Publication Account
Date 1996
Event ID 1016402
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016402
In its rectangular east-west plan and sharp boundary between village and surrounding countryside, Archiestown preserves to an excellent degree the feel of a small planned settlement of the 18th century. It is named after its founder, Sir Archibald Grant of Monymusk, who, in 1760, established what was intended as a community of weavers on the Moor of Ballintomb, a broad shelf above the north bank of the River Spey that was part of the Grant estate of Elchies. The new village burnt down in 1763 and was rebuilt: several of the late 18th-century weavers' cottages can be seen on the west and south sides of the square.
Sir Archibald Grant was the son of a law lord, Lord Kames, who, like other judges of his day, had been an enthusiastic improver. The son had been an MP but was expelled from the House of Commons for fraudulent use of charity funds and turned to husbandry and estate improvement for his income. Grant therefore stands apart from many of his fellow early improvers in being driven by economic necessity rather than the dictates of intellectual and social fashion.
The main interest of the village is its tree-lined square, set north-south, at right-angles to the main street. Although many of the buildings on the east and north sides are 19th and early 20th-century in date, and the apparent mercat cross is the war memorial of 1920, the whole feel of the village is extremely calm and pleasing, in that the basic unified plan survives. The lanes running at right angles to the High Street, along the plots behind the frontage, also survive and help to pull the plan together.
Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: Aberdeen and North-East Scotland’, (1996).
