Archives

I was going to write about food security again, but the piece I ended up with was so depressing that it kept me awake at night worrying about the situation. I therefore decided to give the subject a rest for a bit and try something quite different. I have always been fond of books and reading; when I was a child they called me a bookworm. At the moment there seems to be a lot of interest in reading and books in the news, and I remembered a delightful book I discovered a few years ago: “Blurb Your Enthusiasm: an A-Z of Literary Persuasion" by Louise Wilder (2022). The author was a professional writer of copy for book jackets. She had to hook a potential reader's interest in 150 or so words, describing what the book was about without giving away the ending. She was clearly extremely good at it. I like very short pieces of prose, or indeed poetry like haiku, where the writer can say something important or beautiful in the fewest possible well-chosen words. At the time, I tried writing a few blurbs for some of my favourite books, just for fun (I'm not claiming my efforts were any good, mind you). I decided that books might be a more cheerful subject for the time being, so here they are: some of my favourite books. I do recommend them.

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austin (1813) (Of course)

Five sisters, whose nearest male relative is a distant cousin, desperately try to find themselves husbands before their father dies and leaves them in poverty. Under 19^th century English law an entailed family estate could not be inherited by a daughter, and upper-class girls had very little chance of earning a respectable living. Elizabeth Bennet’s beautiful dark eyes and sparkling wit as she dances her way through her own and her sisters’ courtship mask this harsh reality.

2. Martial’s Epigrams (CE 86 – 103) translation James Michie, Penguin Classics

Very short poems by a right-wing Roman misogynist, ranging from the pastoral through the risqué to the absolutely obscene. You have to admit that they are clever, even while you cringe.

3. The Pride of Chanur – C.J.Cherryh

What is it doing?

How do you talk to a life form whose brain is wired up so differently that its behaviour is incomprehensible?

Is it a he or a she? Or both? Or something else?

This and other questions are explored in this description of half a dozen species trying to interact in intergalactic space when they all have different languages, different cultures and different agendas.  (And some of them have six parallel brains). With a neat illustration of sexism thrown in.

4. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins (1859 – 60)

A young Victorian woman with money but no effective male protector is the victim of a particularly hideous form of identity theft.  Feel the fascination of the most delicious villain in literature as he winds her and her friends in his toils! Can the hero rescue her and foil the dastardly plot?

5. The Influential Mind – Tali Sharot (2017)

A manual by a well-qualified neuropsychologist on the unethical practice of using the latest scientific techniques to manipulate people. If you want to know why you are frittering your money away on things you don’t need, or voting for a government that is going to make your life hideous, this is the book for you.

6. The Kingis Quair (the King’s book) – James I of Scotland (15^th century)

It's springtime, and a captive Renaissance prince falls in love at first sight through the castle window. Patchy, but the good bits are well worth searching for. Oh, and you will have to look up some of the words, it’s written in Early Scots. But they are rather beautiful words and images.

7. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley (1932)

Do you want to see the world that modern politics is leading us to? Here it is. Children brainwashed into being compliant citizens as they sleep, recreational drugs to keep people docile provided by the state, humans beings bred in bottles to fill specific jobs – the perfect capitalist society.

8. Come, Tell me How You Live – Agatha Christie Mallowan (1946)

Gentle nostalgia – I just caught the very end of this era. British archaeology abroad seventy-nine years ago, when surveying was done with theodolites and photography meant spending hours in an improvised darkroom in an atmosphere of noxious chemicals. Archaeologists had to make the effort to learn the local languages because English had not yet spread worldwide, and it was accepted that you would spend at least a few days rushing between a stifling tent and a hole in the ground because of the local stomach bug. But the thrill of finding a small piece of brightly-coloured pottery at the bottom of a deep hole remains the same today.

(9) Dryden’s Translation of Virgil’s Aeneid  (1697)

Publius Vergilius Maro (70 BCE – 19 BCE), commonly known as Virgil, celebrates the destiny of Rome to rule the known world (and the divinity of the emperor Augustus) in this epic poem. A thrilling tale with plenty of battles, shipwrecks, gods and goddesses, and a trip to the Underworld, although the hero is rather nauseating. I suppose it shows me up as a total low-brow, but having been forced to read it in the original for a public exam, I would say that Dryden’s exquisite poetic style is much better than the original Latin.

