Wikipedia
Kincardineshire, also known as The Mearns (from A' Mhaoirne meaning "The Stewartry"), is a former county on the coast of northeast Scotland. It is bounded by Aberdeenshire on the north and west, and by Angus on the south.
The name Kincardineshire is also used for a lieutenancy area, a registration county and in the name of Kincardine and Mearns, a committee area of the Aberdeenshire Council.
The county town was originally the town of Kincardine (not, as many believe, the village of Kincardine O'Neil, which was in the County of Aberdeen). The town of Kincardine, however, ceased to exist during the Middle Ages. The only visible sign of its previous existence is the ruin of Kincardine Castle, 2 miles north-east of Fettercairn. In 1296, King John Balliol wrote a letter of surrender from the castle to Edward I of England after a short war which marked the beginning of the wars of Scottish independence. In 1600 Parliament caused the government of Kincardineshire to be conducted at the Stonehaven Tolbooth. The county extended to Hill of Fare north of the River Dee, but in 1891 the Royal Burgh of Torry on the south bank of the Dee was incorporated into Aberdeen.
The burgh of Stonehaven became the county town, and the county included three other burghs, Banchory, Inverbervie and Laurencekirk. Other settlements include Drumoak, Muchalls, Newtonhill and Portlethen.
The county lost its administrative status in 1975. The area of Nigg in the north of the county became part of the City of Aberdeen, and the remainder of the county became part of the Kincardine and Deeside district of the Grampian region. When the Grampian region was divided into unitary council areas in 1996, the district was absorbed into the Aberdeenshire council area.
Kincardineshire was a constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of Great Britain from 1708 to 1801 and of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1918. It was represented by one Member of Parliament (MP).
The first election to a Parliament of Great Britain was in 1708. In 1707-08 members of the 1702-1707 Parliament of Scotland were co-opted to serve in the 1st Parliament of Great Britain. See Scottish representatives to the 1st Parliament of Great Britain, for further details.
The constituency represented the county of Kincardineshre.
In 1918 the area was combined with part of Western Aberdeenshire to form the Kincardine and Western Aberdeenshire constituency.
Kincardineshire (or the Mearns) was a constituency represented in the Parliament of Scotland until 1707.
Usage examples of "kincardineshire".
Grant, a short-lived poet and prose writer, was born on the farm of Affrusk, parish of Banchory-Ternan, Kincardineshire, on the 26th of May 1805.
Strachan, Kincardineshire, where a tombstone, inscribed with some elegiac verses, has been erected to his memory.
He was the eldest son of a small farmer, William Burness, of Kincardineshire stock, who wrought hard, practised integrity, wished to bring up his children in the fear of God, but had to fight all his days against the winds and tides of adversity.
George Menzies was born in the parish of Arbuthnot, Kincardineshire, on the 21st January 1797.
In the past eighteen years he had never once been outside Bristol, not even to visit his parents in Kincardineshire or the bankers in London, yet from reading reports and studying maps he had an exact knowledge of Wyoming and northern Colorado.
Up to now, the cloistered little Scotsman had known a horizon delimited by Kincardineshire and Bristol.