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Aberdeen, City of Aberdeen, recalled to the modern poet G. S. Fraser “glitter of mica at the windy corners. . . a sleek sun flooding the broad, abundant dying sprawl of the Dee” and “salmon nets along a mile of shore”, while the novelist Lewis Grassic Gibbon called it “the one haunting and exasperatingly lovable city in Scotland — its fascination as inescapable as its shining mail”.

It is the glitter of the mica, among the crystals of quartz and felspar composing the pale blue-grey granite of which the city is so largely built, that provides the “shining mail” and is responsible for that air of timeless impersonality worn by the cliff-like façades and the steeples and turrets of its public buildings, though more than thirty housing blocks, arrayed mainly along the northern perimeter, now make the distant view restless.

The drama of Aberdeen's situation is brought home to the traveller who approaches it by road from the South. To the North of Stonehaven, he crosses the Highland Boundary Fault and leaves behind the fertile red clay of the Howe of the Mearns and Strathmore for a land where, as Sir Alexander Gray has put it,
A few trees, wind-twisted
Or are they but bushes? — Stand stubbornly guarding
A home here and there.

And then, descending from the ridge of moor-land that marks the seaward end of the Grampian mountain barrier, he sees laid out before him this wide-spreading, silver-veined city rising from a river's brim. Aberdeen now occupies and overspills the 2 miles of undulating land between the mouths of its rivers, Dee and Don, extending inland from its long shallow bay a distance of 3 to 4 miles. It grew up, almost in defiance of the laws of nature, as two quite separate burghs, Old Aberdeen — the cathedral and university “village” at the mouth of the Don — and “New” Aberdeen (in actual fact equally ancient), the fishing and trading settlement where the creek of the Denburn entered what was then the sprawling estuary of the Dee.

As you draw nearer, there is a good example of the way in which the old and new confront one another in the Granite City. On your right is the Hill of Kincorth. This hill as many of the new street names bear witness, the Army of the Covenant under Montrose and the Earl Marischal encamped in 1639 before the Battle of the Bridge of Dee, which still spans the river at its foot. That battle ended disastrously for Aberdeen's Royalist defenders. It was but one of the many reverses suffered by the inhabitants during the terrible years of the Civil War. But the bridge that bore the heat of the assault in that midsummer fray still stands as it has stood for 440 years. Although it was very carefully widened over a century ago, it still bears on its piers and abutments the coats of arms of Bishop Gavin Dunbar (who built them between 1520 and 1527), of Bishop William Elphinstone (who planned the bridge in the previous century), of King James V, and of the Regent Albany. This graceful structure in freestone, with its seven ribbed arches, is still in use, although the main traffic artery entering the town has been diverted eastwards along the South bank of the river to the King George VI Bridge, completed during the Second World War.

A green belt of playing-fields and parkland lines both banks of the river here. On the North bank, close to the Bridge of Dee, is a charming miniature, the tiny three-arched Ruthrieston pack-horse bridge, also embellished with coats of arms, built in 1693—4 to improve the access from the larger bridge into the town via the ancient Hardgate, now a forgotten by-way. On the right after crossing the King George VI Bridge is the Duthie Park, one of the city's handsomest open spaces, with winter gardens and many acres of tree-lined greensward.

The architect who left the most conspicuous mark on modern Aberdeen was Archibald Simpson (1790—1847), the son of an Aberdeen merchant burgess. His penchant for the neo-classic style was particularly suited to work in granite, and a dozen public buildings, two fine squares, and a plain but impressive crescent give him well-deserved local immortality. The first of these that you meet on your way eastward along Union Street is the Music Hall, with its massive pillared portico, originally built in 1820 as a group of assembly rooms. It is on the North side of the street about a third of the way down, and was saved from demolition after a heated controversy.

