Coordinates: 56°25′N 3°31′W / 56.41°N 3.52°W
| Almondbank | |
  Almondbank
Almondbank shown within Scotland |
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| OS grid reference | |
|---|---|
| Shire county | Perth and Kinross |
| Constituent country | Scotland |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Police | |
| Fire | |
| Ambulance | Scottish |
| European Parliament | Scotland |
| List of places: UK • Scotland • | |
Almondbank is a large village in Perth and Kinross, Scotland.
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.
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) and the local bus contractor, Stagecoach in Perth, causes some controversy by calling it Bridgeton and charging more to travel to and from there than from what they class as Almondbank (the lower part of the village, over the bridge spanning the River Almond) and residents have argued that the company should still recognise it as Almondbank even if they want to call it the Bridgeton area of Almondbank and still charge more for getting there (because at present, a person with no knowledge of the local bus system may get on at Perth and ask to go to Almondbank, but then find that they have to pay more to get to their part of Almondbank, as Stagecoach don't class it as such). 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 1950's. 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 (the "Western Arc" proposals) 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.
Almondbank is close to another Perthshire village, Methven.
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