Orcadian landscapes

Took the track down to the start of Binscarth. From outside the wood shining fair with only a few shadowed limbs to make shapes within the mass effect. Though it stayed daybright inside I simply followed the farmtrack winding at the upper edge of the plantation, the uneven track bordered by a ribbon of low grass and the downhill side contained by a border of thin withies. The Loch of Wasdale being the lowest I have ever seen it invited me down to the islet again. The causeway looks simply a compact line of stepping stones. Indeed the larger stone blocks are most noticeable on the shore at the landward side, even given that we can't see down to the loch bottom even here, the opposite of what you'd expect. Or perhaps the precarious nature of the way over misleads me, all those wobbles. At one point the jump takes you onto the edge of an upturned slab rather than a horizontal surface. Despite my damaged ligaments I made it over safely apart from dipping my startled foot accidentally into the loch. Of course on the way back I twisted my foot on some nothing whilst still safely on land ! My self-appointed task this time was to go to the back and take photos of this side. Standing as far out as I could and camera at its widest angle had to deal with the effect of scratches on my lens flaring. A wall section at the back of the mound is the best evidence for this having been an Iron Age structure, other places this end it is difficult to plump for either wall collapse or re-use as being the cause for features. There appears to be a perimeter going around the northern side but it seems a little straight on the ground. Seagulls apear to be nesting on the occasional islet at the loch's northern end, which archaeologists have now plumped for being purely natural (so where is the burial place that should go with the southern islet's kirk ?). On reaching the Harray Road I continued up to the Stoneyhill Road and turned onto Staney Hill. At the next junction I turned left and then left again, taking me up the other side of the field with the standing stone. A pair of skylarks kept landing in a field by me, and thought I did manage a couple of shots the out-of-focus barbed wire messed up the photo opp'. Still at least I have them on the ground to my own satisfaction. In the field to my right Henge now has the NMRS record no. HY31NW 114 with a grid reference of HY32201565. Which places it much closer to the highest point of Grimeston district than I had realised. The summit is at HY323157 and I had my eye on a very small tump there as prominent. Luck being with me by now the gate just before the first house this side lay open, and I seized the chance for a closer view. What I see is a lot more than is visible than I'd seen from the road before. Which simply affirms that before dismissing a site it is necessary to have been on it, not simply viewed from a distance, however small that distance may be. Rather than a pimple I found a slight but broad rise with noticeable topography. Ah, but from the ground I could not get enough height to take photos of what I found, my images only showed lowly bumps with a few small stones exposed even though there is enough stuff to show darkly on the aerial photo accompanying the Henge record on CANMORE. Certainly there are several types of site around here ; for instance there's Henge, the summit [I believe], Staney Hill Standing Stone (HY31NW 10 at HY31951567), then at no great distance on the eastern side of the Stoneyhill Road are 'Feolquoy' barrow (HY31NW 20 at HY31761571), a chambered long cairn (HY31NW 51 at HY3164158) and HY31NW 106 at HY318157 consisting of several stones some think either were part of a stone circle or intended to be one. Plus there is something going on with that brood sweep of large stones trailing eastwards from close by the long cairn. Stopping short of Newark I reversed direction back onto the Germiston Road. On my right a lesser road attracts my attention. The nearest building has one of those peedie bell-towers (I think that's the right term) at the far end of the roof. And before becoming a house this started off life as the Kenwood Congregational Church. An impressive tall drystane wall runs beside the road, and because the kirk sits in one corner rather than centrally it might well pre-date that. On my photos I see that the far end of the wall is in actuality a seperate segment. The corner is curved, so I wonder if this is earlier yet. All of which is pure conjecture as I continued down into Lankskaill. There are several steading buildings at Fursbreck but also the Germiston threshing mill. The mill is by the burn on the right, identifiable by a square green door on one end. Though I took pictures of several of the buildings I didn't know what I was seeing or I would have made a point of photographing the wheellpit at the side of the mill. You have to be careful using a camera near houses if you are a solitaire, so my directions were limited. Down at Vola I turned left again ansd struck out for the south leg of the Germiston Road. There are some lovely views to be had here. There are several interesting bumps at Hindatown, so it is unsurprising there are several mounds and tumuli in the vicinity of Nistaben and West Nistaben. Coming back up towards the main road I saw a long ruin to the north, which must be Stoneywoo. There were two buildings, one with its remaining end towards me and the other across my line of sight with both ends still standing. One of those ends comes with a circular structure which is most likely a corn kiln. Or that whole building was a kiln-barn. From the junction with the Harray Road the hills of Binscarth follow you down to the main road with a long line of trees even before the wood itself is reached, as if the whole hillside were wooded. Must have been a verly low tide as coming into Finstown the Ouse held my eyes, the sides of the tidal inlet very exposed.

