In the parish of Orphir, contiguous to the present parish church,
stands the only example in Scotland of a circular church, built in
imitation of the church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. All that
remains of this interesting building, however, is the semicircular
chancel, which is 7 feet 2 inches wide and 7 feet 9 inches deep, and
about 9 feet of the circular nave on either side. From the curvature
of the remaining portion, the diameter of the nave must have been from
18 to 19 feet. Dryden conjectures that the side walls of the nave may
have been 15 feet or more in height, and that they were surmounted by
a conical roof. This church was almost to a certainty erected by Jarl
Hakon, the murderer of St Magnus, after his return from his expiatory
pilgrimage to the Holy Land _c._ 1120.
16. Architecture—(_b_) Castellated
The early Norsemen in Orkney built their houses of wood imported
from Norway, with only a slight foundation of stone; and the Norse
theory of defence lay in attacking the foe, preferably on sea. Save,
therefore, for a few buildings erected by Jarl or Bishop, and by one
or two powerful Viking chiefs, stone masonry during the purely Norse
period (870-1231) was practically confined to churches. Even during
the Scoto-Norse (1231-1468) and Scottish periods men of sufficient
power and wealth to erect imposing buildings of stone were still few.
Compared, therefore, with an ordinary Scottish county the castellated
architecture of the Islands is meagre in quantity; but several of the
buildings of this class that remain are of exceptional interest and
beauty.
[Illustration: Noltland Castle, Westray (15th century)]
[Illustration: The Staircase, Noltland Castle]
At the north end of the island of Westray stands Noltland Castle, the
only ancient military structure which Orkney can now show in a state
of comparative preservation. The castle is clearly of two periods,
but the best authorities now reject the once prevalent idea that the
earlier portion could have been erected by Thomas de Tulloch, Bishop
of Orkney from 1418 to 1460. The building is supposed to have been
added to and beautified by a later Bishop, Edward Stewart, yet so
late as 1529 Jo Ben described it as “Arx excellentissima sed nondum
completa.” Adam Bothwell, the first protestant Bishop, feued the castle
to Sir Gilbert Balfour, Master of the Household to Queen Mary, and a
doubtful tradition says that Balfour had orders to prepare the place
as a retreat for the Queen and Bothwell. Finally the place gave refuge
to some officers flying from Montrose’s defeat at Carbisdale, and was
on that account fired and left dismantled by Cromwell’s soldiers. The
great staircase of Noltland is one of the finest in Scotland, excelled
only by those of Fyvie and Glamis Castles. Another special feature
of the castle is the exceptional number of shot-holes, splayed both
outwards and inwards, which give its exterior walls the appearance of
the hull of an old style man-of-war.
The Earl’s Palace at Kirkwall, built by Patrick Stewart, Earl of
Orkney, about 1600, is one of the most beautiful specimens of domestic
architecture in Scotland, and more regal in appearance than anything
north of Stirling and Linlithgow. Fronting west, the building forms
three sides of a square, and is practically entire save for the roof.
On the ground floor is the grand hall, a magnificent apartment about
55 feet long by 20 feet wide, lighted by three splendid oriels, and
a triple window in the gable, divided and subdivided by mullions and
transoms. There are two fireplaces in the room, one being 18 feet
wide. At the landing of the main stair there is a beautifully arched
apartment of about 9 feet long by 7½ feet wide, commonly styled the
chapel, but which may have been a waiting room. “It is a superb
specimen of Scottish seventeenth-century architecture, its oriel
windows and turrets being unsurpassed by anything on the mainland, and
it is so rich in its details, and spacious in its accommodation, that
it is with more than usual regret that one looks on its roofless and
decaying walls.” The palace has not been inhabited since towards the
close of the seventeenth century.
[Illustration: The Earl’s Palace at Kirkwall
(c. 1600 A.D.)]
The Bishop’s Palace at Kirkwall, which stands in close proximity to
the Earl’s Palace and the cathedral, is supposed to have been erected
by Bishop Reid (1540-1558), on the site of an earlier building, in
which King Hakon Hakonson died in 1263. A prominent feature of this
building is its great length, originally about 196 feet, from which
it is supposed that it formed, or was intended to form, one side of
a quadrangle. Above what was originally the main entrance is the
corbelling of a fine ruined oriel. There is a five-storeyed round tower
at the north-west corner of the building, which contains in a niche of
its exterior wall a statuette long erroneously believed to represent
Bishop Reid. The chief apartment of the palace appears to have been
about 26½ feet long by 24 feet wide. Part of the structure is still
occupied.
