Saturday, May 31, 2014
BARRIER No.1 TO ROSE NESS April 5th 2014
Took the bus to the start of the first Churchill Barrier. The driver was good enough to set me down quite close. As this counted as a Lamb Holm return I thought about crossing over the barrier. Not for the Italian Chapel, where I've been a few times with others, but for the Orkney Winery shop. Even then the draw for me isn't the wine itself, it is the like of chutneys, preserves and sweets that are made from them. A little too rich, in the monetary meaning, for my tastes alas.
My reason for going to East Holm was twofold; firstly that I had taken good views of it from Burray and wanted to return the compliment, secondly that having seen the recent storm-damage to the sea-wall I wanted to see if the nearest cliffs had given up anything (I had chosen low tide at St Mary's). In the bright light the coastal batteries opposite me resembled a landscape-sized art installation, surely intended as more than form following function. Too good not to photograph several times along the way. By the road are the Graemeshall properties. Here a 15th century dwelling was replaced in 1615 by Meil House, which after being sold on became Graham's Hall then Graemeshall (for what it's worth there is a Graemshall, one 'e', in Evie). And I imagine that the name Meil is an early designation for this whole area as we have the Muir of Meil between Hamly Hill and the B9052. A nice quiet road runs up between house and farm by Graemeshall Loch, which is well known to birders. However my attention was caught by the site to my right , two swans on the waters of Scapa Flow - obviously this near the burn outlet the sea is only slightly brackish. Loved the way they practically surfed the waves close inshore. A gentleman in a long motorhome was parked up with a huge camera pointed to the loch, but I still had the best of the deal from my view I think.
No damage looks to have been done to the cliff-section below Mass Howe, certainly the body of the mound must be accounted natural. Because of the name it is said that the structural remains on top are from a church, allegedly a local tradition, especially given the nearby Mass Road track. But it seems more likely to me that Mass=moss and refers to the once extensive Muir of Meil heath. Besides which Mass Road bypasses the mound - if anything the road goes up towards the nearer of the mounds below Hestakelda(y) 'horse well', now Hestimuir, and most likely went to the well as with the Tieve Well Road above St Nicholas Church. Took more photos of the coastal batteries. At the far edge of the nearer and larger one a roughly triangular piece of ground normally rather damp strucki me as positively parched this day. Here what is now marked as a burnt mound is below a wellspring (one of five Wells shown on this length of hillside on the 1882 O.S.). Not wishing to disturb the kie I moved on. Beyond and left of the burnt mound the long ruin roughly parallel to the coast is labelled Old School on the same very large scale map. Which is strange as at the roadside end of the trail the buildings to the left are also named Old School. Perhaps seperate schools for boys and girls (or children and sub-adults maybe). Alternatively as East Schoolhouse [in 1882 labelled as School (Boys & Girls)] lies over from Hurtiso they might be for the three Christian denomination hereabouts. Or more simply the lived-in Old School is named after the ruin. Does anyone know ? Still intrigued by an outpost of the wartime stuff. A narrow piece of land not many metres long sticks out of the body of the cliffs, with a rather precipitous neck at the end of which is a structure resembling the top of a pillarbox. In shape it is an hexagon with a hexagonal plug. There are two holes set close together, and my guess is that this had been a machine-gun post.
At the east side of the neck is what I take for a section of wall or walling composed of slabs. Eventually the coastal path section ends. Just beyond this point there is a long second wall, below the present fieldwall, that is either set into the cliff or hanging on grimly, made of the same material. Now the path runs straight up to the main road, running past Newark (wonder where the old Wirk had been). This is another usually sodden track. Which is hardly surprising as it is bordered by three of the wellsprings mentioned earlier ! If you can, use the Orkney Gate at the top of the track as the trail's style is a monster that is liable to swing you off. Across the road is Manse, which had been a manse for the Free Church. It is safe to assume that both mounds were used by the church but the Flagstaff Mound right of the building has no traces. On the other hand I have actually been on the Sundial Mound and there is a big scatter of stones on its top, though my theory is that some come from a previous structure re-used as I have seen no such remains on any other sundial sites and nor did they surmount big mounds.
Where the road turns to go to St Andrew's is the farm of Hurtiso. It is on Hurtiso land that the famous headgear came to light during peat digging. This appears to have been an antient heirloom, as what had started off life as a piece of neckwear was by stages transformed into a cozytrot, a kind of hooded shawl (except this item has half-metre long tassels on it. The Hurtiso Hood 'moved' into a Kirkwall collection, hence the next newspaper account gives it a St Ola origin instead of Holm. Someone must have pointed out it came from the next parish, because the third newspaper article places its finding in Tankerness, part of St Andrew's ! And so a tentative association with finds on Groatster/Grotsetter land has entered the record. Now that the truth is out the name has been changed to the Orkney Hood (to spare blushes I assume). I used to be puzzled by a niche in the roadside wall until I realised this space had been left by an old postbox ! There is a bench and viewpoint here. One day nearing sunset I photographed a beam of sunlight that from here ran straight across the Italian Chapel, truly wondrous to behold. Continuing over the green and going by East Schoolhouse and Vigga, the Cornquoy and Greenwall roads part just before the hill descends. From here I had distant views of the Burray brochs strongly illumined by the sun. A little too strongly for clarity but enough to show the proper distance between them (other views I'd had of them they had always appeared so close together I had imagined them in a much tighter framing of the chambered tomb that had lain just behind behind them on Northfield farm). Tried to make out St Lawrence's Church on Burray then and later to no avail. But my thinking at this vantage point was that whether brochs were for defence or lookout Laurenskirk plugged a gap that the East and West Brochs didn't cover, the other side of Burray having the Iron Age settlement on Hunda. Turned left onto the Greenwall Road and then down the Tieve Well Road to the Cornquoy Road. There are two mounds either end of the Howes Wick shoreline. Closest is the broch mound under the older section of St Nicholas' burial ground (there was also a well/wellspring beyond the northern well. formerly bounded by a ring of stones). In the late 50's a farmer took 40 trailers of stone from a drystone wall, including a cup-marked stone, and emptied them onto the shore. Near the eastern end of the wick is Castle Howe, where a small Viking wirk has been built over a D-shaped chamber. There are no reports of a circular structure here, but one could make a case for the lower chamber being [part of] one of those controversial IA structures labelled 'semi-broch' by some [no longer ??]. Perhaps I might compare it with North Taing on the Head of Holland that shows at the cliff edge as a dee-shaped bank with stones. There I have noted clumps of large stone coming up in the nearer side of a field during deep ploughing, indicating that the centre of a larger structure could have been removed. And this or an incomplete build are generally accepted as the origin of those 'semi-brochs'.
