Culswick Broch

Shetland, Scotland. Day 27, 25th July.

The walk out to Culswick Broch offers views along a particularly fine stretch of coastline.

I can no longer offer massive images to zoom in through since Microsoft is in the process of killing Zoom.It but this image and the fourth one expand to a larger than usual size if you click on them.

Here it is, on the top of the hill. A drawing survives from 1774 that shows it as largely intact at that time. The remains of later buildings down the slope to the right would have used stones from the broch. The same probably applies to many of the walls and ruined buildings in the first image.

A telephoto panorama with Vaila Island in the background.

Approaching the entrance of the broch, with its huge triangular lintel stone over the door. You can see that it held a commanding position, with any ships visible for many miles. It has not been excavated.

I am now standing on top of the broch. Out to the left is the Atlantic. Then there is the island of Vaila. Where I was staying for the night was behind there. The water to the right of Vaila is Vaila Sound. The peninsula to the right of that is White’s Ness, which has a small lighthouse on the end. The stretch of water to the right is Gruting Voe.

A view from inside the broch. You can see part of the entrance way but I suspect that was blocked and not the way I came in.

Looking past the broch to the coastal views.

Later that night, after dinner, here is the sunset at Burrastow.

Stanydale Temple

Sep12

Shetland, Scotland. Day 27, 25th July.

From Lerwick I drove to West Mainland and Stanydale Temple. The largest island on the Shetlands is called Mainland. This is not to be confused with Mainland, the largest island in the Orkneys, or the Scottish mainland, or the British mainland, or the Continent (the European mainland).

(Click image for larger than usual expanded image)

We are looking down from the main road near Tresta on Clunies Ross’s House and Aamos Kirk. The Clunies Ross house is the large ruins; the ruins of the kirk (or church) is inside the graveyard wall, though there may not be much left of it.

John Clunies Ross was a Scottish sea captain who settled in the Cocos Keeling Islands south west of Indonesia in 1827. The islands had been first settled by British merchant Alexander Hare in 1825 and Clunies Ross established full control in 1831. He became known as “King of Cocos” and established a kind of feudal monarchy that lasted 150 years. John died in 1854 and his son John George took over. In 1857, Britain annexed the islands by mistake; it was supposed to be a Cocos Island in the Andamans Group. In 1955 the islands became an Australian Territory and began a long period of tension between the Australian Government and the Clunies Ross Family. The islanders were paid with plastic tokens only redeemable in the Clunies Ross store. In 1978 the Australian Government bought out the Clunies Ross family and in 1984 the islands voted to integrate with Australia. By then five generations of the Clunies Ross family had reigned over the islands.

Da Aamos Kirk came with a tradition that people would bring money or gifts here when they wished something special to happen. This tradition continued at least to the 1840s, long after the kirk was demolished.

Fish farming, Weisdale Voe, from nearly the same point as the previous image.

This is Stanydale Temple, the remains of a neolithic structure that was the centre for a farming community from 3000BC to 2000BC. This is the view from the doorway. It was called a Temple when it was excavated in 1947. It is much larger than a normal house of the time but may alternatively have been a Chief’s residence or a community centre.

Here we are looking back towards the other end of the Temple, from atop the walls. The walls are thick (1.8 to 2.7 metres) to aid in insulation in winter. For the same reason, the doorway is narrow and faces away from the prevailing winds.

There are three hearths within the Temple and a number of “booths” embedded in the inside walls. The countryside was much more fertile 3,000 years ago. Some combination of over-farming, tree removal and climate change help change the soils towards peat.

Here are some small standing stones beside the Temple, which you can see in the background.

And this is what Stanydale Temple may have looked like 3,000 years ago, from an information board at the site. A lot of effort was required to build it, because the stones were not from near by.

From Stanydale Temple, I headed towards Culswick Broch. Here are some abandoned farmhouses at Gruting.

More abandoned farmhouses, also at Gruting.

This is Culswick, where I parked the car before a walk to the broch. This is not an urban area and the phone is still probably perfectly operational. Handy if the local residents need to phone a builder.

Clickimin Broch

Sep10

Shetland, Scotland. Day 27, 25th July.

Clickimin Broch is now surrounded by a suburb of Lerwick, the main town of Shetland, as you can see in this image, taken from a road at the side.

This is the path in. Originally there was an island and around the 6th or 7th century BC, a small family farm with a fence to enclose the cattle and sheep. There was a large circular farm house from around the 5th century BC. In the 4th or early 3rd century BC, the wall was enlarged as a defensive wall and a blockhouse was built

I presume the feature parallel to the path is the original stone causeway and entrance path.