A short diversion down Bon-Accord Terrace, the first cross street on the right as you move eastward from Union Street's West end, leads to Simpson's Bon-Accord Square and Crescent, both built in the 1840s. For quiet dignity and fine proportions, they are the nearest approach in Aberdeen to the spirit of Edinburgh's New Town. On the way there you will pass, at the corner of Bon-Accord Terrace and Hard-gate, an inconspicuous square stone, built into a wall and surmounted by an inscribed plaque. This is the Crab Stane, marking the boundary of the croft that belonged to John Crab, a magistrate of Aberdeen in 1314. Crab, a Flemish immigrant, performed a service of national importance to Scotland in 1319, at the Siege of Berwick, by devising a crane to deliver the stones that shattered the roof of the English “sow”. But his stone also marks the location of two notable battles — the Battle of the Crab Stane on the 20^th of November 1571, and the Battle of the Justice Mills, on “Black Friday”, the 13^th of September 1644. In this latter fray the Marquess of Montrose, who by this time had emerged as the King's champion in the Civil War, attacked an army of Aberdeen citizens and covenanting lords. Again, as at the Battle of the Bridge of Dee, he was victorious and, enraged by the slaying of the drummer-boy who had accompanied his emissary, let loose his Irish troopers upon the city. The result was the Sack of Aberdeen, three days of rapine and carnage that marked the lowest ebb of the city's fortunes in the time of the “Troubles”.

Returning to Union Street, we find that, midway along its length, it crosses, by the 130-ft single span of Union Bridge, the ravine of the Denburn Valley, which reveals on the North side a striking natural vista.

We can return to Union Street by Back Wynd, an ancient street that skirts the City Kirkyard, in the centre of which stands the Parish Church of St Nicholas, the patron saint of New Aberdeen. This early medieval foundation, in which good work of the first pointed Gothic period still survives, was divided into East and West churches at the Reformation and has been greatly altered since. The two churches are separated from each other by the arches of the steeple and the walls of the transept.

It is in the North transept, known as Collison's Aisle, that the early work is to be seen, including a window above which is a unique lead apron or tracery. The South transept or Drum's Aisle, rebuilt in the 19^th century, contains a stone effigy of Sir Alexander Irvine of Drum, who died in 1457; it has a monumental brass. The West church (originally the nave) was rebuilt in the middle of the 18^th century to designs by James Gibbs (1682—1754), the greatest Aberdonian architect, whose work includes Christ's College, Cambridge, the Radcliffe Library, Oxford, and St Martin-in-the-Fields, London. In the West church are preserved four tapestries illustrating Biblical themes; they are by Mary Jamesone, the daughter of George Jamesone. The belfry houses a carillon of forty-eight bells, which regularly peal out psalm tunes that can be heard above the roar of the city's traffic. In the East church the feature of interest is the medieval crypt, now restored and in use as St Mary's Chapel.

Beyond the intersection of Market Street and St Nicholas Street, Union Street continues to Castle Street, flanked by the Town House, already mentioned, and widening out to form the Castlegate, the ancient forum of the burgh. This Square has been the heart of Aberdeen for seven centuries. It first appears in records in 1219, when the town began to supersede the lowly fishing habitation that had been raided by the Vikings in the previous century. Among its earliest known buildings was the house of the King's Justiciar, Comyn, Earl of Buchan, while William the Lion had a “palace” on the nearby green and a mint in what is now called Exchequer Row. It was called Castlegate because it led to the royal castle on Castlehill to the East. That castle, still commemorated in the burgh's coat of arms, was finally destroyed in 1308, when the pro-Bruce party in the town, rising and rallying to the cry of “Bon accord” (now the motto of the city), ejected the garrison of English soldiers left there by Edward I of England during the first War of Independence. In gratitude for this and other acts of loyalty, King Robert I in 1319 bestowed on the burgh the vast forest of Stocket, extending for many square miles to the West of the town.

The first Town House in the Castlegate was built in 1394. It was superseded in 1622 by a square tower (surmounted by a steeple and spire in 1629), which you can still see. This is the Old Tolbooth, whose fine lead steeple rises above the modern roofs at the East end of the present municipal buildings. Here was housed the Maiden, Scotland's form of the guillotine, used in 1562 to execute Sir John Gordon, the son of the Earl of Huntly who died at the Battle of Corrichie. The tradition is that Mary Queen of Scots wept as she watched the sentence carried out; she occupied the Earl Marischal's lodging, which stood on the East side of the Castlegate and was demolished in 1766 to make way for the present-day Marischal Street, which leads down to the harbour.

The Castlegate is no longer a market-place, thanks to the exigencies of modern traffic, but the last of its many market crosses, a hexagonal structure of six open arches dating from 1686, is a real work of art. The entablature above the arches carries carved portraits of the ten Stuart sovereigns, and is surmounted by a slender shaft bearing a unicorn rampant. It was the work of a local mason, who did the job for £100.