Turning left I continued all the way to the crossroads near the old St Nicholas Manse. Turned right here. Seems a long way from the church it serves, but the same is true of the Tankerness manse next to Northwood House and the North Church (that church now hosts the material worshippers of Sheila Fleet Jewellery). I felt fairly sure a track runs by the west side of the manse enclosure, but being uncertain from this end carried on to The Cottage. Alas the lawn seems to have taken over much of the track since my previous visit (when I walked the Sand of Cornquoy undisturbed) so I'll leave that for a weekday when I disturb none. Back up to the crossroads and decided to continue over to the Roseness trail. Before you reach the tiny car park Ducrow along the way is a perfectly lovely house and garden. My only intention had been to merely have a peek, but cresting the hill before Upper Cornquoy found me stunned by the clarity of Copinsay and the other Deerness on the distant horizon. A well-kept track runs between fields to a signpost marked for Stembister and Roseness paths. Take the right and it is a long way to Stembister in St Andrew's, with its standing stone moved slightly back from the cliffs edge to a drying green. Along the way the path sweeps down a steep decline before climbing equally steeply back up. From Stembister the road to the Deerness Road is only short by comparison, simpler the other way as you would need a lift ftom St Andrew's or know the few buses that way very very well ! Turn right at the signpost for Rose Ness. No, of course I didn't. Headed straight for the nearest cliffs to snap those islands. This is the Bay of Semolie. Nice place for a picnic. The cliffs are stupendous, the views likewise. Don't think you can get down to the beach at all. Here stands the King of Semolie. Sadly the Queen of Semolie passed about the midpoint of the last century. A rather bigger rock stack further along Rose Ness is nameless, so you wonder why they both had names - maybe some lost event took place in the vicinity involving a rig [or perhaps a tale like the "Queen of Morocco" relates]. Walked along the cliffs until I came upon a fence ending right at the cliff edge. Definitely low enough to swing over, but even I didn't risk it. Watched the waves down below crashing up and over the rocks of a small geo. Followed the fence up to the trail proper. The gate there is rather fiddly and most folk would find it quicker to climb the gate rather than open it. Be careful as this is not standing vertical.
Instead of going back to what I think is Tur Geo (whereabouts lies a Bruce's Hole) my feet took me a little further along to where there are rocky plates between the heath and the cliff edge, good for a bit of a clamber. Came upon Rosalind, one of the Orkney Blide Trust support workers. She had come here with a group of youths to do some actual rock-climbing. The day being very blustery they had had no look and contented themselves with scampering amongst the rocks in hope of a climb somewhere not dashed by the high spray. From there I went to the Hole of The Ness, simply The Gloup on the 25" maps. Imagine the gloup in Derrness turned ino a circle form. To my dismay this feature is now fenced in. And not narrowly at that, and in fact the fence struck me as more distant from the rim at its safest point. You can hear the the sea still rushing in and out, and walk over the arch at the cliff, but the most you can see sttod on tippy-toes is the top couple of metres of exposed rock. Didn't complete the walk as it became too overcast for the pictures I wanted. Anyway, the forecast had been for rain later, and fearing it earlier now went back to the start of the trail. Down on the main Cornquoy Road the climbing party soon approached behind me. Even though I had a return ticket I was only too happy to accept a lift back in the circumstances - seemed to take me half the way to Kirkwall before I had the safety belt gone, so I was obviously near the end of my endurance. Fortunately the Out and About planning of Orkney Blide Trust's trip gave me the opportunity to do the headland full justice a short time later. After leaving the gloup some of us kept closer than the others to the land's edge, and treated ourselves to peering down the sheer sides of long and narrow Pantie Geo. We reached the angular monument that I have seen from miles away at various places, a tall truncated pyramid topped by a cross. It sits on the site of one of two Rose Ness beacons. They both dated to the modern era, but at this one there is a large level mound of stones that speaks of an earlier vardr. Or something more, as during its construction in 1867 the men found a well-preserved skeleton and re-buried most of this under the stones dug up. Down near the far end of the ness the slightly later light beacon (1905) still stands. It is where we all finally fetched up.Long ago a neighbour took me here and, by prmission, let me up inside. These beacons are low affairs. Meant only to be seen in daylight they don't 'shout' at you like lighthouses, their human scale most appealing. By it are two concrete foundations that have to be wartime remains. Two of our party sat on the smaller one, about two metres square. A quick glance saw possible earlier stuff there too. The trail ends at The Riff, so there must be an obstacle between there and Roy [brief speculation - roy/roi. is the King of Semolie the Row/Roo 'rock' of Semolie]. Didn't go that far but returned by way of North Cairn. In the hollowed top of this cairn are a number of large stones and a single orthostat, a survivor. Further on we met a member who had arrived late on her own. We were all lucky enough to see a wader up omn the headland barely a small room's length away. The bird ran along the straight edge of a shallow ? peat cutting. Must have had a nest nearby we guessed as it made several passes. Lovely little thing. Jeff and I thought it could be a dotterel. Put rwa photos on the Facebook page of the Orkney Nature Festival and had it identified as a dunlin
Labels: brochs, Castle Howe, East Holm, gloup, Greenwall, Hestakelda, Hole of The Ness, Hurtiso Hood, King of Semolie, Mass Howe, Meil House, Mound, North Cairn, Rose Ness, St Nicholas' Church, Stembister, Sundial, Tieve Well
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
ST.MARY'S TO SOUTH DAWN December 30th 2011
Took advantage of a forecast few hours without rain to go to Holm again. Coming down to St Mary's just before the turn between the road and the loch you can if you are lucky make out the Loch of Ayre broch. This is well camouflaged by grass but you can wander around inside. The archaeologists say the walls survive to five feet high but it is a little higher as standing in the centre (and other places) you cannot see over the top. Many brochs were only ever a storey high, so it strikes me as silly that one website refers to it as a "destroyed broch" along with others that survive equally well. Can't all be Mousa! Over at Skaildaquoy Point there are the remains of a Great War battery, which I only found out later. I think Skaildaquoy is probably named for skeldro 'oystercatchers', though this is simply an educated guess. There are boundaries left at this side of the village. Further along are some named 17thC houses. The storehouse by the shore doesn't look to be as big as its predecessor at the Greenwall grange. I had to get off at the edge of St Mary's as the next fare stage, the Italian Chapel, starts here and my return ticket did not include that.
East of the Churchill Barrier there was until very recently two winches and a small hut. These were all that remained of the fishery here, not big enough to have been marked thus in 1879. I imagine this got shifted to make the way clear for the road sign a few years ago. A pity. Not many metres further east there is still some kind of small machine at the base of the low cliff, possibly ?? a pump. Graemeshall has a mound or mounds beside the road. The first of these has a circular drystone structure at the highest point that looks like a well but on the first 25" is labelled Sun Dial. I think it is presently down as being the site of a flag, though if old it would have the legend Flagstaff (there are both Flagstaff and Sun Dial at Manse in East Holm), so it must have replaced the 'dial' after 1879. There has been an 'excavation' in the mound beside the road, just inside the wall, like a small rectangular sandpit but this is of recent origin. Still would like to know why it is there, however. Going up the road between the buildings the sun beams down on bands of green and yellow and brown. The yellow is the reeds/rushes lining the loch and pushing across it, the green the hillslope pastures behind. Across in the distance I saw what appeared to be the just visible prongs of a tractor where I thought the road to be. This turned out to be a pheasant racing across ! Where the road turns to Graemeshall Cottage there is a big modern shed. For some reason Pastmap places in the field here, NE of Tighsith, a record relating to the cross-slab from Graemeshall
Chapel - perhaps someone had an inkling of something but didn't want it official. The only thing I can see is a very small mound lochside, and even if this were artificial it is surely too peedie even for a private chapel. Tighsith sounds very Irish, not Orcadian at all, in which case could the second element be sidhe, the Shining Folk ?