The stones in front may be the remains of a small wall and gate at the end of the causeway, though with most of the stone removed over time.

This is the entrance way through the outer wall.

Just beyond the main entrance way, this is the blockhouse, originally much higher than now. The broch is behind but hidden by perspective. We will later see this blockhouse from the other side.

Rather than continuing straight through to the broch, I first walked around between the broch and the outerwalls. There are the remains of many dwellings here.

Looking back towards the broch. I think that is probably a hearth in the foreground.

The entrance of the broch, from the inside looking out.

Looking down on some of the steps within the broch, perhaps the steps from the ground floor to the first level. Not available for traverse in any case.

A view from the top. We can see remains of prehistoric houses, the outer wall, the lake and the town beyond.

The broch was built around 100AD. It was originally 12 to 15 metres high (much higher than it is now). In the second and third centuries AD the need for such fortifications reduced and a wheelhouse was constructed inside the broch.

Sometime between 500AD and the arrival of the Vikings in 800AD, the broch and surrounding dwellings were abandoned.

The stairway in the centre of the broch here is not an original feature but the stairs inside the walls are not open for use.

This is the back of the blockhouse, as seen from the top of the broch.

A couple walk past the remains of old dwellings.

Walking out through the blockhouse.

A final view from the road, looking back.

St Ninian’s Isle

Sep8

Shetland, Scotland. Day 27, 25th July 2013.

In the distance is St Ninian’s Isle. I originally hoped to stay in one of those houses overnight and perhaps get some dawn shots, but a room was not available.

The island you can see on the horizon is Fair Isle, halfway between Shetland and Orkney.

(While if you click on any image in this Blog you will see a larger one, in some cases I have been able to offer a huge image you can scroll around in. However, I can no longer create such images because Microsoft has killed its free Zoom.it service and I’m not aware of any easy alternatives. This also means 64 such images in this Blog will become unavailable in their expanded form on 15th September, in about a week).

The island is connected by a sand causeway or tombolo. The remains of a 12th century chapel are just to the right of the end of the tombolo. Older ruins lie beneath. The island may have been used as a domestic residence from the first century BC and as a Pictish burial ground from the third century AD. There are Christian burials there in a graveyard that was used up till the nineteenth century as well as earlier Pictish burials from prior to the arrival of Christianity.

Excavation in the 1958 revealed a wooden box containing a cache of twenty-eight silver objects from the 8th century, the “treasure” of St Ninians. This included bowls, weaponry and jewellery and is thought to be personal items rather than ecclesiastical.

From the view in the previous image I am now looking to the right. The strip cultivation suggests continuation of ancient forms of land tenure.

Here we look from that tiny village back towards the island and the tombolo.

If you click on the image for a larger view, you can make out a few people walking along the tombolo, which is 500 metres long.

From St Ninian’s Isle I went to Lerwick, the main town in Shetland. This is The Lodberrie, the best preserved of a series of Lodberries that used to front the Lerwick shoreline. Dating from the eighteenth century, they were merchant houses and docks for loading and unloading produce from ships. Hence the two boats in the foreground are on a stone sea ramp and the door behind opens onto the sea. The globe in the window is in context with the historical significance of the building and in the background there is a seabird in flight and a Viking galley. You can pay to go for a row in that galley if you’re there at the right time.

Mousa Broch

Sep5

Shetland, Scotland. Day 26 to 27, 24th to 25th July.

I flew from Orkney to Shetland in the late afternoon, picked up a rental car and headed off to my accommodation for the night. After finding a place for a bite to eat, I headed for Sandwick for a night-time voyage to Mousa Broch. The purpose of this trip for most people was to observe the storm petrels returning to the broch. For myself, it was mainly to photograph the broch by moonlight as it was just past a full moon that night.

All of these photographs were taken in darkness and this was a 15 second exposure. The sun had set at 10pm and the boat left at 11pm. These images were taken in the two hours after that. The main light source is moonlight and it is so far north that there is still some residual light after dark in summer (“the simmer dim”).

There are no people in this image. We had stopped for a talk and I took advantage of that to make an exposure before the people arrived.

Moonlight is actually the same colour as daylight though we see it differently because in very low light we use our rods rather than our cones. Exposures range from ½ second to fifteen seconds. I could have processed these images to look as bright as full daylight but that is not how it was.

A little bit later, there are now people around the broch.

