Overlooking Gourdon harbour, the Sma harbour Hoose is set in a stunning location.

The village of Gourdon lies behind the harbour and rises in terraces up the hillside towards the line of the A92, which bypasses the village as it makes its way north into Inverbervie. Close to the harbour is the small building housing the excellent Maggie Law Maritime Museum Maggie Law was a double ended surf lifeboat boat capable of assisting vessels having difficulty entering the harbour.

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. The 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 8,000 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.