Labels: Binscarth, Grimeston threshing mill, Henge, Kenwood Congregational Church, Staney Hill, Stoneywoo, Wasdale

Alighted at Finstown and headed off down to Binscarth Wood, a plantation like every Orcadian wood except Berriedale on Hoy. You cross into the trees where the millstream exits the wood (having started life from the southern end of the Loch of Wasdale then taken a circuitous route) but can then take a farmtrack above them if in a grand hurry - this has a copse strip running alongside for interest. Fortunately this area was dry, as it does hold a lot of moisture that somtimed turns the track to mud. In times past this wood has been turned ito an ornament by the use of wall-lined paths wending their way hither and thither, and you can still follow these in parts. Right near the beginning in a clear space next the burn a tree stump played host to several large pale mottled toadstools. These are about a handspan and I think they might be beefsteak fungus. Some were turning an inky black as they themselves decomposed after these fruiting bodies had given their all for the great mother below. Next to the stump were further fungi, the yellow of chanterelles but not stuck together, flat-capped and utterly dwarfed by an ash key beside them. Bairns and the child-like enjoy a curve in the burn you can often cross, and where there is water furniture relating to its former use as a millstream. Down here the wood is well wooded and tree limbs can make you scramble. But as I head away from the burn and uphill the top corner is almost regimented, light and airy with trees well-spaced and straight trunked. This almost ornamental stand goes back to the mansion house heyday (there was a seperate greenhouse area east of Binscarth House) as the plants are not native - on the ground beneath there are long soft cones like the tip of a pangolin's tail. Coming out of this wood there is a walled 'garden' set back below the house. When NoSAS were based at Binscarth we would chop wood gathered here, but I'm fairly sure this piece isn't open to the public so I don't go there now - I wonder if the naturalists still rent it from the guv. The track now goes between hedgerows, and since the trail became official this has become rather churned up, forming big muddy puddles after bad weather (not quite as bad as the Seatter track though). This brings you out into Wasdale, which once hosted a market of sorts. Down in the loch the islet is enchanting as ever, softly curved with an off-centre pimple and having a penumbra of water-loving grass fanned about it like the rings around Saturn. Just relised the profile is like a shield-boss, I knew there was something niggling at me. As I see it there are two ways of looking at this site's watery ring, that the vegetation-less channel about the land is due to suppression by buried stonework or that it represents a stoneless gap between the islet and buried stonework (not wide enough to be outbuildings I feel). This day the causeway is underwater as per usual. It seems to me that the farm has been better in the past - as well as the market there is a disused quarry stretched across the hillside above. I have still been unable to find a name for the steading remains sitting above the Wasdale track at the junction with that going up to Setter. The Dyke of Setter marks the boundary between Firth and Harray, the Slap of Setter being where there was a gap (in Harray only Winksetter tunship lacks slaps). My next turning point is just beyond Rosebank (which has no age to it). At the junction with the Howe road a ruin on a slight rise is is down on the NMRS as Woodwyn- it isn't named on the 25", so I would place it with Boardhouse ? What isn't on NMRS is a longer building of several parts. further east at HY32931635. I would have thought it had once beem important because rather than drystone places such as the wall corners use carefully carved stone. Possibly the stone came from somewhere else though, or an earlier structure, as its use is a little random in parts. Only one small section of roof remains in place. At the southern end is what seems to have been a kiln - a kiln barn perhaps, or another walkerhouse. I imagine the ruin I believe to be Stoneywoo would have looked like this. This ruin is seperated from