Overlooking the sea, in the extreme north-west of the Mainland, stand
the ruins of the Palace of Birsay, erected by Robert Stewart, Earl of
Orkney, about 1580, on the site of an old palace of the Norse Jarls.
Less elaborate in design, and in a worse state of preservation than
the building erected by his son, Earl Robert’s palace is sufficiently
commodious and noble of outline to make one marvel at the passionate
taste for fine buildings of a race which required two such imposing
structures in two successive generations. Earl Patrick is said to have
partly reconstructed his father’s building, modelling his alterations
on Holyrood, but the building as it stands more resembles the later
courtyard at Dunottar Castle.
17. Architecture—(_c_) Municipal and Domestic
Kirkwall Municipal Buildings, a handsome three-storeyed structure
in the Scottish style, erected in 1884, forms the one specimen of
municipal architecture in the county that calls for mention. The
buildings include a Council Chamber, a Town Hall, a meeting-room for
the Commissioners of Supply, a post office, and four or five suites
of offices for the burgh officials. The main entrance has a fine
semi-classic door-piece, surmounted by two statues of the ancient
halberdiers of the burgh in full uniform.
[Illustration: Town Hall, Kirkwall]
Down to past the middle of the nineteenth century many Orcadian landed
proprietors possessed town houses at Kirkwall, in which they lived
during the winter. Several of these houses were buildings of some
architectural quality, and an interesting survival is Tankerness House,
in the Main Street, the property of Mr Alfred Baikie of Tankerness.
This building is, with some later additions or conversions, a quaint
conjunction of several old residences which at one time constituted
manses of cathedral dignitaries. The house has, however, been in the
possession of the Baikie family since 1641.
[Illustration: Balfour Castle, Shapinsay]
Balfour Castle in Shapinsay, the residence of Colonel W. E. L. Balfour
of Balfour and Trenabie, is one of the finest specimens of Scottish
Baronial architecture in the north of Scotland. Erected in 1847 from
designs of the late David Bryce, R.S.A., Balfour Castle is effective
as a whole without being conspicuous in detail. The house is surrounded
by fine gardens and plantations.
[Illustration: Tankerness House, Kirkwall]
Melsetter House in Walls, as it existed down to 1898, is an excellent
example of the older Orcadian country houses, few of which now survive.
The older part of the building, as it appears on page 32, dates from
the later seventeenth century. The house was originally a country
residence of the Bishops of Orkney, a fact which may account for its
roughly cruciform construction. The place was twice sacked by Jacobites
in 1746, during the absence of the owner, Captain Benjamin Moodie,
with the Royal army. The gardens and grounds are exceptionally fine
for those northern latitudes.
Two other interesting old Scoto-Orcadian mansions are Skaill House
in Sandwick, and Carrick House in Eday, the latter erected in the
seventeenth century by John, brother of Earl Patrick Stewart, who was
himself created Earl of Carrick by King Charles I. At a later date the
house was the property of James Fea of Clestrain, who in 1725 captured
in the neighbourhood the celebrated pirate John Gow.
In the towns and villages of Orkney and Shetland, where the main
street usually runs parallel to the shore, many of the houses stand
with one gable towards the street and the other closely overlooking
the sea, a feature which gives a distinctly foreign aspect to Lerwick
and Stromness in particular. It is sober fact that in many houses in
Stromness, granted a taste for fish, and a high tide at the appropriate
hour, one can catch one’s breakfast from the gable windows before
getting out of bed.
18. Communications, Past and Present
Before the days of steam communication there were two ferries across
the Pentland Firth to Huna in Caithness, one from Walls and the other
from South Ronaldshay. Edinburgh was the usual objective of Orcadians
using this route, and Shanks’ nag the common means of locomotion,
save for persons of quality, who rode horses. The only other means of
reaching the Scottish capital, the sole place out of the Islands which
old-world Orcadians considered of much account, and a place where all
the well-to-do among them had relations, cronies, and “gude-gangin’
pleas,” was by occasional sailing packets from Kirkwall to Leith.
