Slains, Aberdeenshire : Historical writing

Descriptive gazetteer entries

These other entries in our collection of descriptive gazetteers are also about Slains. You may be able to find further references to Slains in the descriptive gazetteers by doing a full-text search here.

Place Type of entry Source
Slains coastal parish Bartholomew
Slains a coast parish Groome

This additional information from our descriptive gazetteers is for locations within the parish or parishes associated with Slains.

Place Type of entry Source
Colliston fishing village Bartholomew
Colliston a fishing village Groome
Cotehill loch Bartholomew
Cotehill a loch Groome
Dropping Cave stalactite cavern Bartholomew
Forvie, Burn of affluent Bartholomew
Muckle or Meikle Loch a lake Groome
Pitlurg seat Bartholomew

Travel writing

This website includes the complete texts of books describing journeys around Britain, written between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries. Selecting one of the links below will take you to the first reference to Slains within the selected text. This will not always be a description of a visit: travellers often mention places other than where they are, for example as a basis for comparison.

Traveller Section No. of Refs.
Samuel Johnson Slains Castle and Banff 3
Thomas Pennant August 7-13: Aberdeen and the North East 2
Samuel Johnson Aberdeen 1

This website includes two large libraries, of historical travel writing and of entries from nineteenth century gazetteers describing places. We have text from these sources available for these places near your location:

Place Mentioned in Travel Writing Mentioned in Historical Gazetteer
Collieston 0 3
Forvie 1 2
Logie Buchan 0 1
Newburgh 1 2
Foveran 0 2
Cruden 0 2
Hatton 0 2
Ellon 1 2
Port Errol 0 3
Ardallie 0 2
Dunbuy 2 1
Bullers of Buchan 8 4
Ythan 2 2
Belhelvie 0 2
Blackhill 0 2
Udny 0 2
Boddam 0 2
Buchan Ness 4 2
Formartine 0 2
Burnhaven 0 2

Names from historical writing

The following appear as names for Slains. Follow the links for what the author actually said:

Name Author Source
SLAINS John Bartholomew Gazetteer of the British Isles (Edinburgh: Bartholomew, 1887).
F.H. Groome Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (Edinburgh: T.C. Jack, 1882-4).
SLANES CASTLE Samuel Johnson A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland (London: W. Strahan and T.Cadell, 1775).

NB: These variant names come from our collections of historical travel writing and descriptive gazetteers:

  • The above links take you to the first reference to this particular version of the name within a book of travel writing, or to the relevant gazetteer entry.
  • Some names may derive from research by antiquarian writers such as William Camden and Thomas Pennant into the Roman, Saxon and medieval names of places. Their claims are not always supported by modern place-name researchers.
  • References by travel writers to the place using its "normal" name are not included. Descriptive gazetteer entries are included only if the name does not appear anywhere else.