author : C. A. McKean

Situated on an exposed headland on the northeast coast of Scotland, and dating from the late sixteenth century, Fraserburgh is the earliest of Scotland’s ‘new towns’, laid out to a continental-style grid. The town’s origins lie in the medieval settlements of Faithlie and Broadsea down by the shore, but it takes it name from the landowner: it was Fraser’s ’broch’ (burgh).

Fraser had grand ambitions for his ‘broch’: he invested heavily in the town’s infrastructure and towards the end of the sixteenth century he sought to establish a university in the town. The town’s strategic location and Episcopalian/Jacobite tendency meant that it was almost permanently garrisoned in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The town’s main economic activities were trading and fishing, and over the centuries large sums were spent on building and improving the harbour facilities. For much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it vied with Peterhead as the busiest herring port in the UK.

The book examines Fraserburgh’s historic development from the late medieval period to its heyday as a fishing port in the early twentieth century. The town has received very little archaeological investigation so the authors consider where the areas of archaeological potential lie, in order to inform future management.