The Guestrow

This image was digitised from Artistic Aberdeen: A Sketch Book (1932) by W. S. Percy.

The book describes the scene as follows:

"The Guestrow, which will not exist much longer except as a name - a demolition scheme is in progress - is one of Aberdeen's most storied streets. At one time controversy raged around the derivation of its name. Some said it meant exactly what it conveyed - that it was the row where guests were housed, and there was foundation for that. But that is too recent a matter, compared to its mention in documents hundreds of years before, in which it is described as Vicus Lemurum, the Road of the Spirits, hence the Ghaist Raw. This name is ascribed to the fact that the row at one time overlooked the city churchyard. Up to within less than a hundred years ago the Guestrow was one of Aberdeen's busiest and most convivial thoroughfares. But within the past fifty or sixty years its narrow ways and congeries of courts had become slums that were a blot on the city. Its glory departed, its actuality is departing too, and soon it will be something only to be read of in local history books or seen in drawings such as this."