Glenbuchat Heritage

28 Communications in Donside

Communication in Donside
Lewis McAllan


The following article is reprinted from and 1988 booklet, Upper Donside, Reflections on the Place and People.

The article on Communication in Donside was written by the Lewis McAllan
(If there is any objection to the reproduction of this article, please email the editor using the email address on the introductory page.)


Communication in Donside
A study of transport in Upper Donside deals with movement on land, rather than on water or in the air. The river Don is not navigable in any serious sense, the area has no public canals, and its relatively sparse population makes the formation of any public air-strip unlikely.

Drove Roads
From time immemorial, tracks of a kind will have existed on Donside. But until well through the eighteenth century many of the tracks were scarcely fit for wheeled vehicles: if some phantom Roman charioteer had arrived, he would have been horrified - as his wheels gave up their struggle against the dry dust of summer, or the dubs and snows of winter. Most traffic would have been local in nature, with pedestrians and pack-horses the main users of the roads. But there was important long-distance movement in the form of cattle droving from northern Scotland to markets at places such as Falkirk and Crieff. Various drove-routes passed through or near Upper Donside.

Furthest west was the track up the valley of the Avon from Speyside to Inchrory and thence, by Loch Builg, over to Braemar and the south. This route passed close to the source of the Don, and droves could, at Inchrory, turn eastwards down that river to a lower crossing point, to join another north-south route which crossed the Ladder Hills and came down the Water of Buchat. With the Don crossed, cattle could reach the Dee at Dinnet or Ballater, and then trek south by one of the ancient tracks across the Mounth. Further east, there were the historic tracks through the Auchindoir gap or over the Suie, these routes converging at the crossing of the Don at Boat of Forbes (now known as Bridge of Alford), and then going south to Lumphanan and the Dee, so as to gain either the Cairn o’ Mounth or one of the other Mounth tracks further west.

Statute Labour
In the eighteenth century, efforts were made to improve the roads. In 1669 the Scots Parliament had passed an Act authorising the levy of highway money from landowners and requiring tenants, cottars and other adult males to work on the roads for six days each year. This system was known as ‘Statute Labour’. The Old Statistical Account for the parishes gives the impression that it did not produce good results. And by the end of the eighteenth century, in some parishes the "statute labourers” could commute their annual payment. The account for Towie (1790) states, of the statute labour obligation, “when paid it generally turns to little account.” (1791) quotes the commutation payment as 1/6 per annum. The desire for commutation was given the force of law in 1800. When an act provided for assessments (instead of the labour) based on valued rent being levied on Heritors, Landowners or Feuars”, with a recovery entitlement from actual “tenants or possessors”. Until about the middle of the nineteenth century, public roads other than the under mentored turnpikes and “parliamentary roads”, were referred to as “commutation" roads. Thus, in 1845, the plan of the first railway line proposed for the Vale of Alford called the Keig Whitehouse Road a “Commutation” road; whereas ten years later the plan of the line to Alford that was built referred to that road simply as a “public” one.

Military Roads
The first major roads built - or radically improved, in Upper Donside in the eighteenth century were three roads made by the Government following the Jacobite risings. The Highland military highways were initially the responsibility of General Wade, but he left Scotland before the routes affecting Aberdeenshire were started and they were under the charge of Major William Caulfield. The best-remembered one in our area is that from Blairgowrie to Fort-George, by way of Glenshee, Braemar and Corgarff. It served Corgarff Castle, which was in garrison occupation from 1748 until 1831. Built in the 1750s, the Braemar-Corgarff section ran north from Gairnshiel on the same line as its present successor (A939) until a point about one mile north of the summit where it entered Donside. It then went north-west to the Castle and did not descend to the Don near Tornahaish as the modern road does. Northward from Corgarff, it generally took the Lecht route of the modern road, except that, to begin with, the old road went east by Milltown, instead of directly up the Hill of Allargue.

The second “military” road went from Corgarff Castle to Aberdeen. After two fords near Corgarff, this road, unlike its modern equivalent (A97 and A944) went down the south side of the river, taking a route between the Callievar and Socach hill-ranges and by Tough to leave Upper Donside at Tillyfourie. Subject, doubtless, to minor modern variations, it can still be driven, except for about four miles eastward of the Colnabaichan ford near Tornahaish. In mileage, this route remains the shortest way between Aberdeen and Strathdon. The third “military” road was part of the south-north route from Fettercairn to Fochabers, by the Cairn-o’-Mount, Lumphanan, Muggarthaugh, Boat of Forbes and the Suie Hill. Between the Dee and Boat of Forbes, a remarkably direct line was taken, what is now the Aberdeen-Tarland Road (B9119) being crossed at its high point of Tullochvenus, about one mile east of the familiar “cross-roads” junction. Much of the route now consists of minor roads, and some of it of undriveable tracks. The northern-most section from Bridge of Alford by Tullynessle over the Suie is a fine tourist run, offering a sudden, spectacular view as the summit is breasted.

