Bennachie Landscapes Online Reports and Transcript Archive

The Bennachie Landscapes Project was imagined and developed over ten years ago.
It provides a knowledge hub for those interested in the various landscape histories of north-east Scotland.

This website contains a wide range of project outputs generated by a number of researchers from across the region. There is a core of work concentrated in and around Bennachie and the Garioch, being the ‘home turf’ of the project. However, some research extends beyond that locality and, it is hoped, this will encourage more input from further afield in the future.

Online Reports:
All of the projects have been largely carried out by volunteers with, at times, some professional input. Many organisations, institutions and charitable funds have contributed to a number of the projects and these are duly acknowledged where appropriate. The site is (or will be!) organised as a resource for accessing a wide range of research carried out across the life of the project. Only brief introductions are given for each project and links provide access to further information where available. Research papers have been reproduced here as ‘BLOPs'(!) – Bennachie Landscapes Online Papers – and, where they have been published elsewhere in print, the appropriate references given. It is hoped that further papers will be added as and when future research dictates. Some printed publications cannot be uploaded for copyright reasons. Where this is the case, full references to the publications are given. The online reports section of this site contains three groups of resources:

1. A directory and brief synopsis of each project, organised alphabetically;
2. Downloadable media relating to the projects;
3. References providing further resources relating to that research.

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Transcript Archive:
Over the years many hours have been spent by Bennachie Landscapes members in transcribing historic documents from various archives. These have been used to support many of the papers produced for the project available on this site. However, the transcripts also represent a valuable resource for future researchers and their production here will, hopefully, avoid some repetitious work. It should be remembered, however, that transcripts will contain transcriber errors and misinterpretations and should not be considered primary sources in their own right. Before using this archive for any publication purposes it is suggested that the original manuscripts should be sought for verification. (They are, after all, wonderful creations in their own right and well worth a trip to view personally in their ‘own homes’!) Equally importantly, accidents can befall the original documents that, in most cases, are unique survivals. Also, even the most careful archival conservation practices can only limit document degradation through time and use. This archive helps in the preservation of their historic content. In order to avoid an unwieldy mass of single documents, the transcripts have been saved as multi-paged ‘BLOTs'(!) – Bennachie Landscapes Online Transcripts – made up of similar types of document and may be grouped as:

1. Estate Plans;
2. Estate Rentals;
3. Other Miscellaneous Papers.