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Site of a town gate. Aberdeen had, in total, 8 ports or town gates that it controlled. The term port in this sense derives from the French port‚ meaning door. In Scotland town's gates or ports are also known as bows, from the arch of the gate. This port was located at number 42 Upperkirkgate, before the street was renumbered. The first evidence for Aberdeen's ports comes from the late date of 1435 but it seems fair to assume that the ports existed from several hundred years before that date. There is evidence in other burghs of ports dating from the 12th century. As early as 1585 there was a reference to a gallery on top of this port. The Council Register for that period contains the entry: 'The said day anent the supplica[t]ioun exhibit in writt be patrik Dauidson burges off abirdene, makand mentioun that he is to big and repair ane galrie vpoun the port of the overkirkgett adjace[n]t co[n]tigue to his tenement of land, conforme to his auld preuiligu co[n]teint in his eudentis of the said galrie'. So from this we know that the gallery was older than the given date. The document goes on to specify that the gallery had gables and was built of what was described as tyll stones: this word is obscure, and may possibly mean tiled stones, that is to say undressed stones from a field. There are further references in this case to 'upstanders' being built out of base and ground stones, in order to support the gallery. Clearly these would have impinged on the street itself and much of the remainder of this document in concerned with specifying that by building these he (Davidson) will not impinge upon any of his neighbours property. The gallery clearly survived for many centuries and is shown on Parson Gordon's Map of 1661. The gallery was still in existence in 1785 when James Black, merchant, bought the tenement in Upperkirkgate from Diane Walker, heir of Alexander Walker. The sasine, dated 28 April 1785 specifies that for £191/8/-, Black got: 'All and whole that large tenement of foreland under and above with that part of the close that is opposite to the tenement on the East. Reserving always free ish and entry thro the side close to the Dyehouse and other houses within the close to the northward of the said fore tenement. All lying on the north side of the Upperkirkgate of Aberdeen close by the port together with the house or gallery above the Upperkirkgate port.' By this comparatively late date the ports were beginning to cause traffic congestion on the roads in Aberdeen. The Upperkirkgate Port, however, outlasted all the other ports of Aberdeen, no doubt because there was private property on top of it. On 25 May 1793 there is the following entry in the Council Register: 'The said day Baillie Ritchie acquainted the Council that James Black merchant in Aberdeen had been communing with him concerning the disposal and sale to the Treasurer for behoof of the community of part of his Tenement of foreland on the northside of the Upperkirkgate consisting of the room or chamber above the Upperkirkgate Port and two brick toofals adjoining lying immediately upon the northside of the High Street for the enlargement of the High Street'. Toofalls are in effect lean-tos. An entry in The Aberdeen Journal of 30 June 1794,notes that 'The workmen have now finished pulling down the Upperkirkgate Port.' Curiously the entry goes on to specify that: 'The room over the Port was used as a state prison, in the beginning and middle of last century, and Mr Samuel Rutherford, who was confined there, for non conformity, in 1636 and 1637, calls it ''Christ's Palace in Aberdeen''. A Mr Oswald, bookseller in the Poultry, London, a great admirer of Mr Rutherford, being on a visit to his friends in Fife, about 40 years ago, came to Aberdeen, for the sole purpose of seeing it.' Rutherford was a Covenanter but there is no evidence about whether or not he was imprisoned in the gallery. If so, it would suggest that it was for some time in public hands before reverting to private hands in the 18th century. It took at least one year from the initial investigations before the port was finally removed, and an entry in the Police Commissioners Records for 1795 contains a proposal to cover the mill burn and to make up the street near to where the Port stood.
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Historic Environment Records (HER) 
Aberdeen City
HER -
NJ90NW0283 - UPPERKIRKGATE PORT