Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
A large town of 24,617 in Moray, Scotland.
Police Scotland doesn’t publish street-level crime, so Elgin has no Safety Grade and, without it, no overall grade. Its other subjects are graded below. Its strongest subject is cost of living (A): the 183rd most affordable of 296 Scottish towns: median sale £181,000, 4.1 years of area income; rent £816 a month. Its weakest is health (C−): life expectancy 75.7 for men, 82 for women.
The 3 things Elgin does most differently from other towns.
Each subject compared with the 2,160 UK towns with an overall grade (schools within Scotland), ordered by how far Elgin is from typical. American towns are graded separately.
Police Scotland doesn’t publish street-level crime, so Elgin has no Safety Grade and, without it, no overall grade. Its other subjects are graded below.
How TownRatings grades towns →
Historic Environment Scotland lists 243 buildings inside Elgin’s locality, 13 of them in the top category, and 4 scheduled monuments.
Explore the history →Data highlights are ordered by what stands out in Elgin.
For Elgin, that is above both Moray’s towns (13%) and Scotland’s towns (13%). No town in Moray costs more to buy into than Elgin, at £181,000, the highest of 5.
Registers of Scotland data-zone sale prices · Scottish Government council tax · Scotland’s Census 2022 tenure · OGL
Two of its 9 schools are below, each with why it’s listed. The grade uses the secondaries its children go to; Scotland publishes no primary results by school.
| School | Level | Pupils | Letter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bishopmill Primary SchoolLargest primary schoolPrimary | Primary | 400 | – |
| Elgin AcademyLargest secondary schoolSecondary | Secondary | 1,082 | C |
Scotland’s Census was taken on 20 March 2022, a year after England and Wales’s lockdown census; 24% of workers were mainly at home, and shares here are of those who travelled.
Elgin sits above both Moray’s towns (53%) and Scotland’s towns (44%) on this measure. 24% of workers worked mainly from home at the census.
Scotland’s Census 2022 (NRS), method of travel and distance to work · DWP claimant count · OGL
Women here live to 82 on average and men to 75.7 (2020–24). Of the 5 towns in Moray, Elgin has the smallest share in bad or very bad health: 5.7%. These answers aren’t adjusted for age, so young towns look healthier; the Health Grade uses age-adjusted measures, including life expectancy and early deaths.
| Census 2022 | Elgin | Moray | Scotland |
|---|---|---|---|
| Good or very good health | 81% | 80% | 78% |
| Bad or very bad health | 5.7% | 5.9% | 7.2% |
| Activities limited (health or disability) | 22% | 23% | 24% |
Scotland’s Census 2022, general health and disability · Public Health Scotland life expectancy by intermediate zone, 2020–24 · OGL
The heritage lists give each building’s grade but not its age, so we don’t say which is oldest.
Elgin has 243 listed buildings on Historic Environment Scotland’s list: 13 Category A, 117 Category B. Elgin has 99 listed buildings for every 10,000 residents, close to Moray’s towns (82) and above Scotland’s towns (22). Elgin’s listed buildings include Abbey Street, Convent of Mercy, Chapel, Category A.
Historic Environment Scotland list, October 2026 · OGL
That puts Elgin above both Moray’s towns (16%) and Scotland’s towns (15%). Young adults of 15 to 24 are 10% of the population. Half the people of Elgin are older than 41.2.
51% women, 49% men
About 96 men for every 100 women. Across Scotland, 51% of residents are women.
| Elgin | Moray | Scotland | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 15 | 18% | 16% | 15% |
| 15–24 | 10% | 9.8% | 12% |
| 25–44 | 27% | 25% | 26% |
| 45–64 | 26% | 27% | 27% |
| 65+ | 19% | 22% | 19% |
| No qualifications | 17% | 18% | 17% |
| Apprenticeship | 10% | 10% | 7.5% |
| Highers or similar | 11% | 11% | 11% |
| Degree level | 25% | 24% | 32% |
Scotland’s Census 2022 · Moray and Scotland: all residents of their towns · OGL
Museums, castles, gardens and days out in and near Elgin. Best known first.
