County town: Peebles
Peeblesshire was established as a sheriffdom from the 12th century, centred on Peebles, an ancient burgh on the upper Tweed. The county's history was shaped by its position in the Southern Uplands.
Peeblesshire is a quiet Border county of the upper Tweed valley and the surrounding Southern Upland hills. Peebles, its county town, is an attractive small burgh on the Tweed noted for its woollen industry and its Beltane Fair, one of Scotland's oldest civic festivals. The surrounding countryside — Traquair, Neidpath Castle, the Tweedsmuir hills — is of great quiet beauty, the hills grazed by sheep and the valleys thick with woodland. John Buchan, author of The Thirty-Nine Steps, was born at Perth but associated strongly with Peeblesshire, and his ashes are buried at Elsfield in Oxfordshire.
The Statistical Accounts of Scotland — the Old Statistical Account (1791–99) and the New Statistical Account (1834–45) — provide detailed parish-by-parish descriptions of Peeblesshire at two moments of transformation. Aubrey draws on these accounts when generating reports for Scottish locations, providing historical context specific to the parish and county.
Scotland's 33 traditional counties, established as sheriffdoms from the 12th century onward, were the administrative framework of the country until the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1975 replaced them with regional councils. They remain the reference framework for historical records, genealogy, and cultural identity.
An Aubrey report for a specific location in Peeblesshire draws on historical maps, archaeological records, Domesday data, Statistical Account records, and landscape history to tell the full story of any site in the county.
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