Steamboat communication between Kirkwall and Leith and Aberdeen was
established about 1832, and nowadays there are two boats a week between
these ports and the Orcadian capital, besides two to Stromness, and
a fortnightly boat to St Margaret’s Hope. There is also a daily
mail-steamer from Stromness, touching at Kirkwall (Scapa) and South
Ronaldshay, to Scrabster in Caithness, thus connecting the Islands
with the Highland Railway at Thurso. Stromness is farther connected
with Liverpool and Manchester by a weekly steamer, and both Kirkwall
and Stromness with Lerwick and Scalloway in Shetland. Kirkwall has
communication with the more important of the North Isles, and Stromness
with the chief of the South Isles (except South Ronaldshay and Burray)
by local steamers sailing several times a week. Motor or horse
conveyances run between Kirkwall and Stromness several times a day.
There are no railways in Orkney.
The first Orkney Road Act was passed in 1857, and under that and
subsequent local Acts, and finally under the Roads and Bridges
(Scotland) Act of 1874, the greater part of the roads in the county
were constructed. The agricultural depression and land legislation
of the “eighties,” by attenuating the incomes of proprietors, tended
somewhat to check this development; but a dozen years or so later
the Congested Districts Board came to the rescue with grants-in-aid,
largely by means of which many miles of new roads were completed. With
very few exceptions, all the islands of any population are now amply
provided with good roads.
19. Administration and Divisions
Orkney forms one Sheriffdom with Caithness and Shetland, and has a
resident Sheriff-Substitute at Kirkwall. There is one Lord-Lieutenant
for Orkney and Shetland, but his deputies and the Commission of the
Peace are appointed separately for each group. In all other matters
of county administration Orkney forms a separate unit, and for the
purposes of the Local Government (Scotland) Act of 1889 the county
is divided into four districts, one comprising the Mainland, one the
North Isles, one the civil parish of South Ronaldshay and Burray, and
the fourth the two parishes of Walls and Flotta and Hoy and Graemsay.
A feature of county administration perhaps peculiar to Orkney is
that each island forms a unit of assessment for the construction
and maintenance of its own roads. The control of piers and harbours
in Orkney is of a somewhat diversified order. The Orkney Piers and
Harbours Commissioners, a body acting under special statutes, control
the piers and harbours at Kirkwall, Scapa, Holm in the Mainland, and
at Stronsay, Sanday, and Westray in the North Isles. Stromness and
St Margaret’s Hope possess their own Harbour or Pier Commissioners,
and the piers at Longhope, Burray, Egilsay, and North Ronaldshay are
managed by the County Council.
Of 21 civil parishes in Orkney, Walls and Flotta, Hoy and Graemsay,
and South Ronaldshay and Burray are in the South Isles; Stromness,
Sandwick, Harray and Birsay, Evie and Rendal, Firth, Stenness, Orphir,
Kirkwall and St Ola, Holm, and St Andrews and Deerness are in the
Mainland; and Shapinsay, Stronsay, Eday, Rousay, Westray, Papa Westray,
Lady, and Cross and Burness are in the North Isles.
Ecclesiastically Orkney forms a Synod of the Church of Scotland,
comprising the three Presbyteries of Kirkwall, Cairston (the old name
of Stromness), and North Isles. There are 27 ecclesiastical parishes.
St Magnus Cathedral is a collegiate church, with ministers of first and
second charge.
The standard of education in the Islands is quite up to the average of
Scotland. There are higher grade schools at Kirkwall and Stromness, and
the ordinary sources of educational revenue are supplemented in various
parts of the county by endowments of considerable value.
Orkney joins with Shetland in returning a representative to Parliament.
20. The Roll of Honour
Of heroes of the sword and men of high ruling capacity Scandinavian
Orkney produced many, who on a wider field of action would assuredly
have left to the world at large names now chiefly known to the special
student of Orcadian history. Apart too from mere men of action,
personalities like St Magnus, St Rognvald, and William the Old, first
Bishop of Orkney, would grace the annals even of a great people. Of
distinguished men of the soldier and statesman type modern Orkney
has, however, produced few, a circumstance no doubt in part due to
the distance of the Islands from the centre of national activity. The
Royalist general James King, Lord Eythin (b. 1589), was a native of
Hoy. Fighting in the Thirty Years’ War, in the service of Gustavus
Adolphus, he attained the rank of major-general, but was recalled to
England in 1640. He received a command in the Civil War under Lord
Newcastle, and in 1643 was created a peer of Scotland. He died in
Sweden in 1652. Perhaps the two most distinguished naval officers whom
Orkney can lay claim to are Commodore James Moodie of Melsetter, who
performed valuable services in the War of the Spanish Succession, and
Admiral Alexander Graeme of Graemeshall, a veteran of the Great War.
