Orcadian landscapes

Another happy accident leads to this article. What is presently the "One Stop Shop" in School Place (I have heard from someone that the former East Church's name has changed again) started off life as a U.P. church. Opposite the junction at the top of Palace Road the former U.P. manse sits at the road corner. A couple of weeks back it positively shone in the low sun. It was over a week later that conditions were right to capture the effect. Checking up on its identity by going over CANMAP then old maps I found that there had been another manse next to King Street Church (originally a Free Church - built 1804 demolished 1892 and re-built in 1893). Only in the 2nd 25" O.S. is the Free Church Manse identified as such. Which probably explains its anonymity when pulled down in 1932. Demolishing the walls of the "building" at the corner of King Street and Mill Street the workmen found late mediaeval stonework. John Mooney said some of the carving on the red and yellow sandstone blocks resembled that on the cathedral. From the partial columns/pillars and other features he thought they had formed part of a church, probably being tombstones. One of the inscribed blocks bore the date 1615. The site is close to the Pabdale burn. Downstream is the site of St Olaf's Church. Its graveyard is now under Bridge Street. In 1901 the Reverend S. Craven wrote that cists with crouched inhumations had been found some years before. Presumably these are the skeletons mentioned in 1929 as previously dug up. In that year excavation for a drain on the West side of Bridge Street uncovered human remains hard by the site of the church. And in 1971 trench digging for a sewer brought to light a whloe skeleton and other bones. You'd think that they would have more care with their dead - and if these are merely ones left behind where did the others go ? Sometime in the seventeenth century The Ridgeway near the bottom of the King's Passage (a.k.a. the Strynd) was built as a tolbooth, a combination of town hall and gaol. In 1740 the Old Tolbooth replaced it. This site lay in front of St Magnus Cathedral, to the right as you look at it. It didn't last long either, the Earl's Palace took over its functions in 1849. Some measure of its size can be gauged from the four decades needed to clear the demolition debris fully. In 1890 they found a fragment of a tombstone in the wall. Shades of King Street. And the following year a skeleton came to light. The cathedral's graveyard wall had been erected only a few years before. Within the graveyard a well had made much of the ground swampy, so (as far as I remember) it had only recently become a suitable burial ground. So maybe there had been burials nearer the shore. Not that this or St Olaf's were the first place of the dead in Kirkwall. In 1928 the top of a red sandstone Celtic cross was found in clay subsoil when digging to extend the pavilion of the Kirkwall Bowling Club took place. Both faces were decorated and it was firmly believed to be pre-Norse. Opinion is that it came from somewhere else but this is a perfectly logical place historically. Because there is nothing to say that the cathedral was the first church on the site. Pictish kirks were often placed over brochs and in Celtic times having a burial ground at a distance from this is very much the norm for Orkney. And there is another well site at the Earl's Palace. Then again, St Duthac's Kirk at Pickaquoy has no recorded burial ground and I can't see one at Kirk Doo by the road to Head of Holland either. Still I wonder how many more places of the dead Kirkwall has had ? SOURCES USED "The Orkney Herald" ; November 12th 1890, June 17th 1891, March 6th 1929, February 3rd 1932 "The Orcadian" ; March 15th 1928 , May 20th 1971 "History of the Church in Orkney" by William Peace & Son 1901 "Kirkwall – from Norse Thing Site to Council Seat" by Dr Alex Sanmark at http://www.uhi.ac.uk/en/research-enterprise/cultural/centre-for-nordic-studies/mimirs-well-articles/kirkwall-2013-from-norse-thing-site-to-council-seat

Labels: Bridge Street, burial ground, Celtic cross, crouched inhumation, Free Church, graveyard, King Street Church, Kirkwall, mediaeval, Norse, Old Tolbooth, Pict, St Olaf, The Ridgeway, tolbooth, tombstones, U.P. Manse