Aberfeldy

Aberfeldy Gaelic: Obar Pheallaidh
Perthshire
Dunkeld Street, Aberfeldy
Location
Grid reference:	NN865496
Location:	56°37’5"N, 3°51’56"W
Data
Population:	1,895  (2001)
Post town:	Aberfeldy
Postcode:	PH15
Dialling code:	01887
Local Government
Council:	Perth and Kinross
Parliamentary constituency:	Perth and Perthshire North

Aberfeldy is a town in Perthshire, on the River Tay. A small market town, Aberfeldy is located in the Highland part of Perthshire and houses a population of about 1,895, as of the 2001 census. It is also mentioned in a well-known poem by Robert Burns.

Beyond its association with Burns, who mentioned Aberfeldy in his poem The Birks of Aberfeldy, the town is known for "Wade's Bridge", built in 1733 and designed by architect William Adam, father of the more famous Robert Adam. General Wade considered this bridge to be his greatest accomplishment. Aberfeldy is also mentioned in the traditional Loch Tay Boat Song.

The town also includes a memorial to the Black Watch, an 18-hole golf course, a children's park, and a town square that features stores, restaurants and art galleries.

The Aberfeldy Footbridge over the River Tay is constructed entirely of composite materials. It connects two holes of the town's golf course on either side of the River Tay.

Breadalbane Cricket Club, founded in 1869, play home matches at Victoria Park in Aberfeldy. The team are the Perthshire Cup Winners for 2007 and 2008, and Strathmore Cricket Union Division One Champions in 2006 and 2008.

Geography

Wade's Bridge over the Tay

Aberfeldy lies in the Tay Valley on the upper reaches of the River Tay, which rises up-valley from Aberfeldy at Loch Tay. The terrain in and around Aberfeldy is gently undulating. Farming and agriculture border the town in the valley's floor.

Areas further outside of Aberfeldy (particularly to the north and west) give way to the extensive Grampian Mountains, with scenic peaks such as Creag Odhar, Farragon (2,559 feet), Schiehallion (3,553 feet), Ben Lawers (3,983 feet) and Sron Mhor punctuating the landscape.

Aberfeldy lies at the intersection of two A roads, the A826 to Crieff and the A827, which leads east and south towards the main A9 trunk road. Aberfeldy is easily reached from southern locations by taking the A9 to the Ballinluig exit, then the A827 to get to the town. Owing to its location off the A9 trunk road, Aberfeldy is less geared toward tourists than its cousin Pitlochry.

The entrance to the Birks of Aberfeldy – a well known gorge and scenic walk – lies on the southern outskirts of Aberfeldy on the A826. The Birks is classified as a "Site of Special Scientific Interest" and contains many varieties of flora and fauna, some of which are protected.

Glen Lyon, widely regarded as one of the High;ands’ most stunning and least-visited valleys, lies about 5 miles from the outskirts of Aberfeldy. Evidence of fort construction by Roman legions several thousand years ago exists to this day, further evidence of the region's historical as well as geographical relevance. At the mouth of Glen Lyon lies the village of Fortingall, where stands the Fortingall Yew Tree, reputed to be more than 5,000 years old (though recent research suggests its age to be closer to 2,000 years).

Churches

Aberfeldy Parish Church meets in the former Breadalbane Church building in Taybridge Road, which was the first new building of the Free Church after the Disruption in 1843. It reunited with the former parish church, St Andrew's in Crieff Road, built in 1884, and for a while was used as halls for the united congregation, until 2005 when the Crieff Road building was closed and a modern interior and suite of halls was added to the Taybridge Road building, providing excellent facilities for adult and youth work.

Culture and the arts

The derelict Birks Cinema

Aberfeldy has no theatre nor a music hall but it does have two community venues, used regularly for music and drama, in the Town Hall and the Locus Centre. These are managed by Locus Breadalbane, a community charity. The nearest venues are the Pitlochry Festival Theatre, the Perth Theatre or the Perth Concert Hall. The new Community School has an auditorium.

The Birks Cinema, built in the very heart of the town in 1939 in a late Art Deco style, closed in the early 1980s for lack of business. It then turned into an amusement hall, for which purpose the entire interior was demolished. The amusement hall closed in 2004 and the building stood as an empty shell for several years. In 2009 it was bought by the "Friends of the Birks" with a grant from the Scottish Government’s Town Centre Regeneration Fund with plans to refurbish and reopen as a new 92-seat cinema and café-bar. The Friends are now a formal company limited by guarantee and registered as a charity, with Charlotte Flower heading up a board of trustees. In spring 2011, the Birks project was awarded £658,520 by the Scotland Rural Development Programme - half the sum needed to carry out the building work. Match funding for the SRDP grant has now been raised - notably through a Big Lottery grant of £539,950 announced on Feb 9 2012. It is hoped that the project will get the green light and that building work can begin in April 2012 with a view to opening in spring 2013.

Aberfeldy is the location of the poem "The Birks of Aberfeldy" by Robert Burns:

Bonie lassie, will ye go,
Will ye go, will ye go,
Bonie lassie, will ye go
To the birks of Aberfeldy!

Now Simmer blinks on flowery braes,
And o'er the crystal streamlets plays;
Come let us spend the lightsome days,
In the birks of Aberfeldy!

In 2001, the author JK Rowling purchased the nearby 19th-century Killiechassie House, on the banks of the River Tay.

Barytes mining

The Precambrian Dalradian geological formations in the Highlands north of Aberfeldy contain substantial deposits of the mineral barytes, which is mostly used as a weighting agent for drilling fluids to prevent blow-outs in oil and gas exploration wells. There are three locations with exploitable quantities of it. The Foss Mine, some 4 miles northwest of Aberfeldy has been operational since 1984 and production averages 50,000 tons a year. So far some 525,000 tonnes have been extracted there by M-I SWACO. In 1990, a locally based company began opencast extraction near the summit of Ben Eagagach, 4 miles due north of Aberfeldy. Approximately 25,000 tonnes were mined from a series of small pits which have now been abandoned.

The largest formation, containing a 7.5 million ton reserve is at Duntanlich, some 6 miles due north of Aberfeldy, south of Loch Tummel. In 1994 an application by MI Great Britain Ltd for an underground operation to mine the deposits was turned down. In 2000, M I Drilling Fluids UK unfolded new plans to establish a mine at Duntanlich to take six million tonnes from the deposit over the next 50 years) and began preliminary talks with Perth & Kinross Council and Scottish Natural Heritage. However, it was decided at that time not to take these proposals forward.

Pictures

• 
  Aberfeldy Distillery
• 
  The Birks of Aberfeldy
• 
  Aberfeldy square
• 
  The 'Auld Kirk', now a Thrift Shop
• 
  Aberfeldy, town centre
• 
  The old water mill, now a bookshop
• 
  Loch Derculich, north of Aberfeldy

Outside links

• The Wonderful World of Aberfeldy Weather
• Aberfeldy Church
• Aberfeldy Tourism
• Aberfeldy Footbridge over the River Tay
• Friends of the Birks Cinema
• National Library archive films relating to Aberfeldy