At the West end of Castlegate you can pass along the one-sided Exchequer Row to the Shiprow, probably the most ancient street in Aberdeen, now all gone save for one of the oldest houses in the city, Provost Ross's house, built in 1594 by Alexander Jamesone, father of George the portrait painter. Restored after the Second World War, it is now the local headquarters of the British Council. Returning to Union Street directly up Shiprow, and crossing it at the Town House corner, you may walk North along Broad Street to the neo-Gothic Marischal College. The three-storey frontage and fifteen-storey tower of St Nicholas House now dominate the North side of the street. Near the main entrance a flight of steps leads down to an inner courtyard where, encapsulated in modernity, stands Provost Skene's House, whose West wing dates from 1545 and was originally an L-plan mansion — a “land” and “inland”. Sir George Skene of Rubislaw, a wealthy merchant who traded in Danzig and later became the Provost of the burgh, acquired it in 1669, adding the East wing with its decorated doorway (surmounted by his coat of arms) and the two stair-turrets. The building, restored by the town council in 1951, is open to the public and contains, among other treasures, a remarkable cycle of religious paintings in tempera on the timber vault of the long gallery. Hidden for 300 years under plaster, they are believed to date from 1622. Panels depict the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Shepherds, and the Crucifixion. Other panels show how medieval religious motifs persisted in the strongly episcopalian North-East long after the Reformation. The two with-drawing-rooms on a lower floor have oak panelling of Skene's day, and there are several handsomely decorated plaster ceilings.

The twin spires of St Machar's Cathedral are graven on the hearts of innumerable Aberdonians. St Machar is said to have founded a church here in A.D. 580, on instructions from Columba to rest when he found the bend of a river that forms a shepherd's crook, as in fact the Don does at this point. Only a few stones remain of the Norman church that was built here when the see of the Bishop of Aberdeen was established in 1156. Both Old and New Aberdeen were given to the flames by Edward III in 1336, and the Cathedral had to be rebuilt. The Nave — almost all that remains in the present structure — was built between 1424 and 1440. It was formerly crested with embattled parapets, and the two western towers are still embattled like a castle. While the two pillars farthest to the East are of sandstone and date from 1357, the 15^th century, work is faced throughout with granite ashlar, the first instance of the large-scale use of dressed granite in the area. The twin spires of freestone that crown the West towers were added by Bishop Gavin Dunbar, who about 1520 also installed the heraldic ceiling that is the chief glory of the interior. His carved tomb is in the ruined South transept, but the effigy from it has now been taken inside to minimize the effects of weathering. In the various monuments within, the whole religious history of the North-East from the Middle Ages onwards can be traced, and we find also good modern stained glass.

There are many old houses in the remaining sector of the Chanonry (including No. 20 Chaplain's Court, the oldest inhabited house in Aberdeen, dating from 1519) and in Don Street, to which it leads. At the North West corner of the Cathedral graveyard a gateway opens into Seaton Park, one of the loveliest open spaces in the city. Here you can walk through woods along the gradually steepening right bank of the Don to the deep gorge of the river immediately above the Brig o' Balgownie — one of the most splendid Gothic monuments in Scotland, with great buttresses and a spectacular pointed arch. It was built by Bishop Cheyne in the early 14^th century and was so well endowed that funds from that source were more than adequate to build the new Bridge of Don farther downstream 400 years later.

From Balgownie to the new Bridge of Don you can walk along a picturesque footpath above the precipitous right bank — or motor across the old Brig and through Balgownie Village on the left bank. On the right bank on the far side of the new bridge begins the promenade, 2 miles long, that will take you all the way from the mouth of the Don to the mouth of the Dee. These 2 miles of sand forming Aberdeen Bay are responsible for making Aberdeen the largest holiday resort in Scotland. There is almost everything here that either the solitary or the gregarious could want for seaside pleasure.

Nearby towns: Ballater, Banchory, Ellon, Inverurie, Kintore, Peterhead, Stonehaven

Nearby villages: Aboyne, Alford, Auchinhove, Ballaterach, Ballogie, Bankhead, Birse, Bridge of Alford, Clova, Coldstone, Comers, Corsindae, Coull, Craigearn, Dinnet, Finzean, Inchmarlo, Keig, Kildrummy, Kinnernie, Leochel-Cushnie, Lumphanan, Lumsden, Migvie, Monymusk, Newburgh, Ordie, Pitfichie, Potarch, Raemoir, Strachan, Tarland, Tillyfour, Tillyfourie, Torphins, Tough, Towie, Tullynessle, Whitehouse

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