Mousa Broch is the largest and most complete broch of them all, around 2,000 years old, and still stands to a height of 13 metres. It is thought that this is close to the original height.

There is an account of this broch in the Orkneyinga Saga. Erlend the Young had requested marriage to Earl Harald Maddadarson’s mother Margaret and been refused so he kidnapped her and they eloped from Orkney to Mousa Broch in Shetland. Harald pursued them and beseiged the broch but found it impossible to attack and it was evidently well enough provisioned to withstand the seige. Erlend then persuaded Harald to accept the marriage in exchange for his support, which Harald might come to need in likely conflicts with the other two Earls, so they reconciled and sailed off together. This would have been in 1156 so the broch would have probably been over a thousand years old at the time.

The inside is now an empty shell but there were originally five floors. The light at the top is the moonlight seeping in; the light at the bottom is torchlight. We were instructed to use red beams, less disturbing I think for the petrels.

The walls are very thick. At its base it is 15 metres in diameter but inside, as we are here, it is only 6 metres in diameter.

The base of the broch is solid, from four metres up there are two walls with a circular staircase between them. There is a steel grid covering the top of the broch so no children fall in from the top. What you see in the sky is the moon, not the sun.

Here people are using their torches to try to detect the petrels as they return to their nests.

The petrels are small and very fast. They have been out fishing by day and return under cover of darkness to the chicks in their nests so they can evade predators. The nests are in the cracks between the stones of the drystone walls of the broch.

There are moving people on the right and at the left a still person casting a light on the broch. Here there is also the shadow of a bird on the broch. You won’t be able to see it even if you click for a larger web image so I’ll show you a blow-up section.

The shadow is easy to see; it’s diagonal with one wing dipping into the red patch of the torchlight. The bird is visible too. You can see one wing better than the other though it’s clearer if you click on the image for a larger view. It’s about halfway between the torch and the shadow and there is a white flash from its tail feathers.

It took me a while to work out what has happened here. It’s a long exposure so the figures of the other people are blurred. The birds are very fast but here is one and its shadow in focus. The person by the broch must be holding a camera as well as a torch. The torch is the red light. The white light is the flash which just happened to go off during my exposure.

Orkney Monochromes

Sep3

Orkney, Scotland. Days 23 to 26, 21st to 24th July 2013

These are some monochrome conversions of images that I have posted in colour in other Orkney posts:

Earl’s Castle, Kirkwall

The Gloup, Deerness

The Stones of Stenness

Farm buildings near the Stones of Stenness

Broch of Gurness

The Between Room, Earl’s Palace Kirkwall

Bishop’s Palace, Kirkwall

The Round Church of Orphir

The Ring of Brodgar

The Stones of Stenness

The sign says it all

Abandoned Farmhouse near Dounby Click Mill

House # 1, Skara Brae

Derelict Farm Shed, Tingwall

Tingwall

Corrigal Farm Museum

Stromness

Unstan Neolithic Chambered Cairn

Sep1

Orkney, Scotland. Day 26, 24th July.

Just outside Stromness I saw a signpost to this cairn, a short distance off the road, that I was not previously aware of. I had a plane to catch but I still had time to investigate….

Outside, the tomb is an oval grass mound. After crawling in through a tunnel entrance (lower right corner of the image) and looking to the right, we see this view. The tomb probably dates to between 2800BC and 3200BC. It was excavated in 1884 and 1934 and the concrete roof and skylight was added in 1934.

This is the entrance to a small side cell. Two crouched skeletons were found in this cell during the 1884 excavations. These probably date to a later period because it was not the usual method of neolithic burial in such cairns.

First the bodies were left out in the open until there were only bones left. Then the bones were deposited in the cairn but not by keeping the skeleton together. They could be randomly arrayed or in some cases similar bones stacked together. There were many such bones inside this cairn.

At the left corner of the lintel above the side entrance is a carving of a diving bird and what may be some runes. I can also see the body and head of a larger bird behind the diving bird. It may just be my imagination though. It is not known whether these are of great antiquity or relatively recent origin.

This is at the right-hand end of the tomb from the entrance way. There was originally a shelf at each end (presumably to hold bones) but the stones for this are no longer in evidence.

The stone on the left unfortunately has a lot of graffiti and not from the Vikings. Dates I can see are 1901, 1890, 1857 and 1891.

