The project

Hi, I’m Mollie. I’m the Project Archivist for the Aberdeen Harbour Board Project, I’m based with the Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives at Old Aberdeen House. The project aims to sort, catalogue and make accessible the records of the Harbour Board. This blog will document my progress as well as exhibiting some of the interesting documents which I find along the way. This project is funded by The National Archives and the Pilgrim’s Trust through the Archives Revealed project (https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/archives-sector/finding-funding/archives-revealed/) as well as the Harbour Board itself.

The Aberdeen Harbour Board collection was deposited with the Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archive in 2019. This is a common procedure as businesses which don’t have a specialist archive choose to deposit their records with local authorities, Universities or another repository of their choosing so that the material can be kept safely. The material was moved by the archive team from Harbour before my arrival – a big thank you to all of them!

The archive in its original home at the harbour.

Although the harbour has been in official operation since 1136, the records which we hold start in the early 1800s (this will be more accurate when I’ve had time to catalogue in detail, I promise) to 1960 when the modern incarnation of the Harbour Board was created. This period is particularly interesting as it is a phase of consolidation through Harbour Acts, major developments on the site and social upheaval due to events such as war. All this material will help put together the story of how the Harbour, its employees and the City operated between the early 1800s and 1960. The archive itself is reminiscent of other business collections and contains records concerning administration, finance, operations, legal, property, staff as well as photographs and scrap books.

The project which I am undertaking will end in December 2020; at which point we hope to have a full catalogue of the Harbour Board archive which will be accessible to the public.