Now the hill starts and it is only by peering over the east roadside wall that you can see the disused twin quarries belonging to East Gr[e]aves. Looking further up you can see Laughton's Knowe from which a Bronze Age razor came. This is the first of the mounds shown behind Skaill. The others are named for Hall of Gorn - on the earlier map this appears correctly as Hall of Gorm, someone later didn't see the curlicue on the 1st O.S. that makes it an em, a not uncommon occurence with flowery scripts. I'd love to associate this with the hell-hound Garmr but odds are it is the Viking personal name (there was a semi-legendary 10thC King Gorm). At Biggings you can go left and reach the main road. As it continued dry I carried on instead. Incorporated in the north wall of the entrance to Craebreck is what I have taken to be an old milestone painted white. When I first saw and photographed this back in 2006 the writing still remained fairly legible, though I couldn't work out where it related to. This time I noticed what might be a smaller version standing at a field corner before that, also marked but unpainted. How very strange to have milestones so very close to one another. The unlikeliness stood confirmed on finding another at another field corner north of the entrance. These three marked 'milestones' appear to mark Craebreck's boundaries, or at least the farmhouse grounds.
The road turns again at Mosshouse. West of here used to be a large pond and a lochan called Laird's Loch with a small islet, Lairdshill being the house north of Mosshouse. Where the map shows a well that marks the western end of the loch. From the road I think this is a high point with two pieces on top that at high magnification reveal themselves as two tall slabs on end facing one another. My guess is that these were used in bringing up water, they might even have been part of a simple wellhouse though that isn't likely here. In 1962 men laying water mains on the NW side of the road near Roma found an underground passage with possible stalls. They ended up blocking off both ends.
At the road junction I turned right and passed the old schoolhouse that is now a private dwelling. Below the place called The Loons a big marshy area used to be a millpond. Now the rain started. In front of where the Graemeshall Burn crosses the road is a mound with an almost terraced appearance. Before it has been a mystery, it looks like something prehistoric or some winding track. But now I know that this is a lade, the channel taking water to the former mill on the southern side of the road. In the sumertime the 'valley' over that side is breathtaking. There is a nice bridge crossing the burn. By now the rain had really started to fall heavily. Just left of the farmtrack to Little Millhouse you come to Becky's Well which I had hoped to photograph with my Casio digital camera. It resembles a large roadside drain composed of slabs. Unfortunately to take a picture I would have had not only to uncover the opening but then also kneel on the ground and place the camera inside the entrance. So no go this time. Fortunately I have pics from previous cameras. Despite the rain I did manage a few shots of the Holm/Clett Battery from this direction. I also took pictures of the flooded fields below Netherton, with the flooding going all the way to the roadbridge. Reaching the war memorial at the junction I was glad of the partial shelter of its walls until the rain went away.
Having already taken a few more very distant shots of the mounds below Hestakelda (the farm to the south of Hestamuir at the top of the unnamed burn) east of the geo. Though the bases seem natural enough they do draw the enquiring mind. Especially the
lower mound that has obviously had a great big scoop taken out of it at some time - mind you the barrow bagging barons of early antiquarianism would excavate any pimple even ! There was a well alongside the ravine that is not on the 1:25,000 so it's always possible this was dug out. From downhill part of the mound can put you in mind of Maes Howe, in that you have the distinct feeling there is a large door you could enter the mound by. Very evocative of something visited by folk in the past. The ravine or whatever ends at the top end of the Mass Gate track without seeming to go anywhere. I'd have to blame the rain for forgetting to look for the stone at the knee where the track meets the tarmac road so I still don't know if this survives. Missed chances. Speaking of which, thought I had a second chance to have a clear shot at a solitary pheasant when I saw a bird by itself in the middle of the field where the hill flattens, except that it turned out to be a lone cockerel. Good photo though.
Nature presented me with masses of lovely sculptured white clouds, with cloudscapes filling the horizon across the barriers. Also took a couple of pics of Skaildaquoy Point in the distance.Glad to reach the village toilets after a couple of hours walk. If I had known about the WWI battery I might have gone on to the ness on a look-see. Did think about taking the farmroad over towards the Taing of Westbank (now I know part of the St Mar's circular walk) to see new horizons and see if the camera took to them at this time. To do so I would have had to take the bus after next, but not only could I not trust the weather turning again (the gods had accomodated me enough I felt !) even more importantly my body had only signed up for the walking I had done and my legs were starting to sag. So instead home and, yes, shopping again.
Took advantage of a forecast few hours without rain to go to Holm again. Coming down to St Mary's just before the turn between the road and the loch you can if you are lucky make out the Loch of Ayre broch. This is well camouflaged by grass but you can wander around inside. The archaeologists say the walls survive to five feet high but it is a little higher as standing in the centre (and other places) you cannot see over the top. Many brochs were only ever a storey high, so it strikes me as silly that one website refers to it as a "destroyed broch" along with others that survive equally well. Can't all be Mousa! Over at Skaildaquoy Point there are the remains of a Great War battery, which I only found out later. I think Skaildaquoy is probably named for skeldro 'oystercatchers', though this is simply an educated guess. There are boundaries left at this side of the village. Further along are some named 17thC houses. The storehouse by the shore doesn't look to be as big as its predecessor at the Greenwall grange. I had to get off at the edge of St Mary's as the next fare stage, the Italian Chapel, starts here and my return ticket did not include that.
East of the Churchill Barrier there was until very recently two winches and a small hut. These were all that remained of the fishery here, not big enough to have been marked thus in 1879. I imagine this got shifted to make the way clear for the road sign a few years ago. A pity. Not many metres further east there is still some kind of small machine at the base of the low cliff, possibly ?? a pump. Graemeshall has a mound or mounds beside the road. The first of these has a circular drystone structure at the highest point that looks like a well but on the first 25" is labelled Sun Dial. I think it is presently down as being the site of a flag, though if old it would have the legend Flagstaff (there are both Flagstaff and Sun Dial at Manse in East Holm), so it must have replaced the 'dial' after 1879. There has been an 'excavation' in the mound beside the road, just inside the wall, like a small rectangular sandpit but this is of recent origin. Still would like to know why it is there, however. Going up the road between the buildings the sun beams down on bands of green and yellow and brown. The yellow is the reeds/rushes lining the loch and pushing across it, the green the hillslope pastures behind. Across in the distance I saw what appeared to be the just visible prongs of a tractor where I thought the road to be. This turned out to be a pheasant racing across ! Where the road turns to Graemeshall Cottage there is a big modern shed. For some reason Pastmap places in the field here, NE of Tighsith, a record relating to the cross-slab from Graemeshall
Chapel - perhaps someone had an inkling of something but didn't want it official. The only thing I can see is a very small mound lochside, and even if this were artificial it is surely too peedie even for a private chapel. Tighsith sounds very Irish, not Orcadian at all, in which case could the second element be sidhe, the Shining Folk ?