Turning around, this is looking to the other end of the tomb. There were many pots found in this tomb in 1884, finely made neolithic bowls some of which had grooved patterning below the rim. The cairn gave its name to this pottery which is known as Unstan ware. There is another type, grooved ware, which some suggest evolved from Unstan ware but they are mainly found on different islands in the Orkneys so it may be there were two groups of people living here.

The other end of the cairn, with the entrance passageway again on the left.

From the information board at the site, this is how the cairn may have looked when it was under construction.

Bibliography for Orkney:

Orkney by Patrick Bailey

The Other British Isles by David W Moore

Orkneyinga Saga

Orkneyjar web site.

Stromness

Aug30

Orkney, Scotland. Day 26, 24th July.

I had a plane to catch to Shetland that afternoon but I still had a few hours to spare so I decided to go to Stromness and see whether I could find a cafe.

Stromness is the second largest town in Orkney with about 3,000 people.

It is the terminal for the vehicular ferry from Scrabster on the Scottish mainland and there is also a ferry from here to the island of Hoy.

Stromness is essentially a Napoleonic War boom town. During that period the Channel became dangerous for shipping so many ships went all the way round past the north of Scotland instead. Stromness was developed as a convenient stopping place along the way. Consequently, though there would have been a small port here before then, most of the houses are from that period.

Corrigal Farm Museum

Aug28

Orkney, Scotland. Day 26, 24th July.

From Tingwall I drove to Corrigal Farm Museum. It is described in some of the Orkney web sites as an intact nineteenth century farmhouse but it is much more than that. For one thing there is a broch nearby and the area has been farmed since neolithic times. For another, the farmhouse itself is an Orkney adaption of a Viking longhouse, so perhaps it even started as one.

And here is the office and behind it to the left, the museum.

Going past the office, here is a collection of old ploughs and farm machinery arrayed on the lawn. The actual museum is the second building and the entrance to it is the first door in the distance. I didn’t take a closer shot of the building from this side so I’ll talk about it here. Also known as a but and ben house, there are a series of rooms along its length. First is the ben or bedroom, then the but or kitchen/ living room. There is a door between these two rooms and the rest of the house to prevent unwanted access by animals. Next there may be a byre (for cattle) and a stable (for horses), then a grain preparation area and finally a kiln for drying the grain. Some young animals or animals in special need of attention might also reside for a while in the but.

Here is a space between the two buildings where peat is stored, for use in burning on fires.

This is the ben or bedroom. The structure behind is a cupboard or wardrobe but the structure in front is a box bed.

This is the but or living area, and probably some bread simmering over the fire.

This is a trap for some small animal, I don’t remember what, but it looks very similar to traps I would later see in Greenland that the precursors of the Inuit set for foxes.

A loom.

A rather elegant-looking cart.

Stacked piles of dried peat for the fire.

Threshing machines.

A small hand grinder on the right and it must be the furnace for the kiln on the left.

Looking through to the kiln.

And finally, a view of the farmhouse, looking back from the outside.

Tingwall

Aug25

Orkney, Scotland. Days 26, 24th July.

I arrived in Tingwall hoping to have time to catch a ferry to the Broch of Midhowe on Rousay but I think I had misread the ferry timetables and this was not to be.

The name Tingwall indicates there was a Thing here, a local Viking Parliament. This is probably the Thing where Earl Haakon and Earl Magnus agreed to the fateful meeting on Egilsay where Magnus was killed. The Thing was probably at a mound near where the pier now is. This is believed to conceal a broch but I was not aware of this at the time so did not photograph it.

Here we have the Tingwall Weather Forecasting Stone, a form of weather forecasting that may have been in use since the neolithic. The green building at the left is probably the local Meteorological Bureau.

You could click on the image to read the sign but since not many seem to do that, I’ll tell you what it says:

Forecast: Condition
Stone is wet: Raining
Stone is dry: Not raining
Shadow on ground: Sunny
White on top: Snow
Can’t see stone: Foggy
Stone is swinging: Windy
Stone gone: Jimmy Tulloch pinched it.

And once again, we have an assortment of fetching dwellings, mostly with sea views, that you might be able to get for a very cheap rent if you get on well enough with the local farmer.

I think this was a trailer for a boat.

Massive slabs on the roof.

I’d say that car has been waiting for the ferry for a long time.

Murray Foote

Tag Archives: Scotland

Culswick Broch

Stanydale Temple

Clickimin Broch

St Ninian’s Isle

Mousa Broch

Orkney Monochromes

Unstan Neolithic Chambered Cairn

Stromness

Corrigal Farm Museum

Tingwall