Cruden Bay

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Cruden Bay is the name of a village in Scotland, on the north coast of the Bay of Cruden in Aberdeenshire.

Harbour Street,Cruden Bay

Just south of Slains Castle, Cruden Bay was the site of a battle between Danes and Scots in 1012. The name of the village is said to come from the Gaelic Croch Dain (Slaughter of Danes). Today, Cruden Bay attracts tourists with its hotels and well-known golf course. It has a long, unspoiled, beach made famous by Tryggve Gran who made the first solo flight across the North Sea.

1 Population
2 Beginnings
3 Fishing community and Seaside Resort
4 The coming and going of the Railway
5 Cruden Bay today
6 Oil pipeline
7 Amenities
8 External links

[edit] Population

1587 (Small Area Population Estimates, 2005 Update)

[edit] Beginnings

William Harry, 19th Earl of Erroll, established the fishing community of Port Erroll in the 1840s and 1850s, adding a functional harbour at the mouth of the Water of Cruden in the 1870s. Before that a tiny, now long-abandoned hamlet of rudimentary fisher cottages, simply known as Ward, stood exposed on top of Ward Hill, just above the harbour site. There was also a parish school since 1606, housed in the elegant two-storey Erroll Schoolhouse (now a B & B) from 1834; the Presbyterian St Olaf or simply Old Kirk (1776, with distinctive conical towers added in 1833); and St James Episcopal Church on top of Chapel Hill in 1842. The seaside parish was dominated by the clifftop Slains Castle begun in 1597 and abandoned and unroofed for tax purposes in the 1920s.

[edit] Fishing community and Seaside Resort

Port Erroll developed as a fishing community to some extent, but the tidal nature of the harbour restricted the size of craft which could operate from it and the village missed out on the herring boom. However, tourism provided another source of income for the village. Even before the coming of the railway, the long pink curve of the Bay of Cruden sands and spectacular cliffscapes to the north was attracting visitors and a small seaside resort was grafting itself onto the fishing community. The Cruden Bay Golfing Society, founded remarkably early in 1791, played on the open links. Bram Stoker holidayed first at the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel and then at nearby Whinneyfold from 1894. Although stories that Slains Castle inspired Dracula are probably overstated, Stoker’s novel The Mystery of the Sea and some short stories do have Cruden Bay as their setting.

[edit] The coming and going of the Railway

The railway brought grandeur but not lasting prosperity to Cruden Bay. The branch line from Ellon to Boddam near Peterhead was opened in 1897, along with the golf course and the 55-bedroom Cruden Bay Hotel two years later. A tramway was added linking the station and hotel. The Great North of Scotland Railway Company promoted Cruden Bay as a Brighton of the North, only twelve hours from London and an ideal escape for gentry and nouveau riche. However, despite initial enthusiasm neither railway nor hotel took off. The railway was closed to passengers in 1932, and in 1939 the hotel was requisitioned as an army hospital, and never re-opened after the war. However, Cruden Bay remains a golfing destination, and the village still sustains three smaller hotels. Additionally, although both the harbour area and the local primary school are still styled ‘Port Errol’, the railway adventure put the name Cruden Bay firmly on the map.

[edit] Cruden Bay today

The 1950s and 1960s was a period of rapid population decline for Cruden Bay, but the coming of North Sea Oil to north-east Scotland, with its attendant jobs and families looking for good communities and picturesque places to settle in, reinvigorated the village, and population rose again with new housing added near the now-closed brickworks, the site of the demolished Cruden Bay Hotel and along the Water of Cruden at Morrison Place. These days Cruden Bay serves mainly as a dormitory village for the important settlements of Peterhead to the north and Aberdeen to the South. However, the eighteenth century timbered salmon station still operates, and some seasonal commercial fishing continues.

[edit] Oil pipeline

Although there is little evidence of its presence other than a small complex a few miles south of the village, the sands at Cruden Bay is the place where the 110-mile long pipeline operated by British Petroleum, in use from 1975, finds landfall. It pumps crude oil from the Forties oilfield to Cruden Bay, then onward by overland pipeline to Grangemouth.