Document record MAB57172 - TRINITY OR QUAYHEAD PORT

Site of a town gate, also known as Shiprow Port.

Site of a town gate, also known as Shiprow Port. Aberdeen had in total 8 ports or town gates that it controlled. The term port in this sense derives from the French port‚ meaning door. In Scotland town's gates or ports are also known as bows, from the arch of the gate. This port was located on Shiprow. The first evidence for Aberdeen's ports comes from the late date of 1435 but it seems fair to assume that the ports existed from several hundred years before that date. There is evidence in other burghs of ports dating from the 12th century. As with the other ports the exact date when the Shiprow Port was built is not known. However it may well have stood at No.64 Shiprow. A 19th century photograph of an eviction from No.64 Shiprow (where the Trinity Congregational Church, now part of the Maritime Museum, stands) shows some intriguing features from about 6 to 13 feet up the outside wall of the tenement. These are stone projections on the exterior wall of the building and may have had hinges for the port set inside them. These features are in the correct location for the Shiprow port: the height of these features would accord with an interpretation of the ports having been very substantial structures, which they would indeed have been. The port was repaired in 1597 when various, mainly Norwegian, timbers were ordered to be stored in the chapel on the Castlehill, 'except John Smyths aucht dalis quhilik was resavit fra him and the Trinitie port biggit therwith'. A key, currently displayed in the Tolbooth Museum, was once said to have been the key to the Shiprow or Trinity port. This suggestion was made by Fenton Wyness in Spots from the Leopard. Unfortunately, there is no evidence to make a final decision about the history of this key. It may equally have been a key associated with the Tolbooth essentially the key needs to be properly analysed and dated. If Aberdeen's ports controlled access into the burgh then this port (along with the Fittie port) was the main place of entry for any mariners or merchants disembarking from ships. Given that the harbour was Aberdeen's gateway to the wider world in the medieval period the use of this gate becomes more important than some of the 'landward' gates. Indeed this is reflected when orders were issued (at various times) to lock Aberdeen's port to protect against plague this gate more than any other (except the Fittie) port was considered to be the most important. Presumably this port was removed when all of Aberdeen's ports were being demolished in the mid 18th century.

DENNISON, E, 1997, HISTORIC ABERDEEN: THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF DEVELOPMENT. THE SCOTTISH BURGH SURVEY, pp. 80-1 (Bibliographic reference). SAB4057.

Record last edited

Jan 14 2021 1:22PM