces at the Bridge of Dee effectively gaining control of Old Aberdeen. (The Bishops' Wars occurred during the early years of the English Civil War, i.e., 1639-1640.)

The central part of the old town is a conservation area rich in historical buildings, some dating to the Middle Ages, and many vernacular buildings of the 17th-early 19th centuries built in the grey granite, so common to the Aberdeen area. A notable feature of the later buildings is the early use of hand-made bricks to build up gables, top garden walls, etc.; this use of brick being rare elsewhere in Scotland before the late 19th century. A number of the streets remain paved with stone setts. There are also several university buildings from the late 20th century.

Old Aberdeen is effectively the main campus of the University of Aberdeen. To the north of the university lies St Machar's Cathedral, whose medieval ecclesiastical buildings formed the original Old Aberdeen before the University arrived in 1495.

Major historic buildings in Old Machar include: the late 15th Century King's College Chapel, one of two surviving Scottish medieval churches with open "crown" spires, and which has the largest surviving collection of medieval woodcarving in any Scottish building; St Machar's Cathedral itself; the recently restored Old Town House (early 18th century); and the Brig o' Balgownie (14th Century), now pedestrianised, and a contender for the title of Scotland's oldest surviving bridge.

Old Aberdeen is now fully incorporated into the City of Aberdeen, with its local authority as Aberdeen City Council. Old Aberdeen remains a "community council area" within the city.

Population Growth

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).

The large change in population between 1851 and 1901 infers a change in parish boundaries, but none has been found in this interval. Samuel Lewis in his A Topographical Dictionary of Scotland of 1851 notes that the parish originally comprehended the parishes of New Machar and Newhills, but this ended after the Reformation (circa 1540).

Research Tips

• Scotlands People, the website of the Scottish Register Office provides

• 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.