Parliamentary Roads
Following a survey by Thomas Telford, an Act of 1803 established the Commissioners for Highland Roads and Bridges. Upper Donside had the benefit of their activities in the form of two major bridges (Bridge of Alford and Keig) and a virtually total re-alignment of the north-south route, completed in 1817. The contractor for all those works was William Minto, an Alford farmer and mason whose ability was commended by those concerned. Thus, was formed what became the modern A980 from Bridge of Alford to Deeside by the Leochel valley, Muir of Fowlis, Craigievar and the Crossroads Inn. In the nineteenth century this route was known as the “parliamentary road”. In 1865 the Commissioners were abolished and their roads and bridges handed over to the County authorities.

The Turnpikes
Early in the nineteenth century there was a radical improvement in Aberdeenshire’s arterial road communications with the formation of “Turnpike roads” under Acts of 1795 and 1800. These were administered by County Turnpike Trustees with devolution to local Trusts to make and maintain their sections of the new roads. Funds were provided by local subscribers and income arose from the levy of tolls at bars on each road about every six miles. At each bar a keeper collected the money and lived in a house provided. The practice was for the Trustees to let to the toll-keepers (by public roup) the right to retain the tolls.
The main turnpikes in Upper Donside provided a route from Aberdeen to Corgarff. This was a continuation of the Aberdeen-Skene turnpike, entering our area at Tillyfourie. and proceeding to Alford, and from Bridge of Alford to Corgarff by Mossat, Glenkindie and Strathdon. with a branch from Mossat to link with the Huntly-Rhyme turnpike. The Alford section was completed by 1811, the Strathdon section in 1826, and the section in 1833. In Strathdon, the turnpike, earlier “military” road, originally followed the side of the river all the way to Corgarff. In 1859. However, the road was diverted to the south side for about a mile and a half to take it further from castle Newe, this diversion involving new bridges near Buchaam and Mill of Newe. There were toll bars at Tillyfourie, Haughton (about one mile west of Alford Village), Forbes (at Bridge of Alford Mossat, Glenkindie, Poldhullie (about of a mile west of Bellabeg) and Colnabaichan (at the junction with the present road south to the t the Gairn)

According to the County Trustees’ accounts for 1836-37, the toll-rents varied greatly: for example, the rent from Colnabaichan in the Corgarff section, was only £10, whereas the rental income from the four toll-bars in the Bridge Alford-Strathdon section totalled £256. In 1837 there was criticism of the toll system; in pamphlet John Clark the Manager of Aberdeen Assurance Coy. advocated that all toll-bars be “thrown down" replaced by “a tax on vehicles and horses of every description in the course of labour". The tolls survived, however, until 1866. When all public roads and bridges in the county were placed under the control of a new body of Trustees to be financed out of the rates. These Trustees survived until the County Council took over in 1890 it, It administered the highways through a committee until 1947, was called the “County Road Board” thereafter, the “Roads Committee”. Since 1975 - The public roads have been within the province the Regional Council. Without doubt_ the turnpikes in their width and general quality were an improvement on what had gone before, and are the main arteries. The toll-houses in Upper except those at Haughton and Bridge of Alford still exist, their distinctive style making them reminders of a piece of history.

Bridges
In early times crossings of the Don were mainly by ford or ferry. But the eighteenth century saw some bridge-building notably Poldhuillie Bridge, above Bellabeg, erected in 1715 by John Forbes of Inverernan. It withstood the great flood of 1829, still exists and is worth visiting. The first crossing at Allargue was built as part of the military road up the Lecht in the 1750's. Perhaps the most important crossing is the Bridge of Alford, which in 1811 replaced the ferry at Boat of Forbes, having ban built by the Parliamentary Commissioners at a cost of £2000. It was, in modern parlance, a cost-effective piece of work, for it carries the north-south route as well as the east-west, Alford-Strathdon, traffic. In 1817, the Commissioners, at a cost of £2300, built the Bridge of Keig, to carry the Keig-Whitehouse commutation road.
There followed more public bridges in the nineteenth century, including some provided by landowners. In Upper Donside, the river is now crossed by fourteen public bridges, of which eight are in the Parish of Strathdon.