[Illustration: John Rae]
Among explorers two Orcadians stand high, John Rae and William Balfour
Baikie, both explorers of the highest scientific type, while Baikie was
in addition a good naturalist and a distinguished philologist. John Rae
the famous Arctic explorer, of the Hall of Clestrain, near Stromness,
entered the service of the Hudson Bay Company, under whose auspices he
in 1846 commanded an expedition which linked up the coastline between
the discoveries of Ross in Boothia and those of Parry at Fury and
Hecla Strait. In 1847 Rae joined the first land expedition in search
of Franklin, and performed important exploration and scientific work.
In 1850 he himself commanded a fresh expedition, which mapped a large
part of the coast of Wollaston Land, and examined to about 100° the
south and east coasts of Victoria Land. For the geographical results
of this expedition, and for his earlier survey work, he in 1852
received the Founders’ gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society.
His final Arctic expedition, organised by the Hudson’s Bay Company in
1853, put the cope-stone to his fame, for on that expedition he at last
succeeded in obtaining definite information regarding the fate of Sir
John Franklin, and in purchasing relics of that hapless explorer and
his party from the Eskimos. He died in London in July 1893, at the age
of eighty, and was at his own request buried in the churchyard of St
Magnus Cathedral at Kirkwall. John Rae was a man of splendid physique
and persevering will, and a consideration of his work as a whole places
him among the greatest of Polar explorers.
[Illustration: David Vedder]
William Balfour Baikie, M.D., was born at Kirkwall in 1825. After
serving for some years as a surgeon in the Navy and at Haslar Hospital,
he obtained the post of surgeon and naturalist to the Niger expedition
of 1854. On the death of the captain of the exploring ship “Pleiad” at
Fernando Po, Baikie succeeded to the command, and this voyage, which
penetrated 250 miles higher up the Niger than had yet been reached, he
described in his _Narrative of an Exploring Voyage up the Niger and
Isadda_. In 1857 Baikie left England on a second expedition. In the
course of five years he opened up the navigation of the Niger, made
roads, established markets, collected vocabularies of various African
dialects, and translated parts of the Bible and Book of Common Prayer
into Hausa. Baikie died at Sierra Leone, while on his way home on
leave, on 17th December, 1864. The loving-care of his fellow-islanders
has erected a fitting and touching memorial to him in that great fane
of the Isles which holds, or ought to hold, the memorials of all
distinguished Orcadians.
Orkney has been the birthplace of many men of high scientific
attainments. Murdoch MacKenzie (d. 1797) was a distinguished
hydrographer, who from 1752 to 1771 performed an enormous amount of
professional work as surveyor to the Admiralty. His _Treatise on
Marine Surveying_ is still esteemed. James Copland, M.D., a native of
Deerness, was one of the leading medical men of his day (1791-1870).
After picking up a knowledge of tropical diseases in West Africa,
and travelling in France and Germany, he settled in London. His once
famous _Dictionary of Practical Medicine_, however, with its 3509
double-column, small-type pages, a book by one man on every branch
of medical science, soon degenerated into one of the curiosities of
literature. Thomas Stewart Traill (1781-1862), son of a parish minister
of Kirkwall, was professor of medical jurisprudence at Edinburgh
University. Himself a man of almost universal learning, he fitly
edited the eighth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Matthew
Forster Heddle, a son of Robert Heddle of Melsetter, was professor
of chemistry at the University of St Andrews, and a mineralogist of
great distinction. His great collection of Scottish minerals, now in
the Royal Scottish Museum at Edinburgh, is one of the finest things of
the kind that any country possesses. To these names we would add those
of the Rev. Charles Clouston, minister of the parish of Sandwick, a
distinguished meteorologist and naturalist, and of Sir Thomas Smith
Clouston, the late distinguished specialist in mental pathology.
[Illustration: Sir Robert Strange, the Engraver]
Sir Robert Strange, highly renowned as an engraver, was a son of David
Strang, Burgh Treasurer of Kirkwall. Strange joined the Jacobites in
1745, engraved the Prince’s portrait and the plate for his bank-notes.
