Thomas Blake Glover

Thomas Blake Glover was born at 15 Commerce Street, Fraserburgh in 1838. He spent the first 6 years of his life here, where his father was a coastguard before moving with his family to Aberdeen. He later went to Japan where he founded a shipbuilding company which developed into Mitsubishi. He is credited with setting Japan on the road to modern industrialisation and is said to have been the inspiration for Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly.

The house in which he was born was destroyed during an air-raid in 1941. As part of the Fraserburgh Regeneration Project a Glover Memorial Garden has just been opened on the site of Glover's birthplace. The centre piece is this statue by Kenny Hunter depicting Glover as he might have been when he lived here.