Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for Garmouth

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.


(F.H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1882-4); © 2004 Gazetteer for Scotland)

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a seaport village"   (ADL Feature Type: "populated places")
Administrative units: Urquhart ScoP       Moray ScoCnty
Place: Garmouth

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