Earthwork record MAB45519 - CAUSEY MOUNTH ROAD

The most easterly of the mounth passes which originally linked Aberdeen with the vanished coastal village of Cowie just north of Stonehaven.

The most easterly of the mounth passes which originally linked Aberdeen with the vanished coastal village of Cowie just north of Stonehaven. It was in use from at least the medieval period. The mounth passes are some of the oldest trackways in Scotland. Construction on the Causey Mounth may have begun in the 12th century when three sections of the road were banked to form the causeways, or causeys that eventually lent it the name. It appears in historical records in 1384 when an Aberdeen burgess arranged an annual payment for maintenance of the road. Receipts for road maintenance are the main evidence of the Mounth pass in the historical records. It is first shown on Pont's map of Lower Deeside surveyed in the 1590s. In its later years it was extensively used as a drove road. The route fell out of use in the 18th century as more direct and faster routes were built by the growing stagecoach industry. Only about one third remains part of the present road network, one third is paths and the rest may only survive as field boundaries.

PEDERSON, N, 2011, GRAMPIAN CAUSEWAYS: THE CAUSEY MOUNTH. IN LEOPARD MAGAZINE MAY 2011. (Bibliographic reference). SAB1483.

HEADLAND ARCHAEOLOGY, 2017, AWPR: CONSTRUCTION PHASE AREAS - RESULTS OF ARCH MONITORING AND MITIGATION DURING POST-EX ASSESSMENT AND ASSESSMENT REPT, Site 145 (Bibliographic reference). SAB5858.

Record last edited

Sep 11 2023 12:12PM