Fordoun (Scottish Gaelic: Fordun) (Pronounced "For-Dun") is a parish and village in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Fothirdun (possibly "the lower place"), as it was historically known,[citation needed] was an important area in the Howe of the Mearns. Fordoun and Auchenblae, together with their immediate districts form the Parish of Fordoun with the Parish Church[1] in the vicinity of the original settlement, now absorbed by Auchenblae.
In the 19th Century Fordoun railway station was opened approximately 3 miles to the South East of Fordoun Church and the original settlement. A village grew at the site of the station (opened in November 1849 and closed in June 1956),[citation needed] where there was also a number of shops, but only a seasonal farm shop remains.[2] In the time since the founding of the railway station the village formerly known as Fordoun Station has come to be known simply as Fordoun and the site of the original settlement has been absorbed by Auchenblae.
People from Fordoun
John of Fordun (d. c. 1384), Scottish Chronicler was born in the Parish of Fordoun.[3]
George Wishart (ca.1513 – 1546) a Scottish Protestant Reformer and one of the early Protestant martyrs burned at the stake as a heretic.[4]
James Beattie (1735–1803), Scottish scholar and writer was born in Laurencekirk and first worked as schoolmaster in Fordoun. He became Professor of Moral Philosophy and Logic at Marischal College and is noted for his Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth (1770) and poem The Minstrel.[6][7]
In his 1819 Geography, James Playfair notes that[10]
Fordoun is a mean town, and the seat of a presbytery, noted for being the birthplace or temporary residence of John Fordoun, author of the Scotichronicon; and of Palladius, who was sent by Pope Celestine into Scotland, in the 5th century, to oppose the Pelagian heresy. The chapel of Palladius, adjacent to the church, is 40 by 18 feet; at the corner of the minister's garden there is a well still called Paldy's well; and an Annual fair in the neighbourhood is styled Paldy-fair.
20th century to present
As part of the national war effort, a number of men from the Parish of Fordoun (consisting of both Fordoun and Auchenblae) volunteered or were conscripted to fight in World War I and II. A war memorial was erected on Gilbert's Hill overlooking Auchenblae in 1920 which records the names of the 29 servicemen from the parish who were killed in World War I and 13 servicemen and one civilian who were killed in World War II.[11] A memorial in Fordoun Memorial Hall (located in Fordoun) lists the names of an additional 14 men (43 in total) from the parish who were killed in World War I.[11] Many of the killed had joined the county regiment, the Gordon Highlanders. The death toll from the village would likely have been higher if the parish's principle source of employment was not farming which was protected as a reserved occupation.
Also in the parish, on the B966, is a disused airfield that was active during World War II. A two-runway satellite for Peterhead airfield, Fordoun Aerodrome operated from 1942 to 1944.[12]
Cináed mac Maíl Coluim was King of Alba (Scotland) from 971 to 995. The son of Malcolm I, he succeeded King Cuilén on the latter's death at the hands of Rhydderch ap Dyfnwal in 971.
Constantine, son of Cuilén, known in most modern regnal lists as Constantine III, was king of Alba (Scotland) from 995 to 997. He was the son of King Cuilén. John of Fordun calls him, in Latin, Constantinus Calvus, which translates to Constantine the Bald. Benjamin Hudson notes that insular authors from Ireland and Scotland typically identified rulers by sobriquets, noting for example the similarly named Eugenius Calvus, an 11th-century King of Strathclyde.
John of Fordun was a Scottish chronicler. It is generally stated that he was born at Fordoun, Mearns. It is certain that he was a secular priest, and that he composed his history in the latter part of the 14th century. It is probable that he was a chaplain in St Machar's Cathedral of Aberdeen.
William Forbes Skene WS FRSE FSA(Scot) DCL LLD, was a Scottish lawyer, historian and antiquary.
Walter Bower was a Scottish canon regular and abbot of Inchcolm Abbey in the Firth of Forth, who is noted as a chronicler of his era. He was born about 1385 at Haddington, East Lothian, in the Kingdom of Scotland. In 1991, Donald Watt said of Bower's Scotichronicon that "We are more and more convinced that this book is one of the national treasures of Scotland, which should be studied in depth for many different kinds of enquiry into Scotland's past."
John Playfair FRSE, FRS was a Church of Scotland minister, remembered as a scientist and mathematician, and a professor of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. He is best known for his book Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth (1802), which summarised the work of James Hutton. It was through this book that Hutton's principle of uniformitarianism, later taken up by Charles Lyell, first reached a wide audience. Playfair's textbook Elements of Geometry made a brief expression of Euclid's parallel postulate known now as Playfair's axiom.
James Beattie was a Scottish poet, moralist, and philosopher.
John Erskine of Dun (1509–1591) was a Scottish religious reformer.
George Wishart was a Scottish Protestant Reformer and one of the early Protestant martyrs burned at the stake as a heretic.
David Beaton was Archbishop of St Andrews and the last Scottish cardinal prior to the Reformation.
Kincardineshire, also known as the Mearns, is a historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area on the coast of northeast Scotland. It is bounded by Aberdeenshire on the north and west, and by Angus on the south.
Palladius was the first bishop of the Christians of Ireland, preceding Saint Patrick. It is possible that some elements of their life stories were later conflated in Irish tradition. Palladius was a deacon and member of one of the prominent families in Gaul. Pope Celestine I consecrated him a bishop and sent him to Ireland "to the Scotti believing in Christ".
Sir John Pringle, 1st Baronet was a British physician who has been called the "father of military medicine".
Fettercairn is a small village in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, northwest of Laurencekirk in Aberdeenshire on the B966 from Edzell. Fettercairn is also reached via the Cairn O' Mount road (B974) from Deeside.
John Barclay AM (1734–1798) was a Scottish minister of religion, and founder of the Bereans.
Alison Cockburn also Alison Rutherford, or Alicia Cockburn was a Scottish poet, wit and socialite who collected a circle of eminent friends in 18th-century enlightenment Edinburgh including Walter Scott, Robert Burns and David Hume.
Rev John Thomson FRSE HonRSA was a Scottish minister of the Church of Scotland and noted amateur landscape painter. He was the minister of Duddingston Kirk from 1805 to 1840.
Menmuir is a parish in the county of Angus in Scotland.
Auchenblae is a village in the Kincardine and Mearns area of Aberdeenshire, formerly in Kincardineshire, Scotland. The village was known for its weavers, a whisky distillery and the annual Paldie's Fair horse market.
Events from the year 1684 in the Kingdom of Scotland.
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