Aberdeen

Aberdeen, city and historic royal burgh (town) astride the Rivers Dee and Don on Scotland’s North Sea coast. Aberdeen is a busy seaport, the British centre of the North Sea oil industry, and the commercial capital of northeastern Scotland. Aberdeen’s primary industries were once fishing, textiles, shipbuilding, and papermaking. Today its economy is focused on the oil industry, though it has grown more diversified to include electronics design and renewable energy resources.

Aberdeen city constitutes an independent council area that covers the burgh of Aberdeen and the surrounding countryside. Most of the city, including the historic centres of Old Aberdeen and New Aberdeen, lies in the historic county of Aberdeenshire, but the city also includes a small area in the south that belongs to the historic county of Kincardineshire. Aberdeen is the historic county town (seat) of Aberdeenshire.

Aberdeen originated as two separate burghs: Old Aberdeen, the cathedral and university settlement on the Don, and New Aberdeen, the neighbouring trading and fishing village on the Dee. Old Aberdeen, reputedly founded in 580 by St. Machar, a disciple of the Celtic missionary St. Columba, became the seat of the bishopric of Aberdeen and was virtually destroyed by the English in 1336. The present St. Machar’s Cathedral, begun in 1424, is a fortified granite building. Royal charters of 1489 and 1498 created a “free burgh” with the church as its administrator. Remnants of this ecclesiastical power survived until 1891, when the episcopal burgh was incorporated with New Aberdeen to form the present city. The oldest surviving charter (1179) confers several trade privileges on the burgesses of Aberdeen.

Some of the oldest streets, from the 13th and 14th centuries, survive near the Castlegate, the historic marketplace of New Aberdeen and commercial heart of the modern city. The Castlegate still contains an old Market (City) Cross (1686). Nearby are two ancient houses, Provost Skene’s House (c. 1545), now a local history museum, and Provost Ross’s House (1593). The parish church of St. Nicholas (Union Street) is divided into two parts: the West Church (built in 1755 by James Gibbs) is separated from the East Church (built in 1838 by Archibald Simpson) by the original 13th-century transept and 19th-century steeple. Two medieval bridges have survived, the Brig o’ Balgownie (1320), spanning the Don, and the Old Bridge of Dee (1527). Other significant buildings include several modern municipal buildings, the Music Hall (1822; Neoclassical), and Marischal College (Broad Street), reputedly the world’s largest granite building, begun in 1844 by Archibald Simpson.

The University of Aberdeen was formed in 1860 by the union of two medieval colleges: King’s College, founded as a Roman Catholic institution in 1495, and the Protestant Marischal College, founded in 1593. Other educational institutions include Robert Gordon University (founded as Robert Gordon Hospital, 1750), Aberdeen College, and the Scottish Agricultural College, and there are research institutes for fisheries (Marine Laboratory Aberdeen), soil science (Macaulay Land Use Research Institute), and animal nutrition (Rowett Research Institute). Aberdeen’s old Grammar School was a medieval foundation.

Aberdeen is an important hub for transport by road, rail, sea, and air. The original harbour, the Dee estuary, has been continually improved. It was Scotland’s premier fishing port from the introduction of steam trawling until the rise of the North Sea oil industry. Today Aberdeen Harbour is the main commercial port of northeast Scotland. Though the city was once the site of one of Britain’s largest granite-exporting industries, today Aberdeen’s primary industries include oil and gas, tourism, and renewable energy. The North Sea oil boom of the late 20th century benefited Aberdeen more than any other city of Scotland, bringing more than 200 new companies and thousands of new foreign residents and financing the construction of housing, offices, and schools. Some 800 acres (324 hectares) of industrial land were allocated to attract industry associated with oil technology. However, Aberdeen and the British North Sea oil industry were hit hard by the precipitous decline in world oil prices beginning in 2014, and there were significant reductions in employment in the region. Although production costs were reduced and production increased in the wake of the market decline, the long-term future of the industry had become precarious. Area 71 square miles (184 square km). Pop. (2001) 212,125; (2011) 222,793.