Now the hill starts and it is only by peering over the east roadside wall that you can see the disused twin quarries belonging to East Gr[e]aves. Looking further up you can see Laughton's Knowe from which a Bronze Age razor came. This is the first of the mounds shown behind Skaill. The others are named for Hall of Gorn - on the earlier map this appears correctly as Hall of Gorm, someone later didn't see the curlicue on the 1st O.S. that makes it an em, a not uncommon occurence with flowery scripts. I'd love to associate this with the hell-hound Garmr but odds are it is the Viking personal name (there was a semi-legendary 10thC King Gorm). At Biggings you can go left and reach the main road. As it continued dry I carried on instead. Incorporated in the north wall of the entrance to Craebreck is what I have taken to be an old milestone painted white. When I first saw and photographed this back in 2006 the writing still remained fairly legible, though I couldn't work out where it related to. This time I noticed what might be a smaller version standing at a field corner before that, also marked but unpainted. How very strange to have milestones so very close to one another. The unlikeliness stood confirmed on finding another at another field corner north of the entrance. These three marked 'milestones' appear to mark Craebreck's boundaries, or at least the farmhouse grounds.
The road turns again at Mosshouse. West of here used to be a large pond and a lochan called Laird's Loch with a small islet, Lairdshill being the house north of Mosshouse. Where the map shows a well that marks the western end of the loch. From the road I think this is a high point with two pieces on top that at high magnification reveal themselves as two tall slabs on end facing one another. My guess is that these were used in bringing up water, they might even have been part of a simple wellhouse though that isn't likely here. In 1962 men laying water mains on the NW side of the road near Roma found an underground passage with possible stalls. They ended up blocking off both ends.
At the road junction I turned right and passed the old schoolhouse that is now a private dwelling. Below the place called The Loons a big marshy area used to be a millpond. Now the rain started. In front of where the Graemeshall Burn crosses the road is a mound with an almost terraced appearance. Before it has been a mystery, it looks like something prehistoric or some winding track. But now I know that this is a lade, the channel taking water to the former mill on the southern side of the road. In the sumertime the 'valley' over that side is breathtaking. There is a nice bridge crossing the burn. By now the rain had really started to fall heavily. Just left of the farmtrack to Little Millhouse you come to Becky's Well which I had hoped to photograph with my Casio digital camera. It resembles a large roadside drain composed of slabs. Unfortunately to take a picture I would have had not only to uncover the opening but then also kneel on the ground and place the camera inside the entrance. So no go this time. Fortunately I have pics from previous cameras. Despite the rain I did manage a few shots of the Holm/Clett Battery from this direction. I also took pictures of the flooded fields below Netherton, with the flooding going all the way to the roadbridge. Reaching the war memorial at the junction I was glad of the partial shelter of its walls until the rain went away.
Having already taken a few more very distant shots of the mounds below Hestakelda (the farm to the south of Hestamuir at the top of the unnamed burn) east of the geo. Though the bases seem natural enough they do draw the enquiring mind. Especially the
lower mound that has obviously had a great big scoop taken out of it at some time - mind you the barrow bagging barons of early antiquarianism would excavate any pimple even ! There was a well alongside the ravine that is not on the 1:25,000 so it's always possible this was dug out. From downhill part of the mound can put you in mind of Maes Howe, in that you have the distinct feeling there is a large door you could enter the mound by. Very evocative of something visited by folk in the past. The ravine or whatever ends at the top end of the Mass Gate track without seeming to go anywhere. I'd have to blame the rain for forgetting to look for the stone at the knee where the track meets the tarmac road so I still don't know if this survives. Missed chances. Speaking of which, thought I had a second chance to have a clear shot at a solitary pheasant when I saw a bird by itself in the middle of the field where the hill flattens, except that it turned out to be a lone cockerel. Good photo though.
Nature presented me with masses of lovely sculptured white clouds, with cloudscapes filling the horizon across the barriers. Also took a couple of pics of Skaildaquoy Point in the distance.Glad to reach the village toilets after a couple of hours walk. If I had known about the WWI battery I might have gone on to the ness on a look-see. Did think about taking the farmroad over towards the Taing of Westbank (now I know part of the St Mar's circular walk) to see new horizons and see if the camera took to them at this time. To do so I would have had to take the bus after next, but not only could I not trust the weather turning again (the gods had accomodated me enough I felt !) even more importantly my body had only signed up for the walking I had done and my legs were starting to sag. So instead home and, yes, shopping again.
Labels: Becky's Well, Craebreck, Graemeshall, Hall of Gorm, Hestakelda, Laughton's Knowe, mill lade, Roma souterrain, Skaildaquoy Point Battery, St Mary's, Sun Dial
Saturday, December 24, 2011
EAST HOLM November 5th 2011
I took the St Margaret's Hope bus as far as the first of the Churchill Barriers. The full name of Holm parish is Holm and Paplay, and basically East Holm is Paplay 'place of the priests'. Lamb Holm (earlier Laman, perhaps as in Lamaness) is included as part of Holm. I considered crossing the barrier to have a look at the eroding ancient settlement in the low 'cliff' to see what has changed since my last 'inspection', but through the mist the tide appeared too high for safety. There is a traditional site of an RC church (quarried away) marked as by the WWII camp remains. 'Popish' can mean any pre-Reformation church so I would like it to instead be close to that settlement - there are the scant footings of a few ancient structures on the ground in the vicinity.
Turning away from the barrier I took the road that heads up to the War Memorial junction. Here is one of those marvellous places where the tide playing over the polished pebbles causes a lovely swooshing sound on the forward and backward strokes, a splendid susurru. Before the Graemes established Graemeshall the area was known as Meil 'sand'. Most likely this was for the portion of beach called the Sand of Graemeshall (though I should point out there had been a sand pit on the other side of the road and burn from Mass Howe I can't think of a fortune being made from sand in the mediaeval period). Uphill to the north there is still the large the Muir of Meil to carry on the name, but as there is a place called Hestimuir 'horse moor' I would suggest this might have been the original name of that moorland.
Crossing over the burn I see the cliff path is now, after a few additions, termed the Graemeshall Trail. At the start there is now a contrived patch of water-worn pebbles for footing but these are, as the saying has it, slippery when wet. I'm not sure they improve the grip therefore. Good job the path reverts after the pebbles! At the far end the trail turns uphill and takes you past the west end of Newark. This strait piece runs tightly between three wellsprings, and even though these are no longer running above ground it is no surprise that this part of the track was thoroughly sodden. And in between the trails beginning and end there is at least one hollow that requires careful crossing.
From the stones the path climbs slowly up. Below you is a stretch of shore whose name Bowan brings to mind Viking farm names Bu/Bow. However in this case the element bow is Orcadian for rocks breaking up waves. On the 1st 6" map has the legend saltings nearby. The mound immediately to the right is Mass Howe, which name is taken to refer to a church. The scant remains of stone on top are said to be it, except that the 1st O.S. marks the traditional site in the field behind. In any case this was most likely the Graemeshall chapel's precursor because an early work mentions as well as the parish kirk (St Nicholas') a chapel, and the parish kirk never moved. I am still of the opinion that here Mass=moss, as ecclesiastic connections give such names as maesigate/mecigate. On the north side of the field lies a track called Mass Road that bears off from the modern road a little ways up from the burn. I currently believe that the supposed mass road was to aid visitors to Hestakelda 'horse well' above. Where this old way departs from the modern road there had been a stone by the outside of the elbow - I must remember to seek it out sometime (if it remains). A possible alternate suggestion is that this is part of an antient boundary [for what it's worth NW of Newgreen (just left of the 02 on the present 1:25,000) there had been another stone next to the SE corner of the field containing a well]. The Paplay kirk has always been St Nicholas Church, explaining why the Vikings appear not to have used the broch under the graveyard there for defence.