(10) The Angry Chef – Anthony Warner (2017)

Or how not to be influenced by influencers, and it doesn’t just apply to trendy diets.  Anthony Warner, a biochemist turned chef, debunks many of the current wellness diets, providing a screamingly funny template for the influencers’ personal profiles. However, his message can apply to many other areas of pseudoscience as well. It does require the reading level of the average Guardian reader, especially the chapter on coconut oil and fatty acids (perhaps that’s just me) but it explains some useful scientific principles quite clearly. Anyone who did not get a biology A-level/Advanced Higher should get a copy at once.

I could suggest many more, but I think that's enough for now. Have fun!

For the last two years, I have been learning a lot of new words. Some of these I have learned by choice, as in my German lessons, or my pathetic attempts to learn how to transliterate 17^th century Scottish manuscripts. And some of them, such as ‘MPAN’, I had to learn to ensure my household electricity supply.

Dear Reader, have you ever heard of an MPAN? Do you have the faintest idea what it is? No, nor did I until about eighteen months ago. I have had to find out as a direct result of the RTS switchoff. The Radio Teleswitch Service (RTS) was a long wave radio signal, which was used to control the times at which household electricity meters switched on certain domestic equipment like storage radiators, to take advantage of off-peak (cheap rate) electricity. It has operated since the 1980s. The signal is being phased out from the end of June 2025 because the equipment is outdated and the parts are no longer available if something wears out.

The discontinuation of the signal means that anybody who uses off-peak electricity for something vital like storage heaters has had to get a smart meter. The smart meter sends a signal to switch on the electricity supply to your storage radiators, hot water heaters etc. Your electricity provider has a number of ‘codes’ which can be applied to your account to set the times of day when the cheap rate is in operation at your home. The meter also transmits readings automatically to your electricity provider which are used to generate your bill. As far as I can understand, it uses cell phone technology in central and southern England, and long-range radio technology in the north including Scotland. It does so via a Data Communications Company server which passes it on to your electricity provider. I have only just found out that when I pay my electricity bill I am not only paying my provider plus SSEN who own the cables and substations, but this communications company which transmits the signal.

It took me months to find all this out, because a year ago the information was not readily available on the internet and nobody, including my (former) provider nor the person I spoke to at the CAB knew enough about it, specifically which signal the smart meters in my area used. I got a variety of confusing answers, unlike today when you can get quite a clear explanation online. In an area with dire mobile phone coverage (improving now since the row over Digital Voice), this question was important. There is also the problem that young people answering telephones may know all about it (or not?), but however willing they may be, they don’t always know how to explain all this clearly over the telephone to novices of any age.

And so to the MPAN.  MPAN is short for “Meter Point Administration Number”, also known as a “supply number” or “S number”. It is a unique 13-digit number which does not change if you change your supplier because it identifies the “electricity supply point” for your home. This number is essential for managing your account. It is NOT the same as the “meter serial number”, a.k.a. Meter ID or MSN, (ten digits), which identifies the physical device doing the metering.

An MPAN can have several meters associated with it, or even no meter at all if the electricity supply is unmetered. Or the opposite. My meter (the physical device) has TWO MPANS, one for the cheap rate electricity that runs my storage radiators, and one for everything else. They each have a separate number and they appear separately on my bill. In fact I usually get two separate bills, because the smart meter isn’t smart enough to send me just one.

It gets worse. One of my two MPANS has two “registers”, one of which does not appear on my bill. Nobody seems to understand why – I have asked. My supplier’s customer service agents have given me several different explanations (don’t get me wrong, they are the best electricity supplier I have had to date). The local charity for helping people with their electricity problems doesn’t understand it. To make matters even more confusing, the register numbers which appear on the meter itself when you are trying to read it are not the same numbers as the MPAN numbers (S-numbers): they are four digit numbers, such “E1-01”. I am currently taking meter readings every day and recording which devices I am using and making huge Excel spread sheets, to try and make some sense of it. After some bad experiences with previous suppliers, I like to check what they say I have consumed against what my meter says. I don’t trust the technology. I have had too many experiences in many areas where technology went wrong.

The ‘Home Display Unit’ is useless because it does not show separate readings for the two different MPANS.

