Almondbank

Coordinates: 56°25′16″N 3°31′01″W / 56.421°N 3.517°W / 56.421; -3.517

Almondbank
Almondbank  Almondbank shown within Perth and Kinross
OS grid reference	NO0626
Council area	Perth and Kinross
Country	Scotland
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Police	Tayside
Fire	Tayside
Ambulance	Scottish
EU Parliament	Scotland
List of places: UK • Scotland •

Almondbank is a large village in Perth and Kinross, Scotland.

RNAS Almondbank

The building of Royal Naval Aircraft Workshops commenced in 1940.^[1] The station a Stone Frigate was employed as a RNAS Aircraft Repair Yard ^[2] and Stores Depot.^[3]

DARA/Vector Almondbank

The Defence Aviation Repair Agency(DARA) site at Almondbank was a major employer in the community for many years providing essential support to the British Armed Forces. The Decision by the UK government in early 2008 to take the site (and its counterpart at Fleetlands, Gosport) out of direct MOD control by doing a conditional sell-off to Canadian firm Vector Aerospace was a controversial one and there were concerns about the future of the site. In 2011 Vector was taken over by Eurocopter who now operate the Almondbank site.

School, Church and Community

The village of Almondbank is often seen as including the attached hamlets of Pitcairngreen and Lochty, and the wider area is sometimes called Almondvalley. There is one school serving the area, Pitcairn Primary, which opened in 1939 and replaced older schools. The school is located in the central housing scheme of the village, which is sometimes called Bridgeton, even though there is no signage in recognition of this and the scheme is officially Almondbank (as opposed to Pitcairngreen and Lochty). Next to the school lies the only shop in the village and directly opposite this is the church, which is known as Almondbank/Tibbermore (St Serf's). Uphill from the Bridgeton area of Almondbank is Pitcairngreen which has a village green dating from the late 18th century, of the type more commonly found in England. Pitcairn means "place of the cairn", in reference to the neolithic cairn located to the North East of the green. There is also a small, far more recent "cairn" located on the green itself. This was erected in commemoration of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth the Second in the 1950s. An area of the village is known as College Mill whilst a housing scheme developed in the 1990s was known as "Bett Homes" for many years, after the site developers. Around the same time these homes were built, a much smaller scheme in the Lochty area was built by local construction firm, GS Brown.

Business and identity issues

In addition to the shop mentioned in the above section, Almondbank also has a post office, fish farm, small industrial estate, two pubs, accommodation, a filling station, and a garage. As well as the aforementioned issues relating to what exactly defines Almondbank, there is also concern that the whole area, including farther away settlements Ruthvenfield and Huntingtower may become part of Perth, as ideas for the expansion of the city are being debated and that the entire area may lose its rural identity as surrounding fields may be swallowed up for the houses that would join present-day Almondbank onto Perth, making it a suburb of a large town/small city. Developers argue that the west is the only direction for expansion of Perth, but local residents have argued otherwise. This situation is similar to that of Scone, which so far, has also managed to retain it's independent identity against threats to develop the small rural stretch which separates it from Perth. And most people in Almondbank and Scone are determined to stay separated from the growing City.

Almondbank is close to another Perthshire village, Methven.

References

The River Almond at Almondbank