Next along a large field contains well-preserved wartime buildings, the remains of WWII Holm Battery and Accomodation Camp and some from WWI. You come across the camp first as you enter. As the field had been trampled recently by kie I tried to tread as light as possible. There is a great variety of structure and form here, from Nissen Huts (engine houses) to underground 'bunkers' (e.g. at the far end the WWI magazine under the obs' post), in a smaller space than (say) Rerwick Head Battery. Also present are gun emplacements from both wars, some plain buildings that might have been storage shed, a fire command post and a tall building that is the battery observation post. It is the last that draws the attention, part of a tiny complex including a gun emplacement and crew quarters. Though my interest in the wars is marginal I could still have spent far longer here with my camera than the hour I did! Two twelve-pounder gun emplacements in the far bottom corner of the site are curiously connected by a sinuous open-top channel, big enough for a man to walk along in a crouch. Perhaps a protected crawlway ?? Returning I went back to the path near to where I entered. Right on the coast are several searchlight emplacements. Looking around the one virtually at the cliff edge there are two lumps of rusting machinery, one of whch looks like a winch. Then on the seaward side I saw some planks across another channel facing onto the cliffs. Even after taking the wood off for a moment I couldn't really tell if this came from the searchlight or was purely to divert a wellspring from the foundations. Put the planks back to keep animals from falling in.
When I came back I found a well-illustrated 58-page A4 spiral bound book by Jeff Dorman called "Orkney Coast Batteries 1914-18" that has all the plans for these and armament illustrations. At only £5 I was surprised that there were still copies left, but these only in Spence's newsagents rather than the publisher's outlet (the Orcadian Bookshop). In this the two putative storage sheds on another page are marked as magazine buildings I think. This is part of another, smaller, battery called Holm/Clett. But even he looks to have missed a multi-sided foundation on the end of a spur directly opposite the Tower of Clett. With the increasing interest in Orkney's fortifications it would be nice for another expert to tackle the inland wartime remnants. Personally I think a good choice for research would be the WWII radio and radar stations. they might be easier to neglect. For instance alongside what I think of as the Tradespark road, actually Heather Loan, Pastmap indicates a radio station (HY40NE 33) pointed out on a Luftwaffe reconnaisance as being behind the houses. There are some parts just protruding but the best surviving part of the 'Mayfield Cottage' radio station lies in a small field at the sharp angle junction of Heathery Loan and the Greenvale track (HY45440881), away from the main part. Another half-submerged almost bunker-like building with the barely protruding bits of something else going away from it.
In the same field is a wellspring with the Tower of Clett 'burnt mound'. But as the latter survives very low all we can be sure of is that it is a mound remnant with some burnt material in an off-centre lump. Last time I thought this lump was the entire mound. Easy to understand when no diameter is given. This time I went more carefully over the boggy ground and could feel the stones under my feet at several places around what I think is the periphery and were of seemingly different form at each place. Anyways, what the 1st O.S. shows here is simply a stream line with a watery ellipse about halfway along that looks anomalous to me at the moment. Where this meets the coast the path goes into a shallow but steep sided hollow that can trip you up by making you go too fast over obstructions that I think cover the springwater. Had a closer look at the structure at the back of the dip just outside the field [HY49480164] and cleared away the covering vegetation as much as I dared. It is cuboid, with the long side facing the cliff being over half-a-dozen courses of fractured stone. I could expose three good courses of the south end. At the north end I had previously seen one erect stone but beneath the grass I found a couple of fallen slabs, either a similarly coursed wall or fallen orthostats. There doesn't seem to have ben a front to it. As to a 'floor' all I could tell is that there is corrugated iron over something - I didn't want to get that messy! My thought was that this is the remains of a well with metal covering it when it went out of use. It seems likely that the stone came from the mound up the hillside. Close by Pastmap shows a burial Raymond Lamb found at the cliff edge, HY40SE 17 near Rami Geo at HY49480160. Alack there is no digital image and I'm not forking out for one of the photos on my money. Mystery, ah !
Along from Rami Geo facing a field junction a spur of land points to the Tower (
them. At the top a new gate lets you into the field having the sundial mound. Not what the phrase would bring to mind this, being a (?) natural mound with a stone arrangement on top. I assume some form of gnomon to have been removed in the early
20th century. Could other sundial sites on the 1st O.S. also have been of this type. In Overbrough in Harray there were two sundials marked, both associated with a church and a broch though only the church on the definite broch is pre-modern in origin. You only cross a few yards of the field before you are confronted by the recent stile that lets you up onto the main road. It is even trickier than those on the Inganess trail, like it has been made for giants. This looms before you and when you gain the top and turn it is as if the pole were a bucking bronco trying to throw you off sideways. With great trepidation I stopped myself being swung round back into the field !
Passing the Hurtiso ('Thornstein's mound') junction that takes you up to St.Andrew's parish the next juncture is at the edge of the height overlooking the rest of East Holm. This farm is Vigga from vígi 'small defensive site', that is small as compared to Castle (castali) Howe that is - for some reason the Vikings appear not to have used the broch now under St. Nicholas graveyard, unless already ecclesiastic by then. However Hugh Marwick says the meaning of the farm-name Vigga as unknown and normally vígi>wick I think. Could perhaps be an error for Bygga ? On the downhill side the boundary wall is curved. So I grew excited on seing a small niche in this. Took a couple of photos and realised later from the red lines that this is where a postbox had been !!
Just shows the value of taking pictures of everything that captures your eye at the time it captures the eye. Coming down to the church I had the opportunity to turn right onto a path to take me the rest of the way.along the cliffs. Didn't though on a short winter's day. Where the road levels the bridge carrying the road at Wester Sand is more complex than necessary for this, perhaps there has been a mill in the vicinity with the pool behind the church possibly a millpond rather than for fish as I previously thought.
Opposite the kirk is a taing called Canniesile. On the side towards me the long flat face of a stone flashed silver. Looked man-made. Then I looked across the rock and several more such stones flashed in the sun. For an instant I could imagine these as the outer edges of some antique foundations, then I realised I was seeing an illusion caused by the low sun's gleam. On the north side of the church is a chimney having two different widths set on top of one another rather than gradually aprioaching one another, topped by a fluted central pediment (I think that is right). In the top half of this side of the kirk are two tall arched recesses, half in the space of the crow-step gable and half the walls. These must have been windows but now are blocked off on the inside by earth red painted wooden panels. The vehicle gateways are framed on the way in by coursed stone which merely abuts the kirkyard wall and so is probably later. Very reminiscent of St Lawrence in Burray without the gates ! Coming through one I went around the east side to have a look at the hut by the kirkyard wall. Nothing of interest there to me. The 1st O.S. shows a well directly behind St Nicholas Church in the field. This would explain the small circular feature that lay there. Like as not this also provides a context for the artefacts that I found after the deep ploughing a few years back. Does the wall serve to mark this falling (or being pushed) into disuse ?