Abbey or prioryGreyfriars Sisters of Mercy Convent in Elginin town
CastleElgin Castlein town
MuseumElgin Museumin town
Castle · Historic Environment ScotlandSpynie Palace1.6 km outside town, to the north
CastleDuffus Castle3.4 km outside town, to the northwest
CathedralSpynie Cathedral1.2 km outside town, to the northPhotos: each place’s Wikidata image, from Wikimedia Commons under the licence below (our copy, resized).
243 listed buildings in Elgin, 13 of them in the top category.
7 High Street, Braco's Banking House: Photo: Anne Burgess · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Elgin Cathedral: Photo: Lucas Kendall · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Blackfriars Road, Mansion House Hotel (Formerly the Haugh): Photo: Lucas Kendall · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Brewery Bridge: Photo: Iain Macaulay · CC BY-SA 2.0
58 notable people were born in Elgin.
Kevin McKidd: gdcgraphics, CC BY-SA 2.0 · Steven Pressley: Alasdair Middleton from Rothesay, Scotland, CC BY 2.0 · Helen Jenkins: MartinPutz, CC BY-SA 3.0 · George Brown: Roger Fenton, Public domain · Robert Calder: Lemuel Francis Abbott, Public domain
The nearest towns and villages, from National Records of Scotland’s 2022 localities. See them on the map →
| Town | People | Miles | Overall | Cost | Safety | Health |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elgin | 24,617 | — | — | A | — | C− |
| Lossiemouth | 6,654 | 4.8 | — | A | — | C |
| Forres | 9,290 | 12 | — | A | — | C− |
No Scottish town has a Safety Grade or an overall grade yet: Police Scotland doesn’t publish street-level crime. People: Census 2022. Miles: centre to centre.
That is 4.1 times the typical town in England and Wales for its size. Its Category A buildings include Abbey Street, Convent of Mercy, Chapel. It also has 4 scheduled monuments.
Homes cost less than in most UK towns: the median sale over three years was £181,000, against £277,000 in the typical town in England and Wales. On cost of living it is the 183rd most affordable of 296 Scottish towns.
Large town in Moray, Scotland
Elgin is a locality of 24,617 people, in the Moray council area. TownRatings uses National Records of Scotland’s 2022 localities as Scotland’s towns: the physical town, as people mean the word, rather than a council area, so its figures cover the town itself. Localities split the big settlements into their towns, as ONS’s 2022 boundaries split conurbations in England and Wales.
Built from NRS geography and Census 2022
Sources: Scotland’s Census 2022 (National Records of Scotland), output areas summed to the NRS 2022 locality · Registers of Scotland house price statistics, medians and quartiles of residential sales by 2022 data zone, 2004 to 2025 (the 2023 to 2025 headline brought to early-2025 prices with each council’s medians) · Scottish Government, Council Tax by band 2026-27; Scottish Water charges 2026-27 · Scottish Government, Recorded Crime in Scotland (crimes, offences and clear-up rates by council area, 2016-17 to 2025-26); Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 2020v2 crime domain and SIMD crime indicators (2014/15, 2017/18), 2011 data zones with Census 2022 residents · ONS gross disposable household income by council (2022), scaled to household income on England and Wales’s councils, with Scotland’s Census 2022 households · DWP / ONS Claimant Count via Nomis (2022 data zones, January to August 2026), over residents aged 16 to 64 at Scotland’s Census 2022; council series since 2015 · Scottish Government school contact list (31 July 2026) and school summary statistics (pupil census, September 2025); School Information Dashboard leavers’ attainment by school, 2022-23 to 2024-25 (data.gov.scot) · TownRatings grades: our own summary of the data, ranked against UK towns only. All under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026 (ONS boundaries). Northern Ireland: Source: NISRA; contains Land & Property Services data and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland information, © Crown copyright, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Scotland: contains National Records of Scotland data, Registers of Scotland data and SEPA data, © Crown copyright / © SEPA 2025, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.