Crossing over St. Machar Drive and continuing north along the Chanonry brings you to the cathedral church of St. Machar,
the parish church for Old Machar. Don Street in Old Aberdeen also has a number of original buildings, including No. 23
where I lived at the age of three! East of Don Street is Dunbar Street and the location of the Aberdeen City Archives.
If you do drive out to St. Machar, parking at the church is only available on Sundays, in fact all parking nearby is restricted
only to residents during the week. There is limited free parking at the Aberdeen City Archives Dunbar Street location, and as mentioned
off Bedford Road at King's College.
Don Street, Old Aberdeen
|
|
|
The harbour is another interesting visit. While very little of the original harbour remains, the area
is still bustling with the oil-rig supply ships and Shetland ferries. If you're an early bird… before 0600… you can catch the
offloading of fish from the trawlers, although sadly this trade is a shadow of what it was 50 years ago, as a shortage of fish has made its mark
on the trawling fleet. Even the harbour ladies are less prevalent than during the boom 70s! When in the harbour area, visit St. Clement's Church
and graveyard; it is the final resting-place
of many Aberdeen seamen. The church is no longer in use. A word of caution... the young ladies that look like they're waiting for a bus in front of the church
early in the morning aren't!
The Aberdeen Maritime Museum in at 52-56 Shiprow is worth a visit, and gives insight into
the glory days of Aberdeen as both a fishing port and shipbuilding centre.
When walking through the downtown and harbour area of such an old city, you can't help but be a little depressed that so little
of that historic city remains. It seems a shame that the City didn't have the
foresight to preserve many of the older buildings in this area. While Edinburgh has a vibrant old city, Aberdeen bowed to the pressures of the oil
and gas industry in the 70's and carved up the city core for a series of wider road accesses to the harbour, and consequently destroyed the old
heart of St. Nicholas and George Street with shopping malls. The attitude toward preservation seems to have changed for the better, but in
general, history is something that most Aberdonians take for granted, the general feeling seems to be that the newer something is, the better
it must be. And that's enough of me on my soap-box!
Still, if you look carefully around the city, you can still see scraps of architecture dating from the 17th century and even earlier, and if you
look around St. Nicholas' Kirk, you can find remnants of Aberdeen's medieval past.
Much of the main street, Union Street, still has the imposing granite buildings built from the early 1800s. These no longer house
wealthy Aberdeen merchants, but are outlets for the ubiquitous fast-food chains housing primarily the cell-phone toting teenagers
seen everywhere. Unfortunately, many of these wonderful Victorian buildings lie vacant on what was arguably once the busiest commercial
thoroughfare in the north-east of Scotland.
|
Ashvale Fish Bar, Great Western Road, Aberdeen
