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Skaterow {or Skateraw], a seventeenth century fishing village about four miles north of Garron Point (now Newtonhill) was a collection of houses consisting of little more than a single grassy road of fisher cottages with open drains. It was perched on the brow of a cliff, with its harbour below at the mouth of the Elsick Burn, where a gravelly beach afforded a good landing place for small boats. The houses, crowded together on land of little use to landowners, were laid out in neat rows and sometimes gable-end on to the sea, but seldom with any garden space and only narrow footpaths separating the houses. In 1855 there were fifty fishermen in Skateraw, and a fleet of twenty six boats - including eleven drifters and fifteen yawls. Over a hundred and fifty persons were employed in fishing related activities in the hamlet.
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