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 also is the county town of the historic region of Banffshire. Banff's initial castle was developed to repel Viking invaders and also a charter of 1163 AD shows that Malcolm IV was living there at that time. Throughout this period the community was a hectic trading centre in the "cost-free hanse" of Northern Scottish burghs, regardless of not having its own harbour till 1775. The very first recorded Sheriff of Banff was Richard de Strathewan in 1264, and in 1372 Royal Burgh condition was conferred by King Robert II. By the 15th century Banff was one of 3 primary towns exporting salmon to the continent of Europe, along with Aberdeen as well as Montrose. There was a lot of lawlessness in seventeenth-century Scotland, and also a few of the most awful wrongdoers were members of the nobility. According to documents maintained by chronicler William Cramond, the tolbooth (courthouse and prison) of Banff was, in 1628, the website of an altercation 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 friends and also fans after that struck Ogilvie with swords before chasing him into the street and also finishing him off with a pistol shot. Banff and Macduff are divided by the valley of the River Deveron. This unforeseeable river was lastly tamed by the seven curved bridge completed in 1779 by John Smeaton. An earlier bridge had been constructed in 1765, yet was swept away in 1768. The old ferryboat was brought back into usage, up until it was shed in a flooding in 1773. A public meeting was kept in 1800 and also passed a resolution for the structure of a turnpike roadway in between Turiff and Banff as the existing road was in an unfortunate state of fixing. Later 19th century transport enhancements consisted of the building of 2 railway lines, from Macduff to Turiff in 1860 as well as the Banff, Portsoy and also Strathisla Train in 1859 which connected to the main Aberdeen to Inverness line. During the 19th Century the Banff Fishery Area (making up the ports from Crovie to Sandend) was important to the herring profession, with manufacturing peaking in 1853 at more than sixty-thousand barrels, of which almost thirty-four thousand were exported, however by 1912 production had declined to just over eight thousand barrels. Currently, the languages spoken in the town as well as in its vicinity tend to be the Doric language of Scots, as well as English.