A mile south of Inverbervie, Gourdon is one of the few natural harbours along this stretch of east-facing Aberdeenshire coast. It is likely that a fishing settlement existed here in Neolithic times, 5,000 years ago, with residents burying their dead in the Long Cairn on Gourdon Hill to the west of the village.

he first written reference to the village was in 1315, to a farming and fishing settlement called Gurden, which is how the name of the village is still pronounced by those living here. An active port was in operation by the 1500s and by the end of the 1700s the population had reached 200. By the 1830s Gourdon was exporting grain grown in the area and importing coal for fuel and lime for agricultural improvements. But the coming of the railway to this part of the east coast in 1865 took away much of Gourdon's sea-borne trade.

Fishing rapidly took over as the predominant activity and in the 1881 season over 8000 barrels of herrings were exported from Gourdon. The herring declined in the early 1900s and by 1912 fishermen from Gourdon had switched to long line fishing from motor boats, some of the first in Scotland to do so. Long line fishing entailed laying a series of lines about 1000m long across the sea bed, one for each man on the boat. Attached to each line were around 800 hooks, baited with mussels by the women of the village. Getting the mussels and baiting the hooks could take up to 9 hours per day and each fisherman had two lines, one being used, the other being baited for the following day.

At least one vessel operating from Gourdon was still employing this labour intensive method of fishing into the 1990s. Others had moved more to seine net or cod net fishing, supplemented in spring and summer by lobster and crab fishing.