Banff
Banff is a town in the Banff and Buchan area of Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Banff is situated on Banff Bay and faces the town of Macduff across the estuary of the River Banff is a previous royal burgh, and is the county town of the historical county of Banffshire. Banff's initial castle was constructed to fend off Viking invaders as well as a charter of 1163 AD shows that Malcolm IV was living there during that time. Throughout this duration the community was a hectic trading centre in the "free hanse" of Northern Scottish burghs, despite not having its very own harbour till 1775. The very first taped Sheriff of Banff was Richard de Strathewan in 1264, as well as in 1372 Royal Burgh standing was provided by King Robert II. By the 15th century Banff was just one of 3 principal towns exporting salmon to the continent of Europe, along with Aberdeen as well as Montrose. There was a large amount of lawlessness in seventeenth-century Scotland, and also a few of the most awful wrongdoers were participants of the nobility. According to records maintained by historian William Cramond, the tolbooth (courthouse and also prison) of Banff was, in 1628, the website of a run-in in between Lord Banff as well as James Ogilvie, his relative. Supposedly, he struck James Ogilvie upon the head with a baton during a court hearing. Twenty of his pals as well as followers then assaulted Ogilvie with swords before chasing him right into the street and also completing him off with a pistol shot. Banff and Macduff are separated by the valley of the River Deveron. This unpredictable river was lastly tamed by the seven curved bridge completed in 1779 by John Smeaton. An earlier bridge had actually been built in 1765, yet was swept away in 1768. The old ferry was brought back into use, up until it was shed in a flooding in 1773. A public meeting was kept in 1800 as well as passed a resolution for the structure of a turnpike roadway in between Turiff and also Banff as the existing road was in an unfortunate state of repair work. Later 19th century transport enhancements included the building of two railway lines, from Macduff to Turiff in 1860 as well as the Banff, Portsoy and Strathisla Train in 1859 which attached to the primary Aberdeen to Inverness line. Throughout the 19th Century the Banff Fishery Area (making up the ports from Crovie to Sandend) was very important to the herring trade, with production coming to a head in 1853 at more than sixty-thousand barrels, of which almost thirty-four thousand were exported, however by 1912 manufacturing had actually decreased to simply over eight thousand barrels. Presently, the languages spoken in the community as well as in its area often tend to be the Doric dialect of Scots, and English.