Aberdeenshire or the County of Aberdeen (, ) is a historic county and registration county of Scotland. The area of the county, excluding the Aberdeen City council area itself, is also a lieutenancy area. The county borders Kincardineshire, Angus and Perthshire to the south, Inverness-shire and Banffshire to the west, and the North Sea to the north and east. It has a coast-line of . The county gives its name to the modern Aberdeenshire council area, which covers a larger area than the historic county.
The area is generally hilly, and from the south-west, near the centre of Scotland, the Grampians send out various branches, mostly to the north-east.
Symbols
The coat of arms of Aberdeenshire County Council was granted in 1890. The four quarters represented the Buchan, Mar, Garioch and Strathbogie areas.
In 2023, a competition was held to choose a county flag. The result, a flag designed by local school pupils, was raised at Castle Fraser on 22 April 2023.
Constituencies
There was an Aberdeenshire constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of Great Britain from 1708 to 1801 and of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1868. This constituency did not include the parliamentary burgh of Aberdeen, which was represented as a component of Aberdeen District of Burghs until 1832, when it was enlarged and became the Aberdeen burgh constituency. The other components of the district of burghs became components of the then new Montrose District of Burghs.
In 1868 the Aberdeenshire constituency was divided to form two new county divisions, or county constituencies, namely Eastern Aberdeenshire and Western Aberdeenshire.
In 1885 the Aberdeen burgh constituency was divided to form the burgh constituencies of Aberdeen North and Aberdeen South.
In 1918 Aberdeenshire and Kincardineshire were treated as if a single county for parliamentary representation purposes, with the area of the Kincardineshire county constituency and the Aberdeenshire constituencies being divided into three new constituencies, Kincardine and Western Aberdeenshire, Aberdeen and Kincardine Central and Aberdeen and Kincardine East. Kincardine and Western Aberdeenshire included the whole of the former Kincardineshire constituency.
In 1950 the area of the former Kincardinshire constituency (as abolished in 1918) was merged into the then new North Angus and Mearns constituency, and the Aberdeenshire area was divided into the East Aberdeenshire constituency and the West Aberdeenshire constituency, but the boundary between these new eastern and western constituencies differed from that for the constituencies of the 1868 to 1918 period.
Boundary changes in 1955 enlarged the Aberdeenshire West constituency, and reduced the size of the Aberdeenshire East constituency.
In 1983, eight years after the local government county of Aberdeenshire was abolished, the Aberdeenshire constituencies were replaced with new constituencies.
Geography
The historic Aberdeenshire is traditionally divided into five districts: Mar, mostly between the Dee and Don, which nearly covers the southern half of the county and contains Aberdeen. It is mountainous, especially Braemar, which contains the greatest mass of elevated land in the British Isles. The Dee valley has sandy soil, the Don valley loamy. Formartine, between the lower Don and Ythan, has a sandy coast, which is succeeded inland by a clayey, fertile, tilled tract, and then by low hills, moors, mosses and tilled land. Buchan lies north of the Ythan, and comprising the north-east of the county, is next in size to Mar, parts of the coast being bold and rocky, the interior bare, low, flat, undulating and in places peaty. On the coast, six miles (10 km) south of Peterhead, are the Bullers of Buchan – a basin in which the sea, entering by a natural arch, boils up violently in stormy weather. Buchan Ness is the most easterly point of Scotland. Garioch, in the centre of the shire, comprises an undulating, loamy, fertile valley, formerly called the granary of Aberdeen. Strathbogie, occupying a considerable area south of the Deveron, mostly consists of hills, moors and mosses.
The interior mountains of the Cairngorms provide the most striking of the physical features of the county: Ben Macdhui, , a magnificent mass, the second highest mountain in the United Kingdom (shared with Banffshire) Braeriach Cairn Toul, Beinn a' Bhùird, Ben Avon, "Dark" Lochnagar, Cairn Eas, , Sgarsoch, Culardoch