Category: Scotland

The Italian Chapel was open. I called in one afternoon and they suggested we visited first thing in the morning. We did, and had it to ourselves. It is an atmospheric place. I did a bit of maths – if it was completed in 1945 and I first visited in 1982, that was 37 years. It is now 39 years since my first visit. I do enjoy the artwork, not just the Virgin and child, but also the gospel writers and the decoration and “stonework”. It is a fascinating story of the triumph of the human spirit in the...

I did full posts on several Orkney churches, and St Magnus Cathedral, when we visited in 2017. We came up for two weeks in June 2021, staying at The Slap Cottage on Burray. It’s highly recommended – their website is http://www.theslapcottage.co.uk/ We had originally booked for 2020, but that was cancelled. Catherine just transferred us to 2021, and both Premier Inn and Pentland Ferries gave us full refunds. This time travel is allowed. We were asked to take Covid tests before we set off and we found the cleaning regime in both PInns en route, and on the ferry,...

On Tuesday 18 July 2017 I did the upper level tour of St Magnus Cathedral. You have to book in advance, and it fills up fast. 1½ hours for £8 – just six of us being taken up. One of the custodians was in charge, and showed us many wonderful things. I have 122 photos, so I won’t put them all in. We started on the triforium, looking up and down. It is wonderful Norman architecture and it is good to see the sails from a different angle. They have an interesting collection of bits and pieces in their...

George Mackay Brown wrote that “in 1511, fifteen ships got ready in Scapa to make a crusade to Jerusalem. The commander-in-chief was Earl Rognvald II of Orkney. With him sailed Bishop William of Orkney in his own shops. There was a group of Scandinavian poets. Some of the Crusaders broke into Maeshowe and cared runes on the stone walls of the dead: ‘Jerusalem farers broke in here.’” In 1993, for the St Magnus Festival, artists Mary Scott, Andrew Parkinson, Dave Jackson and Erlend Brown used him as inspiration for a major visual art collaboration. Painted sails were created to...

In St Magnus Cathedral we have some lovely memorials. Lots of C17 stones which were always indoors, so were never eroded by the calm Orkney weather. There is a lovely book about them by Spencer J. Rosie, Saints and Sinners; memorials of St Magnus Cathedral, Orcadian, 2015. As it’s £30, I really couldn’t justify buying it, so I used the reference copy in Kirkwall library – website – I will say again how wonderful Orkney Libraries are. Here are a selection of them, with some details from the book. I have given the page number in case anyone wants...

Welcome to the Cathedral that stands in the middle of Kirkwall. It is welcoming, has a good website, and is owned by the Council. It was assigned to the inhabitants of Kirkwall by James III of Scotland in a charter dated 1486. The guidebook says “In 1845, the Government presumed the ownership of the Cathedral, expelling the then congregation and carrying out major restoration work to the fabric of the building.” In 1851 it passed to the Royal Burgh of Kirkwall, and eventually to Orkney Islands Council. I had a chat to one of the Custodians, aka Vergers, who...

At the start of WW2 a submarine slipped between the islands into Scapa Flow and torpedoed the Royal Oak. Churchill ordered that barriers should be built to block the four channels. There is a very good display about this work at the Fossil Museum on Burray – website – an excellent museum with lovely tea room, and friendly staff. In the later years of the War, Italians captured in North Africa were sent to Camp 60 on Lamb’s Holm. They were not happy being used on what they saw as war-work, but were persuaded it was legitimate. You can...

Another church (or to be more precise, churchyard) we visited on Wednesday 12 July was Harray Church (HY 314179). I think it is St Michael’s Kirk. It was locked. Steering the Stone Ships, is a book about the Orkney church by Jocelyn Rendall, Saint Andrew Press, 2009. She writes that in the C18 the Church of Scotland was not in a good place – there was a shortage of ministers, a huge social gulf between the minister and the people, a cosy alliance between Manse and mansion, “dull, moralistic sermons endured in damp and draughty buildings; the almost total lack of...