Of course nobody is willing to come out to my home and actually look at the meter themselves. Human technicians cost money, especially on a small island where they have to be shipped in for short periods from the mainland. I have seldom seen anybody as exhausted as the young engineer who installed my smartmeter (working for yet another company); he refused a cup of restorative tea because he had another meter to fit that day and it was going to take him another three hours. He wouldn’t finish until 8pm.

You are often asked to take a photo with your smartphone and email it to them. Fortunately, unlike many people of my age, I do have a smartphone (which really is smart) and I know how to take photos and email them to people. But it still is not so easy. My meter for some reason had to be installed at floor level, and it is difficult for an arthritic old lady to get down on the floor and read it. I have to use a garden kneeler. A friend had hers installed so high up that she needs a ladder to read it. And the display cycles so fast that it is difficult to either take a photo or write the figures down. I did try recording it as a video but my phone refused to transmit it because the file was too large.

Fascinating! But I never needed to know all this until, at the age of 75, I had to have a smart meter. Before, I just had two separate meters.  This is a good illustration of how life is becoming increasingly complicated for older people, unless they have family living nearby. Which more and more of us don’t. Or even then – my nearest (young) relative had never heard of an MPAN. He is living in rented accommodation with no prospect of home ownership. The MPAN is his landlord’s problem.

When I was young I had an aunt living in Kent who had a little greenhouse in her garden. She grew the most wonderful tomatoes and cucumbers in it. Green houses have long been popular with the gardeners of Britain, to keep the sharp east wind off their plants. Sometimes they had a little paraffin heater in them against frost, but for light and water they just relied on the sun and an outdoor tap. Half a century later, we've come a long way. It looks as if all the salad in Britain may soon be grown hydroponically in a form of super-greenhouse. Techno-lettuces, you might say?

During WWII the UK government had to cope with the problem of feeding a population of nearly 50 million people. Britain had depended for a long time on exchanging manufactured goods for food grown in other countries and there was no way that it could supply all its own food for that number of people. Every schoolchild knows about the heroic solution. It worked, but we may be facing a similar situation again soon. We still rely on imported food, and if our supply of imported food were to be interrupted for some reason, it would be far more difficult today. The UK population is now nearly 70 million and there just isn’t enough spare land. An enormous amount of what used to be farmland is now covered by a creeping sprawl of homes, offices, factories, roads etc. If our supply networks were interrupted we would have a serious problem. And these things can happen very quickly.

The favoured solution at present appears to be vertical farming, a form of indoor farming. Vertical farming means growing vegetables in giant greenhouses, not only outdoors on land usually farmed by traditional methods, but in places such as disused mines and tunnels, underground car parks, shipping containers, or on the roofs of buildings. The plants are grown stacked on shelves one above the other, or in towers, so that there is a massive crop from a very small footprint. Orkney is an agricultural area with centuries of experience in growing plants adapted to a difficult climate. Even here, the local college is working on a vertical farm project to avoid the difficulties of importing fresh fruit and veg to a remote storm-lashed island with a short growing season and hardly any daylight for several months per year.

Instead of using sunlight, the vegetables use artificial light from LED lamps. They are usually grown using hydroponic or aeroponic techniques rather than soil. The plants may have their roots in an inert substance such as perlite, with a water-based solution carrying all the nutrients they need running through it (hydroponics). Alternatively, they may have their roots growing down into a container where they grow unsupported but are periodically sprayed with a fine mist of water carrying the nutrients (aeroponics). There is even a method called aquaponics, where growing vegetables hydroponically is combined with farming fish. The waste water from the fish tanks is passed to the vegetables, providing them with nutrients, and then, having been purified by the plants, passed back to the fish.

These methods give complete control over light, temperature, humidity, and water, the vital things needed for plants to grow. Pollination of flowers such as courgettes or aubergines is done artificially as well. (What is the future for the pollinating insects I wonder?) This is known as Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA). The use of LEDS means that you can supply the exact spectrum of light which a particular plant needs at a particular stage of its growth. These greenhouses use less water than a conventional farm, up to 95% less, because it can be recycled. They create less pollution than conventional farms because everything is done by electricity rather than tractors belching diesel fumes, although that of course depends on how the electricity is produced. There is far less need for pesticides and you don’t have to weed them. (Or worry about slugs.) The technology can constantly monitor how the systems are functioning, for example the pH of the nutrient fluid, the temperature and humidity of the surrounding atmosphere, and how well the plants are growing. Labour costs are kept to a minimum, because much of the process can be automated and controlled by computers (you may not consider that an advantage, if you are having trouble finding a job).  They are independent of the weather outside – gales, droughts, unseasonal snowstorms are no problem.  And you can grow food in cities so that it is close to consumers and food miles are low.