He escaped alive from Culloden and evaded the search for him. Settling
in London, he became the foremost in his art. One of his works is the
engraving of West’s Apotheosis of George III’s children, Octavius and
Alfred.
The most celebrated literary man whom the Islands can lay claim to is
Malcolm Laing (1762-1818), the Scottish constitutional historian and
protagonist in the Ossianic controversy. A friend of Charles James Fox,
and a class-fellow of Lord Brougham, Laing sat in Parliament for the
county in the Whig interest from 1807 to 1812. In 1808 he withdrew from
the literary circles of Edinburgh to his home in the Islands, and here
in 1814 he was visited by Sir Walter Scott. Malcolm Laing’s younger
brother, Samuel, was the author of _Travels in Norway_, _A Tour in
Sweden_, and _Notes of a Traveller_. A greater work, however, was his
translation of the _Heimskringla_, the old Icelandic history of the
early Kings of Norway, by Snorri Sturlason, a performance which had an
important bearing on the hero-worship gospel of Carlyle. High literary
ability appears to run in the blood of the Laings. Samuel Laing’s
son, of the same name, was the author of those popular compendiums of
nineteenth century science and thought, _Human Origins_, and _Modern
Science and Modern Thought_, which are still in wide circulation.
[Illustration: Malcolm Laing
(_From a portrait by Raeburn_)]
David Vedder (1790-1854), an almost self-taught miscellaneous writer,
of large output and considerable excellence, was born in the parish
of Deerness. In 1830 he conducted the _Edinburgh Literary Gazette_,
supported by De Quincey and others. The various works of Vedder, which
include _Orcadian Sketches_, and _Poems, Legendary, Lyrical, and
Descriptive_, have fallen on an undeserved oblivion. Vedder is the
Orcadian poet _par excellence_. Perhaps the once highly popular novels
of the amiable Mary Balfour, or Brunton, _Self-Control_, 1811, and
_Discipline_, 1815, would not now be considered a passport to fame;
but a later member of the family to which she belonged, David Balfour
of Trenabie, has in his _Odal Rights and Feudal Wrongs_ written of
the Scottish oppressions of Orkney in the sixteenth century in such
fine limpid English as makes one regret the purely local interest
of his subject. Walter Traill Dennison, who in his _Orcadian Sketch
Book_ has given his fellow-islanders some light fiction of a high
quality, unfortunately elected to write in the strictly local dialect
of the North Isles of Orkney, using a phonetic spelling which is a
stumbling-block to many readers who are quite at home in ordinary Scots
literature. Traill Dennison, like Vedder, is a humourist, and Orkney
gifted to the outside world a greater humourist than either when she
sent the father of Washington Irving across the sea.
Orkney has produced scarce a churchman or a lawyer who has
distinguished himself _as such_. The great Robert Reid, founder
of Edinburgh University, was perhaps the most celebrated of her
pre-reformation bishops, while James Atkine, a native of Kirkwall, was
bishop of Moray in the seventeenth century. William Honyman, of the
Honymans of Graemsay, sat on the Scottish bench as Lord Armidale in the
early part of the nineteenth century, but his marrying Lord Braxfield’s
daughter was perhaps his doughtiest feat. The list of Orkney Sheriffs,
however, includes the famous names of Charles Neaves, Adam Gifford,
and William Edmonstone Aytoun. Aytoun kept house at Berstane, near
Kirkwall, and his humourous sketch _The Dreep-daily Burghs_, is
supposed to make covert allusion to the climatic and other amenities
of the group of parliamentary burghs of which the Orcadian capital at
that time formed one. His connection with the Islands also inspired
his poem of _Bothwell_; and contact with the surrounding seas moved the
lively Neaves to verse of nigh as dolorous strain.
21. The Chief Towns and Villages of Orkney
(The figures in brackets after each name give the population in 1911,
and those at the end of each section are references to pages in the
text.)
=Finstown= is a small village in the parish of Firth, the half-way
house between Kirkwall and Stromness. The village has a pier, an inn,
and a monthly cattle fair. (p. 27.)
=Kettletoft=, a small village on a bay of the same name, on the east
side of Sanday, is the business centre of the island, and a minor
herring-fishing station.
[Illustration: Stromness, Orkney, about the year 1825
(From an old print)]