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 former royal burgh, as well as is the county town of the historic county of Banffshire. Banff's first castle was built to repel Viking intruders and also a charter of 1163 AD reveals that Malcolm IV was living there back then. During this duration the community was a hectic trading centre in the "complimentary hanse" of Northern Scottish burghs, in spite of not having its very own harbour until 1775. The first documented Sheriff of Banff was Richard de Strathewan in 1264, and also in 1372 Royal Burgh standing was provided by King Robert II. By the 15th century Banff was just one of 3 major communities exporting salmon to the continent of Europe, in addition to 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 as well as prison) of Banff was, in 1628, the site of a run-in between Lord Banff and James Ogilvie, his relative. Supposedly, he struck James Ogilvie upon the head with a baton during a court hearing. Twenty of his good friends and also fans then assaulted Ogilvie with swords before chasing him right into the street as well as finishing him off with a pistol shot. Banff and also Macduff are divided by the valley of the River Deveron. This unpredictable river was lastly tamed by the 7 curved bridge finished in 1779 by John Smeaton. An earlier bridge had been integrated in 1765, but was swept away in 1768. The old ferry was restored into usage, till it was shed in a flooding in 1773. A public conference was held in 1800 and also passed a resolution for the building of a turnpike roadway in between Turiff and also Banff as the existing roadway was in a sad state of repair. Later 19th century transport renovations consisted of the structure of 2 train lines, from Macduff to Turiff in 1860 as well as the Banff, Portsoy as well as Strathisla Railway in 1859 which linked to the main Aberdeen to Inverness line. Throughout the 19th Century the Banff Fishery Area (comprising the ports from Crovie to Sandend) was very important to the herring profession, with manufacturing peaking in 1853 at greater than sixty-thousand barrels, of which virtually thirty-four thousand were exported, nonetheless by 1912 manufacturing had declined to simply over 8 thousand barrels. Currently, the languages spoken in the community as well as in its location have a tendency to be the Doric language of Scots, as well as English.