Bed and breakfast availability
Hopeman b&b, guesthouse and hotel accommodation

Visit Hopeman and the surrounding villages and stay in bed & breakfast accommodation:

Hopeman, Moray. To the outside world the little harbour of Hopeman has a special kind of fame associated with the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh. It is familiar to them both as the unofficial “port of Gordonstoun”, for here the cutters of the famous school founded by Kurt Hahn have made their haven for nearly four decades.

Hopeman is not an ancient village. The first house in it was built in 1805 when the village was laid out by William Young of Inverugie, the “improver” who later migrated across the Moray Firth to the Strath of Kildonan and played a key part in the most bitterly resented of the Sutherland Clearances, side by side with James Loch and Patrick Sellar.

If he had not been, attracted by the prospects of profit from sheep-farming under the Marquess of Stafford in the Sutherland glens that he helped to depopulate, it is possible that Young would be remembered today as an entirely benificent influence on the economy of Moray. He transformed the estate of Inverugie by deep ploughing, which turned up the sandy surface of the soil and brought the deep black earth beneath into cultivation, while his founding of the village of Hopeman certainly seems to have been justified by the long-term history of the place, though it had its teething troubles. The harbour was built by Admiral Archibald Duff of Drummuir after Young had left the scene. A modern benefactor, Innes Cameron, an Elgin distiller, provided the “town clock” in the tower of Hopeman church, the extensive playing-fields and the paddling-pool — created by the building of a barrier forming a lagoon.

The rich agricultural land in the hinterland of Hopeman was brought into existence by draining the Loch of Spynie, which in historic times extended all the way from Lossiemouth to Burghead. By this means “an uncultivated forest, deformed almost everywhere by gloomy black pools of stagnant water” was transformed in the 18^th century into an “unbroken arable field of deep rich clay producing weighty crops”.

Nearby towns: Burghead, Elgin, Forres, Lossiemouth

Nearby villages: Alves, Cummingston, Duffus, Dyke, Findhorn, Fogwatt, Kinloss, Lhanbryde, Longmorn, Rafford, Urquhart

Have you decided to visit Hopeman or the surrounding villages? Please look above for somewhere to stay in:

• a Hopeman bed and breakfast (a Hopeman B&B or Hopeman b and b)
• a Hopeman guesthouse
• a Hopeman hotel (or motel)
• a Hopeman self-catering establishment, or
• other Hopeman accommodation