 In other words, you can grow large amounts of vegetables all year round, unaffected by bad weather, in a very small footprint, close to consumers and with fewer sources of environmental pollution, in a sophisticated form of greenhouse.  Sounds perfect.

Well, not quite. Some varieties of crops are more suitable for these techniques than others. Leafy greens such as lettuce, kale and spinach are easy, so are things like strawberries, tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. But you can’t live on lettuce, and root vegetables are more difficult. However, it looks as if it might be possible to grow some of the staple carbohydrate crops this way.  Apparently potatoes are a possibility, although at present this is not considered commercially viable in the UK. Japan is experimenting successfully with growing rice hydroponically in vertical farms in disused warehouses. Rice is also being trialled in India. Barley is currently being grown hydroponically, although the articles I have seen focus on growing fodder for animals rather than humans. It can be grown very quickly using minimal amounts of water. I read about a fascinating project developed by refugees in the desert in western Algeria, with help from the World Food Program and Oxfam. These people are victims of desertification due to climate change. Unfortunately, climate change causes some people’s farmland to flood, in other places it becomes desert. They have been growing barley shoots hydroponically as fodder for their traditional sheep and goats.

There are some commonly-acknowledged drawbacks. These systems are expensive to set up, since they require a lot of specialised equipment,  for example LED grow-lights, or pumps for the nutrient fluids. You need ventilation and constant monitoring of the atmosphere to make sure that moulds won’t grow and there is enough CO2 for plant growth, which means electronic sensors and computers to analyse the results and make the adjustments. All this complicated equipment needs constant maintenance. It requires quite a lot of technical expertise in a variety of fields to set up and run an indoor farm successfully. And as it is a new technology, it is constantly changing and farmers or farming business have to keep on upgrading. Anybody who gets frustrated by the constant upgrades on their laptop will know all about this problem.

Doubts have been cast on how commercially viable they can be because of the large amount of electricity required. Renewable sources such as solar power are used, but power outages can be disastrous – a whole crop can be lost in minutes. Usually a back-up source is installed. The same goes for water. Even if the farm uses a system where water can be recycled it is usually necessary to top it up from time to time. There seems to be some confusion about plant pests. Although they are said to need far fewer pesticides, I have also read that waterborne diseases can spread very quickly, and tiny pests like aphids and thrips came become a problem.

Above all, there are possible supply chain problems for the technology. For example, there are firms based in the UK which make grow-lights. But when you search for what materials are needed to manufacture grow-lights, it would take several pages to describe them. And among them are rare earth minerals, 98% of which currently come from China. Other sources are being developed or “acquired”. But it seems to me that vertical farming merely moves the danger from supply chain problems one stage further on, from problems importing lettuces to problems importing the equipment to grow lettuces. A contribution from high-tech farming may be necessary to feed a massively oversized population, but we should remember that it isn’t in any sense a panacea.

And when I look out over the fields in Orkney and watch the wind creating moiré patterns across the fields of golden-brown barley, or watch a farmer ploughing a field with a flock of seagulls swooping and diving behind his tractor as it turns the earth, or even, when I smell the slurry that wafts throughout Orkney when the farmers spray the muck from their cowsheds onto the fields, I can only hope that conventional farming won’t disappear completely. Somehow I feel safer buying my food from a farmer who has at least some personal contact with the land and the seasons, rather than a businessman who considers raising crops a matter of computers, nutrient fluids and LEDs.

It’s early December, and a grey lid of cloud hangs over the Orkney Islands, alternately disgorging rain and sleet. Occasionally the clouds part and the extremely low angle of the sun results in the most beautiful rainbows I have ever seen. Waves break across the Churchill Barriers, driven by sixty-mile-an-hour gusts. We only have daylight for six hours a day. What can you expect at 59 degrees north? In my vegetable garden, most plants have died back for the winter. The slugs have gnawed my Christmas potatoes down to the ground, and only my leeks, watercress and parsley are bravely holding out. Perhaps it’s a good time to visit, in imagination at least, the veggie patches of somewhere warmer and lighter. And I thought of babai, the Giant Swamp Taro, growing in the coral atolls of the Pacific.

