Public Health

 Rubbish bins began to replace ashpits – the Town Council minutes record that in 1953 there were 175 houses with ash bins and only 28 with ashpits – so that by the 1960s only bins were being collected by George Donald, whose long service as town carter ended in 1965 when Banff County Council took over refuse collection. Dumping of rubbish in Causewayend Quarry, which had no space left and was infested with rats, also ended at this time and the quarry was bought by contractor Kenny MacLennan.

(Twenty years later the quarry, now jointly owned by Leslie Anderson and Kenny MacLennan, was made available for Banff and Buchan District Council to transformed into the Anderson-MacLennan Park.)

One effect of the Town Council’s energetic house building policy was that existing arrangements for sewage disposal became increasingly inadequate. In 1955 inspection of the sewer at the top of Main Street revealed that it had been constructed entirely of “much too shallow” field drains. The Town Council agreed to replace these with 4-inch pipes and lay four gulleys on each side of the street.

By the 1960s houses had septic tanks which discharged into a common drain leading to the open ditch which still emptied into the Arkland Burn near Mill of Cranna. This arrangement came under attack from Banff, Moray & Nairn River Purification Board, and the Council asked Fairhurst to design a modern sewage scheme which would serve the whole Burgh including provision for future expansion to the northeast.