Logierieve: A Dastardly Deed

 Logierieve Station pictured on a sunny  day in June 2011.
The station is built on the site of a former dame's school.

Logierieve is to the west of the station. 

Rev William Temple, writing in The Thanage of Fermartyn, published in 1894, gives an interesting insight into the huge impact of the railway in transforming rural Aberdeenshire and relieving the isolation of many settlements. 

'Logierieve is situated on a rising ground overlooking what in days of old was called the 'Great Moss of Logierieve'. The prospect used to be very somber, but now with the railway trains continually passing and repassing, its solitariness has been much relieved.' 

In the 17th century Logierieve, then known as Logieruiff was the home of William Hay. Hay's brother Francis had been involved in a long drawn out and acrimonious quarrel  with his former friend, Adam Gordon of Gight, twice during the course of the disagreement swords were drawn and twice  Hay was  overcome by Gordon who twice spared him.  However, the quarrel  culminated in Adam Gordon being shot in the back by  the riled Hay.  Gordon of Gight, brother of Adam,  then took matter's into his own hands, rode to Logieruiff  and without obtaining a warrant ,proceeded to seize Francis Hay, took him to Aberdeen  where he was  imprisoned  in his own lodgings in the Gallowgate, 'The Bonnie Wifie's Inn'. After being imprisoned there for forty-eight hours , Hay was brought before the Sheriff Depute of the city, a Gordon clansman. This was a highly irregular trial at which Hay was unrepresented, death threats having been made to an advocate who offered to act for him. At the trial Hay was condemned to be beheaded and next day 'was led to a solitary spot and butchered by the swords of his enemies'.  William Temple,  Thanage of Fermertyn, Aberdeen 1894.

On the south side of the station the Line cuts through Logierieve Wood and is flanked by willows which provided pleasant shade on the day we walked this section..

Den of Old Maud

Maud Junction,  a distinctly autumnal look with fallen leaves. The lay out of the station reflected the need for lines to split to serve Peterhead and Fraserburgh and for the extensive goods yards needed by the cattle mart. The Peterhead platform is on the right, the Fraserburgh ones to the left, the goods yard was further left.




Maud Hospital,  originally the Buchan Combination Poorhouse, this imposing building designed by Alexander Ellis, was opened on 26th January 1869 in order to provide deliberately spartan accommodation for the poor of parishes across Buchan. This view from the Line just south of  Maud Station shows the side of the building. The presence of the railway and resultant good links across Buchan was a factor in the selection of Maud as the site for the poorhouse. The poorhouse assisted the development of Maud by providing employment for local tradesmen and craftsmen, including tailors who made uniforms from tweed and corduroy for the inmates, joiners who did maintenance work and made coffins. The school roll was considerably increased by the number of child inmates.



Buchan Combination Poorhouse, now Maud Hospital, from Hospital Road. The institution was taken over by Aberdeen County Council in 1930 when it became known as Maud Home. At this time it catered for 160 including 'ordinary poor, mental defectives, harmless lunatics and chronic sick'. The building was described as having 'narrow dark central corridors, with day rooms and dormitories on either side, enjoying neither cross light or cross ventilation'. The home was handed  over to the National Health Service in 1948 and became known as Maud Hospital.

The Line snakes along the eastern edge of  the Den of Old Maud, chiefly on an shallow embankment. On either side the land is marshy, there are extensive areas of ash trees and occasional willows and rowans in the den. As we walked along this section a single buzzard, flying high over the den was being mobbed by a group of rooks to which it remained indifferent. 

The willow herb seeds along the Line provided food for a flock of finches

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At the southern end of the Den there is a stand of immense beech trees one of which has recently lost a huge branch. The torn limb revealed rotten wood at its junction with the trunk but had this year's leaves on the branches.

Rusty leaves and beech mast littering the path.

Strichen Toll House

Strichen Toll House on the B9093, the old turnpike road, seen from the point where the entrance to the Aberdeenshire Council Depot crosses the Line.

Following the Turnpike Act of 1795,  local Turnpike Trusts, consisting of landowners and burghers whose estates exceeded £400 Scots,  were able to apply for an Act of Parliament empowering them to build roads, in some cases, by raising statute labour and to levy tolls to pay for their construction and maintenance.  

The Turnpike Act stipulated that the roads had to be built and maintained to a high standard, in Aberdeenshire  the average cost of turnpike roads was £350 per mile. The Trustees, usually the landowners through whose estates the road was to pass, borrowed capital to build the road then recovered  the cost by renting out the right to collect tolls. Toll houses  were built every six miles.  These were usually two roomed cottages, often with a rounded or semi-hexagonal gable end to allow the toll keeper to see travellers approaching from both directions. Outside the toll house a barrier with a counter balanced bar (the 'turnpike')blocked the road until the toll had been paid. Charges varied from locality to locality and with the type of traffic using the road, vehicles were charged according to the number of horses pulling them. 

 

The completion of  the railway in 1865 drastically reduced the amount of road traffic and sounded the death knell of toll keeping and in 1866 all toll bars were removed from Aberdeenshire roads.

Around the White Horse

Holmwood House

Grey Granite has been reading, 'Around the White Horse', the memoirs of Mrs C.J.Thomson, Miss Charlotte Jane Gavin of Holmwood House, Strichen. The original was written in 1888, just 23 years after the railway arrived in Strichen and  is a fascinating account of village life .Born in 1811, Miss Gavin was the sixth daughter of Dr Alexander Gavin of Strichen. In addition to his six daughters Dr Alexander had five sons, all the children were regarded as being well educated, the girls first by a governess, then when they were older, at a school in Aberdeen. The boys all attended the parish school until they were thirteen when they went to University in Aberdeen. The family was considered to be part of Strichen 'society' .

Today the front garden of Holmwood is carpeted in crocus and snowdrops, poultry roams the garden.

Miss Gavin describes the benefits of the railway to the community, 'This pleasant view (to the West of the town) down the valley of the Ugie is cut off now by the railway embankment, built in 1865, but in exchange for the amenity of  a pleasant prospect, there are the practical advantages of easy ingress and egress to and from the village with facilities for traffic which largely promote the prosperity of the people.



There are two banks in the village and a monthly market. The railway does good service on these occasions, bringing the country folk by noon and carrying them off again to their homes by four o'clock p.m.; so that scenes of drunkenness a thing of the past; all is quiet before evening as if no market had been.'

Miss Gavin records that when Captain Fraser of Strichen House returned from the travels of his youth he married a French wife, Miss Leslie of Bohine, a Roman Catholic. Although  a Protestant himself, 'he endowed the Roman Catholic Church with a nice house for the priest and several acres of land as a glebe'. This house, on Brewery Road, built in 1751, is now known as  'The Cloisters' and is just visible from the Line.

The Cloisters glimpsed from the Line. The building on the left was a originally a chapel.

The ruins of the chapel for Strichen House, seen from the Line opposite Borrohill Wood