Alford House

Chemists to five generations of royalty

Davidson & Kay held a Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria from 1884, preparing medicines for five generations of the British Royal Family — and even the Czar of Russia. Their prescriptions were placed in the charge of a guard and carried by horseback from Ballater to Balmoral.

One of their dispensaries stood here, on Alford Place — an everyday counter with an extraordinary clientele.

The day a king passed by

Positioned where Union Street forks into Holburn Street and Alford Place, the building stood at a great civic gateway. When King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra came to open the new granite extensions of Marischal College, vast crowds gathered on the pavement directly beneath Alford House.

To stand at this window in 1906 was to stand above a sea of waving hats, watching a king pass through the Granite City.

At the heart of the west end

This corner once faced “Babbie Law’s Corner” — a legendary local sweet shop redeveloped in 1885 — and stood directly across from Thomas Mackenzie’s 1850 Christ’s College, today “The College” bar.

It was, and remains, one of Aberdeen’s great meeting points: the Victorian economic gateway where the city’s grandest street begins.

The banking years

For much of the 19th and 20th centuries the ground floor was a bank — latterly the long-tenanted Trustee Savings Bank — while the upper floors moved from tenement homes to professional offices. The original architectural drawings, “Plans for New Savings Bank, 8 Holburn Street” dated 28 January 1932, survive in Aberdeen City Archives.