When I was a little girl, nurtured on Robert Louis Stevenson* and RM Ballantyne**, I used to imagine living on the classic coral island. The sun always shone: on the equator, there is no winter dark and cold. White sandy beaches were lapped by the brilliant blue waves of the lagoon and fringed by waving green coconut palms. Coconuts dropped from the trees and tasty fish swam into your hands. Around the lagoon lay a reef of shimmering white coral, with a string of tiny low-lying islets rising just above the waves. The beaches on the outside of the reef were open to the vast Pacific Ocean. The only sounds were the rustling of the palm fronds and the breakers crashing and foaming against the reef…

I was recently re-reading an old favourite of mine, ‘A Pattern of Islands’, by Arthur Grimble***, describing his experiences as a colonial officer  in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, in the early 20^th century.  A second book in my personal library about these islands is ‘Atoll Holiday’, written by Nancy Phelan****, after she spent a long holiday in the Gilbert Islands in 1956. These islands were a British Protectorate from 1892 until 1916, and then a British colony until 1976, when they became two separate colonies. In 1978 the Gilbert Islands became independent, as the republic of Kiribati, and the Ellice Islands remained British, now called Tuvalu.

Kiribati lies in the central Pacific Ocean, and consists of 32 tiny atolls and one raised coral island, strung out across the equator. ‘Atoll’ is the name for a roughly circular coral reef, with or without islets, surrounding a central lagoon.  Atolls only occur in the warm tropical and subtropical seas where coral can grow. There are various theories about how they develop their characteristic shape, but the most popular seems to be that the coral formed around an extinct volcano which subsequently eroded away.

Daydreams apart, these islands are not the best place for growing vegetables. They are made of coral and have no stone. They also have very little, very poor, soil. Grimble, writing of his arrival in the Gilbert Islands in 1914, describes in heartrending detail how attempts to make compost for growing the sort of vegetables he was used to were foiled by the speed at which it eroded away. He wanted beans and tomatoes. He got coconuts. The islands are short of water too. Water comes from rainfall which forms a convex ‘freshwater lens’ between the ground surface and the lower layers of coral which are permeated with salt water from the surrounding ocean.  The little islets are usually only a few hundred metres across, from ocean to lagoon, so plants also have to be salt-tolerant. Most of Kiribati is only two metres above sea level.

Between them, Grimble and Phelan described a selection of vegetable foods which came mainly from trees.  There were coconuts: green and ripe, both nuts and milk, and the sweet sap known as toddy which was collected from the palm blossom. It can be drunk fresh, or fermented into an alcoholic drink. Toddy was collected every day by men climbing up the coconut palms, and Phelan explained that it contains many nutrients which complement a diet of mainly fish and coconut.  Pandanus fruit, breadfruit, banana and an occasional pawpaw or pumpkin were also mentioned.

The main vegetable grown by the islanders which wasn’t a tree, apart from occasional pumpkins, was a plant known as ‘babai’.  This is the local name for Cyrtosperma merkusii or giant swamp taro, a plant native to the islands and an important part of their culture. Babai has dark green arrow-shaped leaves, huge succulent stalks and flowers a bit like an arum lily. It can grow up to 6m tall, with leaves up to 2m long by over a metre wide. The starchy corm (the swollen base of the stem) can be nearly a metre in diameter and weigh 80-100kg. It can be stored for long periods in the ground, or sun-dried and stored, so it is a useful resource for times of shortage.

Both Grimble and Phelan talk about babai being grown in deep muddy pits with compost added, each plant wrapped round in a straw cage. The pits are muddy because they are dug into the level of the freshwater lens, and their size varies from a few square metres to over a quarter of a hectare.