Tufta by a field called Bruntquina. IIRC quina is a variant of quoys, which would give Bruntquina as 'burnt enclosure'. Tufta is (I gather) the plural of toft and meant a collection of ancient buildings. Would be nice if the ruin had been the original Tufta but it is equally close to Appiehouse. When I saw stones eposed in a mound south of it in the same field I thought I had found that Howe was named after, only a year later do I know I confused Tufta with Howe, though it is the only mound before reaching Winksetter to show likely evidence for being other than a grass-covered earthen hillock it ain't much. The level (well, kind of level) piece of my walk ended just beyond Winksetter a little further on from where you start north for the Knowes of Trotty (the seperate mounds of the barrow cemetery almost visible to the unaided eye). At this part you are several metres above the valley floor. I go to the edge of a big bend and below me see another unmarked little ruin, perhaps a shieling for a seasonal farm labourer. This bit of the farmtrack has been cut into the hillside more laterally than vertically. Coming around the corner of the bump/hillock I could see something behind and climbed up over it to investigate. There is a long mound with a stepped profile like a low-backed settee viewed from the front and a bump by one end. Unlike the nearby heathery slopes it has a covering of bright green grass. There are large stones scattered liberally on and in it, a few with square corners. When I went back nearly a year later going by the fences and walls I made it out to be roughly at HY343167 (it lies between one of each). The sceptic in me said it might be an old quarry, but though the area is peppered with disused quarries on the maps it is well away from all the quarries shown on the 1st O.S. and subsequently. Coming back I decide to extend my walk by going up the Howe road to the Lyde Road, a lovely rolling farmroad, a dark ribbon. Past Manse I turn left over to the main road. That is when my body announced my exhaustion ! The track on the other side goes around the top of the hill and can be used to avoid a tricky corner. Going down the main road there is a single-storey stone building with a slight L-shape, 18th/19thC I would guess by the small roof slabs the size of tiles. This is down as Brough smithy, HY31NW 65 at HY3197917216, described as rubble-built. The L bit at the left has a piece blocked off by red bricks. This was the access to the hearth within this gable end, which has two peedie windows and a broad chimney (this now with a strong-ish lean) as if the ground floor had been taken off of your average two-storey house. What I myself find cute is small rubble-built enclosure abutting the north end, built of stones of much more variable sizes than the smithy - and no mortar either IIRC. Must have gone down the Stoneyhill Road and across to the north leg of the Grimeston road as I took another picture of the summit (HY323157) of Grimeston tunship. This is in the same field as the standing stone. I have a feeling that what I picked out at the summit relates to the Henge site in the field across the road (now on record as HY31NW 114 at HY32201565). Still looks like a tiny tump from the road, but in April 2013 discovered this to be highly deceptive as well as it's having an even closer association with the henge (rather than simply being up high overlooking the site). Once more back onto the main road, and down the final straight to the junction, I saw again two wartime remains in the corner of a field on the east side of the road. Surely I will have snapped them from roadside before and no energy left to enter for more now. Coming to the junction there are lovely views of Bincarth's wood and hedgerows, strung out with Wideford Hill visible in the far distance. Took a couple of pics of the Bincarth Farm complex and one of the buildings I could see had a strange piece on one side with two parallel lines of horizontal slabs leaving a space as if some long large billlboard had been taken away. So a year later I made a point of examining the farm more closely and thoroughly. And then I took the bus home.

Labels: Binscarth, Brough smithy, Bruntquina, causeway, Grimeston, Henge, Staney Hill, Tufta, Wasdale in Firth, Winksetter