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

To save a little time, and perform last August's journey with several reversals, I took the bus to the Harray Road junction. Today's walk I undertook in order to confirm my memory of a couple of things I saw walking the farmroad to Winksetter back then as well as place them more firmly on my map [good job because I had confused two completely different ruins !]. The bog cotton has put on a magnificent display this year. Starting at the Harray junction I could have happily spent several hours simply photographing all the clumps and swathes whitening the countryside with their glossy heads. And then there were the other blooms. Throughout my travel I saw several different species in combinations such that I could go on to take pics of several 'pairings' at each place after snapping the initial grouping. The first patch lay on the verge ; orchids, daisies, trefoil, kidney vetch and buttercups. Ragged Robin pierced the bog cotton with its pink ribbons sometimes. The WWII structures came further up the Harray Road than I thought, having remembered them as much nearer the stuff by the junction whereas actually they are near the southern end of the Grimeston Road, opposite Duntroon. They're still standing several courses high. There is still no record for them, but knowing their whereabouts I can read their locations from CANMAP as being at HY33741431 and 33801439, by the north side of the track show running around the southern end of the loch and up to the farmtrack. At the crossroads with the Stoneyhill Road instead of going straight over the Howe road to Winksetter I reversed last August journey by continuing up the Harray Road then turning right onto the Lyde road and thence down the Manse Road to reach Howe and Geroin. Where this straightens out looking to the east I could clearly see what had been a fairly broad farmtrack running through a roadside field alongside the northern fieldwall. It presents like an old farmroad but comes to a halt where it meets other fields at a tear-shaped enclosure. On the map it points meannglessly north of Trattlaquoy, but then I remember the mound I found where the Trattlaquoy road meets the Lyde Road, and that seems a likely fit for a terminus whatever it used to be. From modern Nettletar about half to two-thirds of the way to the Geroin farmtrack if you look NW of road to about halfway between that and Burn of Nettleton there is a cist site, HY31NW 109 at HY3283017460, which contained a crouched inhumation with a calibrated date of 3030~2620. Continuing this line quickly brings you to another cist site, HY31NW 102 at HY32881751, on the southern side of a hillock - one can imagine that this grassy knoll once extended as far as the first cist. The 2004 excavation found the second cist to be made up of four interconnected side slabs with horizontal base slabs at the centre. This dates later, to the Bronze Age (calibrated dates of 1880~1690 and 1740~1530). On the central floor they found copper-alloy, burnt bone and pottery. Where the road bends again a short track leads to Geroin Cottage - in "Harray - Orkney's Inland Parish" the Germiston tunship map places the Fa'an Stane O'How's position prior to break up and removal at the point of the field below the cottage i.e. HY33151705. A track by the western fieldwall goes to the point (and there is/was a nearby well/wellspring, which may be a connection with the stone). I had hoped to find another candidate for the mound Howe had been named for but coming from this direction there are so many possible mounds either side of the road and nothing to the undulating landscape that looks other than natural. Some rain came to try dampen my spirits. I had opted to take a packamac (rather than my nowadays uncloseable lightest jacket). Which kept the water out only to hold the heat in ! At least full blazing sun never came out this day. Still tempting to cut my walk short at the next junction. However I can be unbelievably stubborn and needed to place things accurately so I didn't make a major boo-boo in the blog. When the showers finally left I then 'hit' clouds of midges, my flailing hands mostly to no account. Became even worse when I turned right at the junction, not stopping until almost at the farm. In a field south of the road are the remains of a large quarry. On the opposite side of the farmtrack a field at HY338167 is associated with the names Howinawheel and Howinalinda in the Harray book. The first element appears to denote a larger mound like the sixty-footer Howana Gruna. Wheel could refer to resting e.g. the pausing of a funeral cortege or a herders rest. Howinalidna, Heuon a Lidna in the 1790's, means 'mound in the slope'. Which is a pity as I can see at least three suspect bumps in the field, no hill-slope in my sight. This hasn't always been a rectilinear field - in the earlier maps a very roughly circular piece of land is shown instead. Could it be that rather than being the name of a mound Howina-wheel refers to a circular enclosure containing Howinalidna ? For some reason my memory had placed my putative unrecorded Winksetter mound where the quarry is, rather than at HY343167 behind Winksetter. This is oh so not a quarry, there are oodles of these depicted on the maps elsewhere and none of them anywhere near - all I could find nearby having been a small triangular body of water. This is a very busy area archaeologically, one of dozens on Orkney Mainland. From the modern buildings look south to the earlier Winksetter and then some 200 yards to the east of that Howan mound (HY31NW 17 at HY34211652) sits at ~250' OD close to the W end of a prominent ridge. The barrow's grass covers an earthen mound mixed with small stones. Before parts were removed (at the end of the 19thC or start of the 20th) this tumulus was much bigger than its present 39'D and 2.5-3' height. 