A city layered in time

At the Cathedral’s 850th anniversary in 1987, a torchlight procession was held through the streets of Kirkwall. With the streetlights off, the upward light showed the detail of old stonework, long unnoticed, and it was like walking back into another time. There is this same feeling in Bryce Wilson’s superb new book.

From now on when I walk up the Strynd I will remember the name ‘The King’s Passage’ – from the 1785 visit of the future King William IV when serving in the Royal Navy. After seeing Kirkwall’s sights, he went up the Strynd to visit an old shipmate, John Traill, Captain of Marines, and spent an hour with the family.

The Town Hall gets an added dimension when we learn it was built by the same man who constructed the East Kirk and the terraced houses of East Road and Dundas Crescent. This was Samuel Baikie, half-brother of William Balfour Baikie who explored the River Niger. Their father, Captain John Baikie, served in the Napoleonic Wars and on retirement opened Kirkwall’s first bank. His house is today’s Royal Bank of Scotland. Sir John Franklin’s niece, Sophia Cracroft, visited and much enjoyed the strawberries for supper.

Trade flows through Kirkwall’s history, starting from the first Earl Rognvald, who built a hall near the harbour. His uncle, Thorfinn, moved power to Birsay, but in a later generation a second Rognvald took Kirkwall to new heights by building a cathedral. The book carries the story along in a fine flow, with a rich tapestry of people, events and places. We follow the church built by the first Rognvald, dedicated to St Olaf, as it falls into disuse and eventually becomes a poorhouse, with St Olaf’s Wynd the Poorhoose Close. Remarkably, it survived into the late 1950s, when the Aberdeen Savings Bank, who owned the building, demolished it for a Bank House extension. The archway we see today was saved by the County Librarian, Evan MacGillivray.

There are many memorable stories. We hear how one night in 1732 Sir James Sinclair of Mey, kept in the Tolbooth for six years for debt, was taken out by the Kirkwall Magistrates to, as the record notes, ‘enjoy an evening’s sociality in a private dwelling”. We hear of the Town Crier who was also the Town Piper, “marching to the skirl of his pipes before 6 a.m. to rouse the sleeping workers”; and how the Piper’s House on Anchor Close became the premises of Flett & Sons who developed in the 19th century as seedsmen and general merchants. We follow nine centuries of culture, from the music in Rognvald’s cathedral to the founding of the St Magnus Festival, and along the way people like the great engraver Sir Robert Strange. 

The Lang Gutter and the Lang Stean, the Ivy Hoose and the Oily Hoose, the Keelies and the Laverock, the Papdale Burn with two corn mills, a snuff mill and two distilleries … all are blended together with poetic descriptions from Robert Rendall and George Mackay Brown and Christina Costie,  and a glorious collection of paintings that draw you in to a past world. It has the ideal introduction from Kim Twatt, and it is rounded off by Bruce Gorie’s records of archaeological digs and discoveries, Alison Miller’s memories of a Kirkwall childhood, and Lorraine Bruce’s wonderful picture of the Fatty Cutty Sweepstake as the runners gather at the foot of the Strynd to race to Shearer’s for the Thursday delivery of fatty cutties from Westray. It is all brought together by Bryce Wilson’s wealth of knowledge and understanding, with every page opening a fresh window in time, a continuing source of delight to return to again and again.

From The Orcadian of 31 October 2024. The book Kirkwall: a history by Bryce Wilson is published by The Orcadian Limited (The Kirkwall Press) and available from all good bookshops including The Orcadian Bookshop, 14 Albert Street, Kirkwall, priced £23.99.