Deeside Piper

About Deeside Piper

The Deeside Piper — published under the full title Deeside Piper and Herald — is a weekly newspaper based in Banchory, Aberdeenshire, serving Royal Deeside and Upper Donside in the north-east of Scotland. Owned by National World, it is the community newspaper for one of Scotland’s most celebrated rural districts: the valley of the River Dee, famous for its royal connections, its castles and its Highland landscapes, and the neighbouring valley of the River Don.

The paper and its title

The Deeside Piper takes its name from the district it serves — Deeside, the valley of the River Dee — and from the piper, an emblem of Highland Scotland. Its extended title, the Deeside Piper and Herald, reflects the amalgamations common in the history of the Scottish provincial press, where neighbouring titles combined to serve wider rural areas. Published weekly from Banchory, the largest town in the district, it provides the staple diet of the community newspaper: local news, sport, community events and family announcements for the Dee and Don valleys.

Royal Deeside: the heart of the patch

The core of the Piper’s circulation area is Royal Deeside, the stretch of the River Dee valley west of Aberdeen that earned its royal prefix through its association with the British monarchy. Balmoral Castle, the royal family’s Scottish residence, stands on Deeside, and the district’s villages — Ballater, Braemar, Aboyne — have catered to royal visitors and tourists for more than a century and a half. Banchory, where the paper is based, is the gateway town to the valley, sitting where the Dee emerges from the hills onto the coastal plain.

The Piper’s Deeside patch takes in a string of distinctive communities: Torphins and Lumphanan in the lower valley; Kincardine O’Neil and Strachan among the hills; Aboyne, the mid-Deeside village known for its Highland games and golf; Ballater, the Victorian village built to serve Balmoral; and Braemar, at the head of the valley beneath the Cairngorms. It is a district of castles — Crathes, Drum and Balmoral itself — of whisky, forestry and hill farming, and of a tourism economy built on some of the finest scenery in Scotland.

Upper Donside: the neighbouring valley

North of Deeside lies Donside, the valley of the River Don, and the Piper’s title explicitly embraces the upper reaches of that valley too. Upper Donside is a quieter, less visited district than Deeside: a landscape of heather moor, farmland and scattered villages including Strathdon, Lumsden, Rhynie and Kildrummy, with Alford as the area’s principal village. The Don rises in the Ladder Hills and flows east to the sea at Aberdeen, and its upper valley communities share Deeside’s dependence on farming, forestry and country sports. For these villages, the weekly paper is often the only journalistic record of local affairs.

Journalism for a rural economy

The economy of the Piper’s patch shapes its journalism. Farming — cattle, sheep and arable — remains central to the valleys, alongside forestry, country sports and the estates that manage much of the upland landscape. Tourism is the other great industry: Royal Deeside draws visitors from around the world to its castles, its golf courses, its walking and its whisky, while events such as the Braemar Gathering — the famous Highland games held each September — and Aboyne’s own games bring the district’s traditions to international attention. A community weekly in such a district must speak to farmers and hoteliers, gamekeepers and shopkeepers alike, and the Piper’s pages reflect that breadth.

Sport on Deeside and Donside

Sport has always been central to the Deeside Piper’s appeal. The paper’s archive shows decades of coverage of local football — including the exploits of Deeside clubs — alongside rugby, cricket and golf, the latter a particular passion in a district that boasts celebrated courses at Ballater, Banchory and Aboyne. Shinty, athletics and the Highland games circuit all feature, as do the equestrian and country sports that are part of the area’s way of life. For clubs and competitors across the two valleys, the Piper’s sports pages remain the definitive weekly record of results and fixtures.

A weekly for scattered communities

The Deeside Piper serves one of the most dispersed readerships in Scottish local journalism. Beyond Banchory, its patch is a patchwork of villages, hamlets and isolated farms spread across two river valleys and the hills between them. In such country the weekly newspaper performs a role that goes beyond reporting: it is the noticeboard, the debating chamber and the family album of the district. Planning disputes, road improvements, school news, fundraising appeals, agricultural shows and the achievements of local young people all find their place, alongside the births, marriages and deaths that readers have turned to for generations.

Ownership: part of National World’s Scottish portfolio

The Deeside Piper is owned by National World, the regional publishing group whose Scottish titles include The Scotsman and a wide stable of weekly newspapers across the country. The paper came into the group through the familiar consolidation of the British regional press: the Johnston Press titles acquired by JPIMedia after Johnston Press’s administration in 2018, then bought by National World in 2021. In May 2025 National World was itself taken over by Media Concierge, the Irish publishing group owned by Malcolm Denmark, in a £65 million deal — making the Piper part of a private, family-owned newspaper group operating under the Iconic Media name.

The Piper in the archive

The Deeside Piper’s 20th-century history is preserved in the British Newspaper Archive, where digitised editions from the 1980s and 1990s — published in Banchory, Aberdeenshire — record the district’s life in remarkable detail. The archived pages capture everything from football and rugby reports to pantomime reviews, motoring advertisements and the everyday commerce of the valley towns. They show a paper deeply embedded in its community: the same blend of sport, entertainment listings, local business and civic news that defines the community weekly to this day.

Print and digital

The Deeside Piper continues to publish as a weekly print newspaper for the Dee and Don valleys, while its journalism also appears online through its dedicated website. Like its sister titles across rural Scotland, it has adapted to the digital era — reaching readers on phones and computers as well as in print — while retaining the weekly rhythm and the intensely local focus that have always been its defining characteristics.

A vital source for the valleys

For the residents of the Dee and Don valleys, the Deeside Piper remains what community newspapers have always been in rural Scotland: a vital source of information and a forum for the district. In villages where the shop, the school and the village hall are the centres of social life, the weekly paper binds the community together — carrying the news of who has achieved what, what is planned and what is opposed, and what is happening at the weekend. Its role is especially important in the upper valleys, where broadband coverage has historically been patchy and where the printed weekly remains the most reliable way of reaching every household. The Piper’s continued publication is a testament to the enduring demand for journalism that treats small communities as worthy of serious attention.

Official website

The Deeside Piper’s official website is deesidepiper.co.uk, carrying the latest news, sport and community stories from Banchory, Royal Deeside and Upper Donside, with subscription and contact details for the newspaper.