Heading towards Rose Ness I only went about as far as the top of the St Nicholas Manse track before turning back instead of continuing to North Howe cairn. Along the way I looked longingly at Castle Howe, a Viking fort that probably started of as a broch. It seems strange that there is not another broch on the ness itself, the nearest on Mainland being at Dingieshowe, but the seaways are guarded by the several that gave their name to the island of Burray. It lies by the other end of the narrow bay from the St Nicholas broch. You can walk along the shore and then carefully pick your way across. Other than that you can approach the seaward side along an old track. You do have to pick your way along fallen fences, however at this time what put me off was the thought of wading through sodden grass not knowing this hid and mebbe slipping a lot. From it to the road is a curving rise. This is much more obvious looking back from further along. It would be nice if this rise were part of a larger settlement. Unfortunately Orkney is one of those places where it is often difficult to divine the natural from the man-made. On the one hand Orcadians used nature's mounds as part of their monuments or for burying stuff and on the other settlements and artificial hills get taken over by nature (often buried in their turn). Ducrow looked quite nice with the smal trees protecting the front of the farmhouse. A man with a dog was looking after stock on the hillside.I thought about going to the castali from the roadside fields except that on a short day becoming engrossd there would steal time from it.
Returning to the church a road runs up from the south corner of the kirkyard wall and has two kinks before reaching the next junction. On the inside of the first kink the wall angle is filled by one of Orkney's triangular flat-topped stone piles. It has only just now struck me now that this is more than likely the Orcadian version of a stone clearance cairn. Opposite the second kink is I think the ruination of a wartime building. However if so it has subsequently become a dumping ground for the debris of other buildings. The field on the inside of this kink has been used by the water board. Only after coming back home did I find that this is the location of the Tieve Well. And the road is called Tieve Road (presumably from the well rather than vice versa). In Irish tieve means 'hillside' and you would reckon that it had been the original route to the church before the modern road from Vigga direct. But Gaelic is only suspected in the South Isles rather than a definite fact, and even there its use is doubted by most. Pity. Marwick says unknown origin but a later writer derives it from Old Norse tave 'overflowing', hence muddy or boggy ground.
At the top end of the road I turned right and went over to Upper Bu in order to gain a better view of Greenwall. Greenwall is the traditional site of a Franciscan monastery hence ?Paplay. The resemblance between the storehouse here and that in St. Mary's is because the owners of Greenwall later took over Meil (building Graemeshall there). But this is far bigger and I already wondered if it had been a tithe barn before I re-found the monastery connection with Greenwall. Upper and Nether (now Lower) Bu, nearby, were originally the Bow of Scale, Earl Erland's bu farm. The current verdict is that we should read this as 'the Bu called Skaill'. Pastmap shows a stone south of Braehead (?Fea) W of Upper Breckquoy, and two beside the road S and ESE of Upper Bu.
I wonder if these might have marked the boundary between the areas of Paplay and Grenewall ?? Later Greenwall became a grange by the inclusion of the Bow and other places. I never knew before that Orkney had granges. Coming around to the front of the relatively modernised main house I see it glowing a pale biscuit in the fading sun. The slightly off-centre doorway is a portico topped by an equilateral triangle. This is of modest size but no less impressive for that. The second floor windows start at the tip. There is a pleasing asymmetry to all the windows and the front also has a small building attached at the left. The high-sided roof covers a third floor and has a chimney either end. The two-tone effect is probably because narrower and lighter lower portion has been cleaned and repointed when the modern windows were put in. The whole frontage is awfu' bonnie.
I would like then to have gone up the tracks and peedie roads to Muckle Ocklester so that I could come down past the modern church to look for the possible features I'd glimpsed after ploughing before coming back to the Hurtiso junction. I wonder if 'Thorstein's Mound' has a connection with the Lyking Viking burial found near Upper Hurtiso or possibly even with the hood found "off the moss of Hurtiso". But the clouds meant dusk would arrive early so I instead carried straight over to Vigga. Not many metres to the north is what amounts to a small viewpoint from where you can look down on the land from St Mary's to Burray. Here I took several photos of the dying sun's rays across Holm Sound when I became aware of a lady getting out of a car behind me. As she came closer I recognised a social worker I had known. I showed her how the sun in throwing a ray of light over the sea towards us cast its dark brightness over the Italian Chapel on Lamb Holm. There being no more to be usefully done I accepted her offer of a lift back to Kirkwall where I did my shop before going home.
1) Since this walk I went again to the site of St Nicholas Chapel in Evie. Until the 18th century this was the parish church. In this I believe it took over from the Knowe of Desso (aka Denshow), where George Petrie trenched out a blue slate cross-slab. This is in the same style as the Papa Stronsay cross, which came from another chapel dedicated to St Nicholas. Add this to the Holm church and that once standing by the Round Church in Orphir, similarly dedicated parish churches, and you get a strong feeling that in Orkney [and some places elsewhere ?] a dedication to St Nicholas shows where an early (or early Viking at least) kirk had been built. Too much of a coincidence otherwise methinks !
2) The second thing I have learned since then is that what appears to be an ancient tradition of the healing properties of dew from certain places is that this is a displacement, that originally the curative was well water before this became thought superstitious. On Wideford Hill in St Ola there is a day of the year when lassies run up the hill for the first morning dew. If we look instead for a well there is only one on the whole thing. This is just near Blackhill. I knew it to be special from the first time that I saw it. A big bowl-shaped depression at HY423114 with the remains of a wall at the wellspring side (though on the 1:25,000 the W is shown further up the field edge). I think it once held more water - when the reservoir was built they initially had a problem with a leak or overflow from water elsewhere, probably explaining the pipe that has been inserted at some time.
I took the St Margaret's Hope bus as far as the first of the Churchill Barriers. The full name of Holm parish is Holm and Paplay, and basically East Holm is Paplay 'place of the priests'. Lamb Holm (earlier Laman, perhaps as in Lamaness) is included as part of Holm. I considered crossing the barrier to have a look at the eroding ancient settlement in the low 'cliff' to see what has changed since my last 'inspection', but through the mist the tide appeared too high for safety. There is a traditional site of an RC church (quarried away) marked as by the WWII camp remains. 'Popish' can mean any pre-Reformation church so I would like it to instead be close to that settlement - there are the scant footings of a few ancient structures on the ground in the vicinity.
Turning away from the barrier I took the road that heads up to the War Memorial junction. Here is one of those marvellous places where the tide playing over the polished pebbles causes a lovely swooshing sound on the forward and backward strokes, a splendid susurru. Before the Graemes established Graemeshall the area was known as Meil 'sand'. Most likely this was for the portion of beach called the Sand of Graemeshall (though I should point out there had been a sand pit on the other side of the road and burn from Mass Howe I can't think of a fortune being made from sand in the mediaeval period). Uphill to the north there is still the large the Muir of Meil to carry on the name, but as there is a place called Hestimuir 'horse moor' I would suggest this might have been the original name of that moorland.