Railways
The only public railway which penetrated into Upper Donside was the Alford Valley Line from a junction at Kintore with the Great North of Scotland main line, by Kemnay, Monymusk and Tillyfourie. It opened to traffic on 21st March 1859, carried passengers and freight until 2nd January 1950, thereafter was “freight only” and closed to all traffic on 3rd January 1966. It was originally intended to terminate about a mile west of Alford Village near the cross-roads half-a-mile south of Bridge of Alford, but the Alford terminus of 1859 remained the end of the line. Although never fast or prestigious, this railway revolutionised the ease and speed of transport. Things gravitated towards it. Local roads leading to stations became busier; the Alford railhead - a tiny hamlet - expanded greatly to become the major focal point of the district. Inevitably, however, rail traffic declined after the arrival on the roads of the internal combustion engine.

The line was single-track, with passing loops at Kemnay and Tillyfourie. The June 1863 working time-table shows a daily service of three double journeys, with a fourth on Fridays and Saturdays. The trains were then “mixed”, with no separate goods trains. The normal pattern, however, came to be four passenger and two goods trains each way daily. The Passenger coaches were, at Kintore, attached to, or detached from, main-line trains to or from Aberdeen. This took time, but was convenient. From 1921 the freight schedule was reduced to one train daily each way, but from March 1922 there was on Tuesday afternoons, for the mart traffic, an additional livestock train, which became known as “the Cattler”, from Alford. From 1933, there were further economies - the withdrawal, except on Tuesdays, of two passenger trains, (making it possible for one engine normally to work the whole service, passenger and freight) and the taking out of the Tillyfourie passing loop.

Throughout the railway age, there were suggestions for various other lines to serve Upper Donside or parts thereof : such as, in the 1850s, a branch to Rhynie and Lumsden from the mainline at a point between Kennethmont and Gartly, a branch from Buchanstone between Oyne and Insch to the Vale of Alford by a tunnel under Brindy Hill, and a link to Tillyfourie and Alford from a point near Drum on the Deeside line instead of from Kintore : and much later, in 1914, a “light railway” extension of the existing line from Alford to Strathdon. But two proposals merit special mention. The first, approved by Parliament in 1846, was a branch from Kintore to Bridge of Alford by Kemnay, the Don Valley, Keig and Montgarrie, slightly shorter than the Tillyfourie route to its originally authorised terminus and with much easier gradients. Circumstances prevented the construction of this “river route” - the main line through Kintore did not open until 1854, and by then the statutory approval of -the branch up the river had lapsed. In the discussions of 1855 about the best route to Alford the “river route” does not seem to have been taken into reckoning for resuscitation. If it had been built, post- railway growth might have been at Bridge of Alford, or Montgarrie, instead of at Alford.

In 1884 there was submitted to Parliament a Bill for a remarkable line, forty-two miles long, to link Nethybridge on the Strathspey route with the Deeside line near Cambus o’May. It was to form part of a through route between Aberdeen and Inverness. Having come up the Dorback valley from Nethybridge, the Strathspey - Deeside line was to cross the Avon by A viaduct some five miles up from Tomintoul and then plunge into the western extension of the Ladder Hills by a tunnel one and three-quarter miles long on a gradient of 1 in 60. Emerging into the fresh air of Upper Strathdon several miles west of Cockbridge at a summit height of about 1520 feet, trains would have run down the Don valley to Newe and then south towards Boultenstone and over to Deeside. Perhaps predictably, Parliament rejected the scheme.

Public Transport on Roads
It is hard to discover any record of organised public transport before the turnpikes made the movement of wheeled vehicles more practicable. In 1840 the New Statistical Account for Alford spoke of a “stage-coach to Aberdeen three times a week”, and this is consistent with accounts for the parishes of Tullynessle and Forbes (wherein the coach is called “The Lord Forbes”), Auchindoir and Kearn, and Strathdon. The Strathdon coach, however, did not, in winter, go further west than Mossat. In 1853, according to the Aberdeen Directory, the “Lord Forbes” was still making a thrice-weekly run to Aberdeen, but from Alford the “Vale of Alford” coach was plying daily to the city and back - a three-hour run, giving passengers six hours and a half in Aberdeen.

