Ellon

A fairly recent addition to the regions collection of cut metal signs showing the current favourite iconography of a man with a pair of horse and a plough. Behind is an older primitive painted board sign now almost illegible.

A large very phallic standing stone 3.1 m high located just below a low summit, on a slope which shelves gently to the SE.

A carved wood bench the side supports representing the eider ducks, for which the reserve is famous, on columns of shell and weed encrusted rock, the back board is carved to suggest the estuary landscape the bench faces.

It commemorates the dead of both World War I & II. It is a rectangular block standing on a three-stepped base, surmounted by a kilted soldier, in Glengarry, in a challenging position with gun at ready across his front. Erected August 5th 1923. It stands within a low wrought-iron enclosure. Another small plaque was erected in 2000 to commemorate all people killed in conflicts since the World War II.

Apart from the original Preston tower this is not a building with serious defensive intent, more a stylish country palace. As with the tomb for the same client and the other castles he was involved in the design of, Leper has combined what was then modern style with older traditions to create a fusion that is peculiarly Scottish. He has an approach that resonates with C. R. Mackintosh in a much later era.

Beach drawing mostly consisting of a sun burst design with spiral and star motifs.

A 3.6 metre high steel otter in the town of Ellon, which celebrates the environmental regeneration of the River Ythan.

An elegant elongated cone shaped cairn with in-curved sides in coursed dry stone, without any interpretative sign. It is on the lands of Auchleuchries that Patrick Gordon belonged to.

A bit of an ugly and intimidating monument to the hereditary principle and the divine right of the aristocracy/rich to rule the rest of us for their own advantage, however it is worth the climb up both the hill and the stairs for the view toward Bennachie. Erected to the memory of the Prime Minister the Fourth Earl of Aberdeen. A square tower of coursed red granite with dressed quoins and a corbelled and crenellated parapet. The lower stage is steeply battered. SMR

The Savoch war memorial stands in the churchyard of Savoch church, to the southeast of the building. It is rectangular pink granite standing on a two-step base and surmounted by a tall tapering rectangular 20ft obelisk. It commemorates the dead of both World War I & II.

A square concrete block of the kind that once covered much of the coasts of Britain and Europe, with carved graffiti. Blocks of concrete such as this still stretch all the way from Aberdeen to the mouth of the River Ythan at Newburgh. There are also extant examples on more northerly Aberdeenshire beaches that could have been used for landing. Built in 1940 they were designed to prevent tanks landing during the feared Nazi invasion. Some have simple graffiti on them but this one was richly decorated by Louis Lawson. There is a caricature of Churchill who is watching Hitler looking upwards at a bomb falling from the sky. At the bottom there is the chilling message "Hitler's Graveyard".

It is in the form of a celtic cross, with interlacing decoration, surmounting a squat angled rectangular base which bears the names of the dead from World War I. It sits on a two-step base, the upper step of which bears the names of the dead from World War II.

The Tolquhon Monument, built by Thomas Leper in 1589, of a chocolate- coloured sandstone, to commemorate William Forbes of
Tolquhon (perhaps to Forbes' design) and his wife Elizabeth Gordon, is supposed to be the relic of the S. aisle of the old kirk. Rich arched altar tomb mixed gothic and Renaissance motifs inspired by Dunbar tomb at St. Machar's, Cathedral.
It is somehow very Scottish in style.
Present pedimented setting probably of 1798. The monument is housed in a classical surround believed to be of 1798 in date, though a large porch has been erected by Historic Scotland consisting of sheets of perspex with bronze structural supports. The tombstone is remarkably well preserved with its representative figures, though the structure preserving it rather resembles a domestic green house.

Coats of arms as shown for William is 'Forbes quartered with Preston' and shown for his wife is 'Forbes impaled with Gordon'.
The charges on the shields show, heads of boars, unicorns and muzzled bears. The unicorns appear again at the top of the arch either side of the crown flanked by hounds hunting on the right a deer and on the left another animal I cannot definitely identify (perhaps a fox or martin).

W A & S Higgins Agricultural Engineers; an unusual sign, an old farming implement (a wheel driven potato or turnip lifter), painted welded to a frame with a new sheet metal sign on the top.