Crossing over the burn I see the cliff path is now, after a few additions, termed the Graemeshall Trail. At the start there is now a contrived patch of water-worn pebbles for footing but these are, as the saying has it, slippery when wet. I'm not sure they improve the grip therefore. Good job the path reverts after the pebbles! At the far end the trail turns uphill and takes you past the west end of Newark. This strait piece runs tightly between three wellsprings, and even though these are no longer running above ground it is no surprise that this part of the track was thoroughly sodden. And in between the trails beginning and end there is at least one hollow that requires careful crossing.
From the stones the path climbs slowly up. Below you is a stretch of shore whose name Bowan brings to mind Viking farm names Bu/Bow. However in this case the element bow is Orcadian for rocks breaking up waves. On the 1st 6" map has the legend saltings nearby. The mound immediately to the right is Mass Howe, which name is taken to refer to a church. The scant remains of stone on top are said to be it, except that the 1st O.S. marks the traditional site in the field behind. In any case this was most likely the Graemeshall chapel's precursor because an early work mentions as well as the parish kirk (St Nicholas') a chapel, and the parish kirk never moved. I am still of the opinion that here Mass=moss, as ecclesiastic connections give such names as maesigate/mecigate. On the north side of the field lies a track called Mass Road that bears off from the modern road a little ways up from the burn. I currently believe that the supposed mass road was to aid visitors to Hestakelda 'horse well' above. Where this old way departs from the modern road there had been a stone by the outside of the elbow - I must remember to seek it out sometime (if it remains). A possible alternate suggestion is that this is part of an antient boundary [for what it's worth NW of Newgreen (just left of the 02 on the present 1:25,000) there had been another stone next to the SE corner of the field containing a well]. The Paplay kirk has always been St Nicholas Church, explaining why the Vikings appear not to have used the broch under the graveyard there for defence.
Next along a large field contains well-preserved wartime buildings, the remains of WWII Holm Battery and Accomodation Camp and some from WWI. You come across the camp first as you enter. As the field had been trampled recently by kie I tried to tread as light as possible. There is a great variety of structure and form here, from Nissen Huts (engine houses) to underground 'bunkers' (e.g. at the far end the WWI magazine under the obs' post), in a smaller space than (say) Rerwick Head Battery. Also present are gun emplacements from both wars, some plain buildings that might have been storage shed, a fire command post and a tall building that is the battery observation post. It is the last that draws the attention, part of a tiny complex including a gun emplacement and crew quarters. Though my interest in the wars is marginal I could still have spent far longer here with my camera than the hour I did! Two twelve-pounder gun emplacements in the far bottom corner of the site are curiously connected by a sinuous open-top channel, big enough for a man to walk along in a crouch. Perhaps a protected crawlway ?? Returning I went back to the path near to where I entered. Right on the coast are several searchlight emplacements. Looking around the one virtually at the cliff edge there are two lumps of rusting machinery, one of whch looks like a winch. Then on the seaward side I saw some planks across another channel facing onto the cliffs. Even after taking the wood off for a moment I couldn't really tell if this came from the searchlight or was purely to divert a wellspring from the foundations. Put the planks back to keep animals from falling in.
When I came back I found a well-illustrated 58-page A4 spiral bound book by Jeff Dorman called "Orkney Coast Batteries 1914-18" that has all the plans for these and armament illustrations. At only £5 I was surprised that there were still copies left, but these only in Spence's newsagents rather than the publisher's outlet (the Orcadian Bookshop). In this the two putative storage sheds on another page are marked as magazine buildings I think. This is part of another, smaller, battery called Holm/Clett. But even he looks to have missed a multi-sided foundation on the end of a spur directly opposite the Tower of Clett. With the increasing interest in Orkney's fortifications it would be nice for another expert to tackle the inland wartime remnants. Personally I think a good choice for research would be the WWII radio and radar stations. they might be easier to neglect. For instance alongside what I think of as the Tradespark road, actually Heather Loan, Pastmap indicates a radio station (HY40NE 33) pointed out on a Luftwaffe reconnaisance as being behind the houses. There are some parts just protruding but the best surviving part of the 'Mayfield Cottage' radio station lies in a small field at the sharp angle junction of Heathery Loan and the Greenvale track (HY45440881), away from the main part. Another half-submerged almost bunker-like building with the barely protruding bits of something else going away from it.
In the same field is a wellspring with the Tower of Clett 'burnt mound'. But as the latter survives very low all we can be sure of is that it is a mound remnant with some burnt material in an off-centre lump. Last time I thought this lump was the entire mound. Easy to understand when no diameter is given. This time I went more carefully over the boggy ground and could feel the stones under my feet at several places around what I think is the periphery and were of seemingly different form at each place. Anyways, what the 1st O.S. shows here is simply a stream line with a watery ellipse about halfway along that looks anomalous to me at the moment. Where this meets the coast the path goes into a shallow but steep sided hollow that can trip you up by making you go too fast over obstructions that I think cover the springwater. Had a closer look at the structure at the back of the dip just outside the field [HY49480164] and cleared away the covering vegetation as much as I dared. It is cuboid, with the long side facing the cliff being over half-a-dozen courses of fractured stone. I could expose three good courses of the south end. At the north end I had previously seen one erect stone but beneath the grass I found a couple of fallen slabs, either a similarly coursed wall or fallen orthostats. There doesn't seem to have ben a front to it. As to a 'floor' all I could tell is that there is corrugated iron over something - I didn't want to get that messy! My thought was that this is the remains of a well with metal covering it when it went out of use. It seems likely that the stone came from the mound up the hillside. Close by Pastmap shows a burial Raymond Lamb found at the cliff edge, HY40SE 17 near Rami Geo at HY49480160. Alack there is no digital image and I'm not forking out for one of the photos on my money. Mystery, ah !
Along from Rami Geo facing a field junction a spur of land points to the Tower (
them. At the top a new gate lets you into the field having the sundial mound. Not what the phrase would bring to mind this, being a (?) natural mound with a stone arrangement on top. I assume some form of gnomon to have been removed in the early
20th century. Could other sundial sites on the 1st O.S. also have been of this type. In Overbrough in Harray there were two sundials marked, both associated with a church and a broch though only the church on the definite broch is pre-modern in origin. You only cross a few yards of the field before you are confronted by the recent stile that lets you up onto the main road. It is even trickier than those on the Inganess trail, like it has been made for giants. This looms before you and when you gain the top and turn it is as if the pole were a bucking bronco trying to throw you off sideways. With great trepidation I stopped myself being swung round back into the field !
Passing the Hurtiso ('Thornstein's mound') junction that takes you up to St.Andrew's parish the next juncture is at the edge of the height overlooking the rest of East Holm. This farm is Vigga from vígi 'small defensive site', that is small as compared to Castle (castali) Howe that is - for some reason the Vikings appear not to have used the broch now under St. Nicholas graveyard, unless already ecclesiastic by then. However Hugh Marwick says the meaning of the farm-name Vigga as unknown and normally vígi>wick I think. Could perhaps be an error for Bygga ? On the downhill side the boundary wall is curved. So I grew excited on seing a small niche in this. Took a couple of photos and realised later from the red lines that this is where a postbox had been !!
Just shows the value of taking pictures of everything that captures your eye at the time it captures the eye. Coming down to the church I had the opportunity to turn right onto a path to take me the rest of the way.along the cliffs. Didn't though on a short winter's day. Where the road levels the bridge carrying the road at Wester Sand is more complex than necessary for this, perhaps there has been a mill in the vicinity with the pool behind the church possibly a millpond rather than for fish as I previously thought.