With the advent of the railways, the function of the coaches became increasingly to convey passengers to and from trains, rather than to go all the way to Aberdeen. From Strathdon there were regular coaches to Gartly and Alford Stations. The Gartly coach (via Lumsden) was still running in 1914, when it left Strathdon (Bellabeg) each week-day at 4.35 am to arrive at Gartly station at 8.15 a.m. By 1922, the Gartly coach started at Lumsden. The Strathdon-Alford service underwent a radical change in 1906, when the railway company introduced a “motor omnibus, the progenitor, if you like, of the Northern Scottish bus. The “motor “originally had solid tyres and in 1922 was still 1 hour 50 minutes for the nineteen and a half miles between Bellabeg and Alford. But its schedule of two double journeys each day in summer and on winter Saturdays was an improvement giving almost six hours in Aberdeen between trains. For over forty years this bus had a worthy driver in James Ellis, whose lifetime of service on the route made him a legend. The bus, supplemented by open motor charabancs, played a part in the “Three Rivers Tour” introduced by the railway company in 1907. On these summer trips from Aberdeen, you went by train to Dinnet or Alford, then by bus or charabanc to Corgarff, over “The Lecht” to Tomintoul by horse drawn coach, and finally by railway motor bus to join the train home. The tour could be reduced to a Dee and Don Day trip. In 1914 the complete tour cost £1 (first class) or 15 shillings (Third Class) and the reduced one 12 shillings or 9 shillings

After the First world war, increased motor traffic on roads competition by buses and lorries with the railways and each other. The first daily bus service (taking in also Keig, Montgarrie and Bridge of Alford) to Aberdeen, via Monymusk and Kemnay. was started in 1925 by Mr. J. M. Jaffray, a Monymusk resident There was a frequency of four double journeys and a Sunday service. In 1928 Mr. Jaffray sold the service to Messrs. G. & R. Smollett of Rothienorman. who developed it to a daily frequency of seven journeys. 1929 saw the railway company (by then LNER} extend its Strathdon-Alford bus to Aberdeen via Kemnay and provide several additional runs between Alford and Aberdeen, thus competing with its own trains as well as with Smollett’s buses. The railway buses were not well patronised by the local people, who called them “Liners”, and preferred Smollett. On an evening of icy roads, a young lady exclaimed in a tone of obvious satisfaction - “The Liner’s ditched”. On 15th August 1930 the “Liners” were taken over by Scottish General, a company associated with the S.M.T. (in which the railways had a large interest) and Alexanders of Falkirk, the service being operated in the name of W. Alexander & Sons Ltd. Then in 1935 Alexanders bought over Smollett, and rationalised the time-table, with Alford given a service to Aberdeen by both routes - Kemnay and Skene - and the Strathdon service taking the Skene route.

There had also been competition west of Alford. A weekly service from Glenbuchat to Aberdeen was started in 1914 by Mr. W. C. Davidson, Merchant, with a vehicle whose chassis had once belonged to the King of Spain. This service continued until the 1930s. From 1925 until 1935 (when his service was bought by Alexanders) Mr. James Gordon of Bellabeg (popularly known as “the Duke”) ran a bus from Strathdon to Aberdeen daily, with a second journey on Saturday evenings. From Lumsden, the Garden family, who in earlier times had run the horse coach from Strathdon to Gartly Station, operated a motor bus to Aberdeen, normally on three days each week, until the 1950s.

Alexanders’ post-1935 schedules remained the basis of the services until recent years. The main traffic flow in Upper Donside is now the conveyance of school pupils, the increase in private car use involving a decline in the number of other bus passengers. The 1980s have, therefore, seen some reduction in the schedules. But certain changes have been beneficial, such as the diversion of the Strathdon bus through Lumsden village, a new twice-weekly fast service from Lower Speyside to Aberdeen, picking up on Donside, between Lumsden and Bridge of Alford, and limited services from Alford to Huntly and Banchory.

Museums
It seems fitting finally to mention the Grampian Transport Museum at Alford - the brainchild of local people, and run by a voluntary association. A new road transport exhibition hall was opened in 1982. One of the most unique exhibits is the “Craigievar Express”, a steam tricycle built in 1895 by “Postie Lawson”, an ingenious inventor, in Craigievar. In addition, the old, then derelict, Alford Railway Station was replaced by a new building in a historical style. It contains a railway museum, and from it there has been laid a narrow-gauge railway for about three kilometres through the Haughton and Murray Parks - an agreeable tourist attraction for all ages.