Peterhead
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a seaport and burgh of barony of Buchan, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, on a peninsula, 32 miles N. N. E. of Aberdeen. Founded in 1593, it is somewhat irregular in plan, but clean and largely built of the celebrated "Peterhead granite," whose reddish variety is so much used for monumental purposes. The Keiths, Earls Marischal, were superiors of the place till the rebellion of 1715, when the Old Pretender landed here, and after which their forfeited estates were purchased by the Edinburgh Merchant Maiden Hospital, to whose governors many improvements are owing. Of Marshal Keith bronze a statue was presented to the town in 1869 by King William of Prussia; and the market cross, a granite Tuscan pillar (1833), bears the arms of the Earls Marischal. The public buildings include the town hall (1788), with spire 125 feet high; the parish church (1803), with one of 118 feet. Of industries may be mentioned the woolen manufacture, boat building, and granite polishing. Peterhead was made a head port in 1838. From 1788 it gradually became the chief British seat of the seal and whale fisheries till 1852. At present Peterhead is chiefly important for its great herring great fishery, which during the herring season brings some 5,000 persons to the place. The S. harbor was commenced in 1773, and the N. harbor in 1818, a canal being formed between them in 1850; while a new harbor was formed and the S. harbor deepened under acts of 1873 and 1876. Their three basins, hewn out of the solid rock, together cover about 22 acres, but are as nothing compared with the great harbor of refuge, begun in 1886, which, but for the World War, would have been completed in 1921. In the neighborhood are the ruins of Inverugie, Ravenscraig, and Boddam castles, all strongholds of different branches of the Keiths; Buchan Ness, the most E. point of Scotland, 1, with a lighthouse (1827); and the Bullers of Buchan. Pop. (1918) 14,000.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's in 1921 blamed the World War for the unfinished "great harbour of refuge, begun in 1886" — work on those breakwaters, largely done by convicts from the prison opened at Peterhead in 1888, was eventually abandoned without the full design ever being realised, and the prison itself closed in 2013 and reopened as a museum. The "great herring fishery" that drew 5,000 seasonal workers is gone; Peterhead instead became Britain's biggest fishing port by value of landings, dealing chiefly in whitefish and mackerel rather than herring. North Sea oil and gas transformed the local economy from the 1970s, with the St Fergus gas terminal a few miles north and a power station on Peterhead's own shore. The granite trade that gave the town its reddish monumental stone has ceased as a working industry, though the buildings and the Marischal statue of 1869 remain; population is now around 18,000–19,000.
Written for this edition, 2026.