Opposite the kirk is a taing called Canniesile. On the side towards me the long flat face of a stone flashed silver. Looked man-made. Then I looked across the rock and several more such stones flashed in the sun. For an instant I could imagine these as the outer edges of some antique foundations, then I realised I was seeing an illusion caused by the low sun's gleam. On the north side of the church is a chimney having two different widths set on top of one another rather than gradually aprioaching one another, topped by a fluted central pediment (I think that is right). In the top half of this side of the kirk are two tall arched recesses, half in the space of the crow-step gable and half the walls. These must have been windows but now are blocked off on the inside by earth red painted wooden panels. The vehicle gateways are framed on the way in by coursed stone which merely abuts the kirkyard wall and so is probably later. Very reminiscent of St Lawrence in Burray without the gates ! Coming through one I went around the east side to have a look at the hut by the kirkyard wall. Nothing of interest there to me. The 1st O.S. shows a well directly behind St Nicholas Church in the field. This would explain the small circular feature that lay there. Like as not this also provides a context for the artefacts that I found after the deep ploughing a few years back. Does the wall serve to mark this falling (or being pushed) into disuse ?
Heading towards Rose Ness I only went about as far as the top of the St Nicholas Manse track before turning back instead of continuing to North Howe cairn. Along the way I looked longingly at Castle Howe, a Viking fort that probably started of as a broch. It seems strange that there is not another broch on the ness itself, the nearest on Mainland being at Dingieshowe, but the seaways are guarded by the several that gave their name to the island of Burray. It lies by the other end of the narrow bay from the St Nicholas broch. You can walk along the shore and then carefully pick your way across. Other than that you can approach the seaward side along an old track. You do have to pick your way along fallen fences, however at this time what put me off was the thought of wading through sodden grass not knowing this hid and mebbe slipping a lot. From it to the road is a curving rise. This is much more obvious looking back from further along. It would be nice if this rise were part of a larger settlement. Unfortunately Orkney is one of those places where it is often difficult to divine the natural from the man-made. On the one hand Orcadians used nature's mounds as part of their monuments or for burying stuff and on the other settlements and artificial hills get taken over by nature (often buried in their turn). Ducrow looked quite nice with the smal trees protecting the front of the farmhouse. A man with a dog was looking after stock on the hillside.I thought about going to the castali from the roadside fields except that on a short day becoming engrossd there would steal time from it.
Returning to the church a road runs up from the south corner of the kirkyard wall and has two kinks before reaching the next junction. On the inside of the first kink the wall angle is filled by one of Orkney's triangular flat-topped stone piles. It has only just now struck me now that this is more than likely the Orcadian version of a stone clearance cairn. Opposite the second kink is I think the ruination of a wartime building. However if so it has subsequently become a dumping ground for the debris of other buildings. The field on the inside of this kink has been used by the water board. Only after coming back home did I find that this is the location of the Tieve Well. And the road is called Tieve Road (presumably from the well rather than vice versa). In Irish tieve means 'hillside' and you would reckon that it had been the original route to the church before the modern road from Vigga direct. But Gaelic is only suspected in the South Isles rather than a definite fact, and even there its use is doubted by most. Pity. Marwick says unknown origin but a later writer derives it from Old Norse tave 'overflowing', hence muddy or boggy ground.
At the top end of the road I turned right and went over to Upper Bu in order to gain a better view of Greenwall. Greenwall is the traditional site of a Franciscan monastery hence ?Paplay. The resemblance between the storehouse here and that in St. Mary's is because the owners of Greenwall later took over Meil (building Graemeshall there). But this is far bigger and I already wondered if it had been a tithe barn before I re-found the monastery connection with Greenwall. Upper and Nether (now Lower) Bu, nearby, were originally the Bow of Scale, Earl Erland's bu farm. The current verdict is that we should read this as 'the Bu called Skaill'. Pastmap shows a stone south of Braehead (?Fea) W of Upper Breckquoy, and two beside the road S and ESE of Upper Bu.
I wonder if these might have marked the boundary between the areas of Paplay and Grenewall ?? Later Greenwall became a grange by the inclusion of the Bow and other places. I never knew before that Orkney had granges. Coming around to the front of the relatively modernised main house I see it glowing a pale biscuit in the fading sun. The slightly off-centre doorway is a portico topped by an equilateral triangle. This is of modest size but no less impressive for that. The second floor windows start at the tip. There is a pleasing asymmetry to all the windows and the front also has a small building attached at the left. The high-sided roof covers a third floor and has a chimney either end. The two-tone effect is probably because narrower and lighter lower portion has been cleaned and repointed when the modern windows were put in. The whole frontage is awfu' bonnie.
I would like then to have gone up the tracks and peedie roads to Muckle Ocklester so that I could come down past the modern church to look for the possible features I'd glimpsed after ploughing before coming back to the Hurtiso junction. I wonder if 'Thorstein's Mound' has a connection with the Lyking Viking burial found near Upper Hurtiso or possibly even with the hood found "off the moss of Hurtiso". But the clouds meant dusk would arrive early so I instead carried straight over to Vigga. Not many metres to the north is what amounts to a small viewpoint from where you can look down on the land from St Mary's to Burray. Here I took several photos of the dying sun's rays across Holm Sound when I became aware of a lady getting out of a car behind me. As she came closer I recognised a social worker I had known. I showed her how the sun in throwing a ray of light over the sea towards us cast its dark brightness over the Italian Chapel on Lamb Holm. There being no more to be usefully done I accepted her offer of a lift back to Kirkwall where I did my shop before going home.
1) Since this walk I went again to the site of St Nicholas Chapel in Evie. Until the 18th century this was the parish church. In this I believe it took over from the Knowe of Desso (aka Denshow), where George Petrie trenched out a blue slate cross-slab. This is in the same style as the Papa Stronsay cross, which came from another chapel dedicated to St Nicholas. Add this to the Holm church and that once standing by the Round Church in Orphir, similarly dedicated parish churches, and you get a strong feeling that in Orkney [and some places elsewhere ?] a dedication to St Nicholas shows where an early (or early Viking at least) kirk had been built. Too much of a coincidence otherwise methinks !
2) The second thing I have learned since then is that what appears to be an ancient tradition of the healing properties of dew from certain places is that this is a displacement, that originally the curative was well water before this became thought superstitious. On Wideford Hill in St Ola there is a day of the year when lassies run up the hill for the first morning dew. If we look instead for a well there is only one on the whole thing. This is just near Blackhill. I knew it to be special from the first time that I saw it. A big bowl-shaped depression at HY423114 with the remains of a wall at the wellspring side (though on the 1:25,000 the W is shown further up the field edge). I think it once held more water - when the reservoir was built they initially had a problem with a leak or overflow from water elsewhere, probably explaining the pipe that has been inserted at some time.
Labels: Bow of Skaill, Castle Howe, Greenwall, Grenewall, Hestakelda, Holm Battery, Lamb Holm, Mass Howe, Meil, Paplay, St Nicholas Church, Teith Well, Tower of Clett, Vigga
