Garmouth

(Garmouth Kingston)

A historical perspective, drawn from the Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland: A Survey of Scottish Topography, Statistical, Biographical and Historical, edited by Francis H. Groome and originally published in parts by Thomas C. Jack, Grange Publishing Works, Edinburgh between 1882 and 1885.

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Garmouth, a seaport village in Urquhart parish, Elginshire, on the left bank of the river Spey, ¾ mile S of Kingston at its mouth, 4³/₈ miles N by W of Fochabers, and 5 NE by E of Lhanbry d station, this being 3¼ miles E by S of Elgin. A burgh of barony, under the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, it chiefly consists of modern houses, neatly arranged in regular street lines; it has a harbour naturally good, but severely damaged by the great flood of 1829, and always subject to fresh shiftings and obstructions of ground from heavy freshets of the Spey; and it, at one time, conducted a remarkably large timber trade, in the export of tree-trunks floated down to it from the forests of Glenmore, Abernethy, Rothiemurchus, and Glenfishie. It still deals largely in timber, both for exportation and for local shipbuilding, the latter industry having somewhat revived in 1870, after a great depression; and it also imports coal, exports agricultural produce, and carries on a valuable salmon fishery. Garmouth was plundered by the Marquis of Montrose in the February, and burned in the May, of 1645; and at it King Charles II. landed from Holland on 23 June 1650. It has a post office, with money order and savings' bank departments, a branch of the Caledonian Bank, gas-works (1857), a fair on 30 June, a Gothic Free church (1845), with an octagonal tower, and a public school. The last, on an eminence between it and Kingston, is a handsome Elizabethan edifice, erected in 1875-76 at a cost of over £1600. Pop. (1831) 750, (1861) 802, (1871) 636, (1881) 626.—Ord. Sur., sh. 95, 1876.

An accompanying 19th C. Ordnance Survey map is available, or use the map tab to the right of this page.

Note: This text has been made available using a process of scanning and optical character recognition. Despite manual checking, some typographical errors may remain. Please remember this description dates from the 1880s; names may have changed, administrative divisions will certainly be different and there are known to be occasional errors of fact in the original text, which we have not corrected because we wish to maintain its integrity. This information is provided subject to our standard disclaimer