Rotary Club of Buckie

Welcome to the website of the Rotary Club of Buckie

Welcome to the Rotary Club of Buckie Website

Buckie lies either side of the the mouth of the Burn of Buckie where it flows into the Moray Firth. It was formed by the growing together of a series of once separate fishing villages: Nether Buckie, west of the Burn of Buckie (and now known as Buckpool) Easter Buckie, Yardie, Ianstown, Gordonsburgh and Portressie.

The oldest part of Buckie lies in the almost separate settlement of Rathven, inland from Ianstown. Settlement here dates back at least 1000 years, with a church established by 1200 and a hospital for lepers at around the same time.

Buckie itself began to take shape in the late 1700s and early 1800s. A new town was laid out along the ridge above and behind the fishing villages by the lairds, the Gordon family of Cluny, whose grand mansion, Letterfourie House, had been built a little inland by Robert Adam in 1773. The new town revolves around Cluny Square, with East Church Street and West Church Street running off it to form the axis of a grid pattern.

Parts of the attractive town that emerged are still on view, though the town centre is bypassed by the A942 which runs along the shoreline, and by the A98, which follows a line a mile or so inland.

But the heart of Buckie is its harbour. The huge harbour you see today, the Cluny Harbour, was built by the Cluny family in 1877 at a cost of £60,000, and at the time, it was one of the finest harbours in Scotland. This was actually their second attempt to develop a harbour here, having previously built Nether Buckie Harbour a mile or so to the west in 1857. This had a tendency to silt up and so the Cluny Harbour followed. Nether Buckie was renamed Buckpool in 1886 and Buckpool Harbour was filled in for use as a park in the 1970s. It has since become the finishing point for the Speyside Way.

Buckie's harbour remains one of the most active and fascinating in Scotland. Despite the setbacks that have befallen the Scottish fishing fleet in recent years this remains a great place to see fishing boats going about their business. It is also unusual in remaining home to a very active shipyard, Buckie Shipyard Ltd., which repairs and builds fishing vessels and a range of other craft. This makes Buckie an especially good hunting ground for collectors of lifeboats, as there are usually several on view, being serviced or tested: as well as Buckie's resident lifeboat in the harbour.

Rotary was established in Buckie in 1958 and celebrated 50 years of service to the community in 2008.

Buckie Lifeboat with Buckie Shipyard in the background

War Memorial at Cluny Square in the centre of Buckie.

Photos shown above along with introductory text courtesy and with kind permisssion of Undiscovered Scotland.

http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk

Welcome to the Rotary Club of Buckie website. Please visit our site regularly to keep up to date with our progress in helping others at home and abroad in the current Rotary year. Recent events include the annual Six Harbour Walk which has raised £13000 to date,Chest Heart & Stroke Awareness day which resulted in over 40 referrals to GPs in the area, A Texas Scramble Golf Competition which raised £900 for International Projects ,a Shelterbox campaign supported by local primary schools which helped the club to raise sufficient funds to send Shelterboxes to disaster zones such as Haiti and Chile ,and a presence at the Portsoy Traditional Boat Festival in early July which is expected to have raised around £600 for the 'Thanks for Life' polio campaign.

On the following pages, we'll introduce our club office-bearers and Club President, and illustrate some more examples of the types of activities in which Rotary is involved. We'll show you how a group of volunteer Rotarians, use their skills and vocations, to improve life for people less fortunate than ourselves at home, in our own communities, and abroad, through our various projects. We'll also illustrate some of the fun and fellowship we enjoy by being members of the family of Rotary. Perhaps sometime soon you will join us and experience the pleasure of 'Service above Self' We'll tell you about some of Rotary's major triumphs, but primarily this website will show you what we, in the Rotary Club of Buckie, are doing to help others in need at home and abroad. We'll show you how Rotarians behave to uphold our motto 'Service above Self'. All 'Rotary' graphics on this site are courtesy of the official Rotary International website download page and the Library of Graphics for Rotarians.

We have a two part brochure which describes some of the things we do in Buckie Rotary Club. Please click on the links to download in pdf format,Rotary Brochure 09 Mark 2.pdf,Rotary Brochure Mark 2 front.pdf