250-300 yards SW of the farmhouse used to be a very large burnt mound, HY31NW 21, with a bit of a hollow on one side. It sat in a field corner with a dyke running across it and in tight association with a well at its SW side. Of course burnt materials do not only a burnt mound make, pity we don't know what they were. Roughly 500 yards east of Winksetter two mounds 12~15' are reported close together on the hill (and that is all that is known of them). Yet further away there might be settlement remains, HY31NW 19, on a piece of marshy ground periodically damp enough to be called the Loch of Shunan [not to be confused with The Shunan, a full-time loch further north]. The original report is that the scant remains of a stone structure at the foot of a hill were spread over a large area, with flint arrowheads and tools found on adjacent lands. The only stones now found, at HY34191610, don't resemble anything (they are "on a slight eminence" anyway). Going north of the track I was on the south outlier of Knowes of Trotty is no great distance away.at HY34201727 . Having placed 'my' mound on the map as best I could I turned around to head straight back. I thought I would quickly draw level with a couple coming back from the Knowes of Trotty barrow cemetery. Then Flora called. Several more of those flower groupings, only in miniature. Cinquefoil dominated, then tiny white cross-shaped flowers and almost equally small pale purple flowers with light violet honey-guides and stamens like long eyelashes (a speedwell ?). Spent some time trying for the right shots. On the way back to the Harray Road located and placed on the map the kiln-barn and adjacent mound (HY32931635 and HY330163). Wonder if Bruntquina 'burnt enclosure' field is a reference to (what had been) the 'collection of ancient buildings' that Tufta next door owed its name to. Thought about following the Tufta road up around but opted for the straight deal instead - enough excitement for one day, uncertain weather etc. Tempted to have another peek at the high point of Germiston. Thought I could add nothing more. Only afterwards, on using CANMAP another time, did I find that Henge now has an NMRS record and an aerial view that shows it to be further upfield than I realised, so that rather than the summit looking westwards over Henge it is almost directly due east !! Because both features are visible. Germiston top is a rough irregular oval whilst Henge is an almost too perfect circle delineated by bright arcs (?water). The photo shows Henge perimeter clipped by the road, but before this road a track ran through the circle. Is it a coincidence that the Sandwick Road formerly ran through the Ring of Brodgar or could there have been a reason to drive animals this way, a fireless Beltane ?? Archaeological research has no finality. Down at the Refuge junction I turned off into Wasdale. The Slap of Setter was the opening in the boundary dyke seperating Firth from Harray and there are a few interesting erect stones both sides of the road until you get to the end of the Seatter farmroad. Still can't find a name for the ruin at the junction, most annoying. Birds pleeping at me as I neared the loch shore, then one perched on a nearby post. Thought this an over-sized plover at first but soon realsed that it wasnae - something about the beak. Later worked out it were a sandpiper, but even a bird book stuffed full of photos couldn't help me narrow it down and no-one on Orkney Live has said owt. The good thing about the nesting season is that as I walked along the sandpiper let me get quite close before flying off a few more posts away. In fact this was a pair of birds - mostly one parent flirting with me on the roadside fence whilst another one held the shore. Continued in this fashion for a fair while before they left me alone. It seemed to me that the islet was the most exposed I had ever seen it. Remembering that an archaeologist reckoned on there having been an 'apron' it suddenly occured to me that perhaps causeways and 'aprons' go together the way that a broch tower entrance and its guard-cells do. Looking at a photo later the face of a stone in the causeway looked to have moulding. Next photo showed several more, but appearing more geological in appearance, thin strata layers. Not the kind of stones I have come across in Orkney if they are. So are they natural and brought here or are they from the former kirk on the island. Please, oh pretty please. A gate sits across the next bit of track but the large stone block at the wall end is above this. Obviously meant for a larger, perhaps more ornamental, gate, but could have been re-used from another place it seems to me. Took a few more pictures of the Howe Harper cairn on the hillside above. Still of the opinion that where it is and how it sits very like Cuween or Whiteford Hill tombs. Probably someone else thought that too, hence the ? excavation scar. Though the trail is still deeply rutted at least today the water did not fill them in. Below the low trees there were beautifully underlit clumps of fern with a topping of sunlight. Didn't go through the wood as I had to confirm that there are no signs to prohibit vehicles parking at this end when kie occupy the field by the other. There aren't. Just be sensible. Anyways the farm is a very interesting mix of styles and structiures. From this direction the first thing that hits you is a blue-tinged corrugated iron pyramidion topping a square tower with doorways (I take it) top and bottom. Come to the top of the road and there is another such structure without the blue hue. At the top this one has a small window or slide surmounted by a decorative slab arch. Then comes the long building I noticed before. Below the eaves are two rows of projecting horizontal slabs. Central to these is a blocked-off window, the thin slabs at its bottom 'breaking into' the lower row and having an extra-long lintel across the top. Below all these is a large sliding wood door. Downhill has more normal window spaces and doorways.The downhill end forms part of the entrance into the farm. The end of this building has a a big wide round arched doorway with damn thick walls. And above an oriel window. First thought is stables. The other side of the entrance is a smaller building with a hgh hipped corner which, IIRC, makes it easier for carriages to turn round. Eighteenth or nineteenth century I'd hazard. These are only some of the buildings here. Having taken the edge off my curiosity I continued to the main road and turned left. I reached the bus shelter opposite Baikie's Stores with time to spare.

Labels: Binscarth, Bruntquina, cist, Fa'an Stane O'How, Geroin, Henge, Howan, Howe Harper, Howinalidna, Howinawheel, Loch of Shunan, Trattlaquoy, 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