Peterhead

NK14NW 16 1313 4691 and 1309 4692.

The plague was endemic in Peterhead in 1645, resulting in the death of over 300 people. The first victims died in the tolbooth (NK14NW 20), and such was the fear of infection, that the building was subsequently razed to the ground. A site was selected N of Ronhead and eight timber huts were built for the isolation of the sick, while in an adjacent field, broad, deep trenches were excavated to bury the dead. Both sites were deserted after the epidemic. The huts apparently survived until about 1775 in a fragmentary state. Buchan (1819) claimed that 'there remained not long ago, some of the ruins of these huts', The Statistical Account (1795), however, claimed that the huts were pulled down, burnt and covered with earth after the plague had passed; there could be some confusion here with the burning of the tolbooth. The area was untouched until about 1775 when the land was trenched and several pieces of timber recovered indicating the site of the huts. Buchan claimed to have examined the site and discovered several fragments of bones 'strewed among the dust of pits which had been dug in that place'. He had identified the site from Moir's plan which is annotated concerning the site and orientation of the huts and graveyard. A fever hospital was erected in 1880 practially on the site of the huts; this was replaced by a housing estate in the 1930s.

W Moir 1739; Statistical Account (OSA) 1795; P Buchan 1819; A T Simpson and S Stevenson, 1982.