Shetland, Scotland. Day 28, 26th July.

It was a wet day so I stayed in my room for some hours processing images until the weather began to clear.  Then I headed for Scalloway Castle.

En route, I went to Lerwick where I visited the museum.  I also briefly stopped to take a couple of images there.  This is a different lodberry (eighteenth century warehouse/ wharf) to the one at the end of the St Ninian’s Isle post, with the Viking galley still in the background.

 

Boats at moorings in Lerwick.

 

Less than ten kilometres away is Scalloway and this is Scalloway Castle.  We have previously encountered Earl Robert Stewart, bastard half-brother of Mary Queen of Scots in the post on Birsay and his son Earl Patrick Stewart in the post on Earl’s Palace, Kirkwall.  Scalloway Castle was built by Earl Patrick Stewart as his residence in Shetland from 1599 to 1604.

 

There were originally also various outbuildings, courtyards and enclosed gardens.  The main building was originally four stories high.

 

This was probably originally a ground floor office

 

This was originally the kitchen (also on the ground floor).

 

A corridor, probably on the first or second floor.

 

This is the Main Hall.  There was another story above the floor here.  By 1701 the slate tiles had started to fall off and the roof beams were decaying.  In 1908 the ruined castle came under State ownership.

 

This is how the Main Hall may have looked at the time, from an information board at the site.  The walls were plastered and hung with tapestries.  There were also many large open fires to maintain warmth, extravagant no doubt in a land with little or no wood unless they used turf, dung or peat.

 

This is a chamber or bedroom.  There was another, including a toilet, on the floor above.

 

Looking down a castle stairwell.

 

And this is Hamnavoe, on the island of West Burra a few kilometres south.

 

I’m not sure exactly where this is but it must be in West Burra or East Burra, not very far from Hamnavoe.  I might have gone for a walk in the countryside near here but the weather did not encourage it.