Mintlaw, Aberdeenshire

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: [unknown]

Mintlaw

Mintlaw (literally meaning a smooth, flat place) is a large village in Aberdeenshire, lying along the A952 road. As the largest settlement within 11 miles, it supports a number of shops and local amenities, such as a police station, library, dental surgery, and group doctors' practice.

The local area is rich with prehistory and historical features. To the south of Mintlaw are a number of prehistoric monuments, including Catto Long Barrow, Silver Cairn and many tumuli (burial mounds). In that same vicinity of the Laeca Burn watershed is the point of assembly for soldiers in historic battles between invading Danes and indigenous Picts.

Mintlaw was formed as a planned village around 1813 by James Ferguson, the 3rd Laird of Pitfour. Unlike many of the other planned villages of the time, trees lined the streets and, instead of having a square at the center of the village, it was diamond-shaped. It was later re-designed to become a roundabout on the main route between Aberdeen and Fraserburgh.

Victorian times saw the coming of the railway, the Maud to Peterhead line being built in the 1860s. Mintlaw was a scheduled stop on this line. The Post Office moved to be closer to the railway and became a Crown Office. Mintlaw Station was the postal address for the whole district for many years. The Crown Post Office was combined with that in Peterhead with the closure of the railway in the 1960s. Telephone numbers, too, were Mintlaw Station until the early 1970s when the word Station was dropped.

Although the date of the village's founding is not known for certain, 2013 was marked as its bicentenary year. [[1]]