Babai has to be properly processed to get rid of toxins but it is very nutritious and in the early 20^th century it was an important part of the local diet. Grimble refers to it being mashed with butter, or steamed. He found it indigestible. Phelan also found it very heavy (page 179), except when it was mixed with other ingredients. She was presented with a pudding called ‘buatoro’ which she thought very pleasant. It was made by grating the babai, mixing it with coconut cream and with a syrup called kamaimai which was rather like golden syrup and was made by boiling down toddy. The pudding was cooked in a leaf wrapper.  It does sound rather nice, if a bit heavy, rather like my father’s golden syrup steamed pudding.

Alas, in the 21^st century, although giant swamp taro is still quite widely grown, islanders have apparently largely switched from their traditional diet to buying wheat bread, rice and sugar with the proceeds from the copra trade. It may be more convenient in the short term, but the resulting health problems are causing serious concern.

And the legendary coral island with its shining sands, coconut palms and babai growing in muddy pits may soon be nothing more than a memory. The rising sea levels associated with global warming are threatening babai cultivation as the fresh water lens is being contaminated by sea water, and extreme high tides lead to salt water spilling over into the pits. Many Pacific island groups are preparing to migrate to other countries, as entire islands are in danger of being submerged. They are, after all, only 2m above sea level.

* ‘Treasure Island’, 1883 Robert Louis Stevenson

**‘The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean’, 1857 R. M. Ballantyne.

***‘A Pattern of Islands’, 1952 Arthur Grimble

****‘Atoll Holiday’, 1958 Nancy Phelan

This year (2025), I spent my summer holiday down south. While I was in London, a friend, knowing that my current historical interest is the 18^th century, took me to see two 18^th century houses administered by English Heritage. The one that particularly caught my fancy was Marble Hill House, a small Palladian villa in Twickenham. It’s a little gem. The proportions of the house are so beautiful, that it didn’t really matter that the original contents were sold with the house in 1824, and that most of the furniture, pictures etc. displayed there today have been replaced from other sources. Nor did it matter that the gardens are still in process of restoration, and the lawns at the front and back were burnt brown by the heat wave this year, because the setting on the north bank of the Thames is so lovely.

Marble Hill House* was a villa built on what was then the outskirts of London, so that its owner, attached to the royal court, could enjoy fresh country air and scenery from time to time. Henrietta Howard was a Woman of the Bedchamber to Caroline of Ansbach, wife of George II. Henrietta was also George's mistress, both before and for some time after he succeeded his father as King of England and Elector of Hanover. The villa was in the neo-Palladian style, popular in Britain from the early to the mid-18^th century. This was based on the work of Andrea Palladio, a 16^th century Italian architect. He was inspired by the work of the Roman architect Vitruvius and by the proportion and ornament used in the buildings of ancient Rome. Neo-Palladian buildings were symmetrical, one side being a mirror image of the other. They often had fronts similar to a classical temple, with a triangular pediment over the main entrance, supported by columns or pilasters, and large tripartite Venetian windows (a central large arched window with smaller rectangular windows either side). The principles of Palladianism could be applied to small houses as well as to what were virtually palaces. While the exteriors of the buildings were simple and plain, the interiors, which also contained classical features, might be richly decorated. The houses usually had gardens carefully designed to complement them.

Marble Hill is a small square symmetrical building with four floors. It has five bays across the front and three across the side; the centre three bays on the north front project slightly. The north front faced the road and originally had a forecourt; this was where visitors arrived by carriage. It has a triangular pediment supported by four pilasters with simple Ionic capitals. The south front has no pilasters but is very similar. It faces the river (visitors might arrive by boat) and overlooked the garden. The garden included a flower garden, a greenhouse, a grotto, a bowling alley, and an ice house; also lawns, woods and walks. On the east side there was originally an L-shaped service wing which no longer exists.

The interior had some lovely features. I can't go into detail about all of them, but the ground floor included a hall which opened onto the south front and was based on the Roman atrium. This was the entry to a Roman house, open to the sky in the centre with a square pool for rainwater below the opening. This pool is represented at Marble Hill by four columns surrounding a square marked by floor tiles in the centre of the room. A beautifully-carved mahogany staircase (unfortunately, the mahogany was probably the result of slave-labour) leads up to the first floor where the most important rooms were located. In the ‘Great Room’, music, dancing and other entertainments took place. Henrietta Howard was known to be a very intelligent, well-educated and cultured woman and she had a wide circle of talented friends. The large marble fireplace in the Great Room, with its classical decoration, is really beautiful. Her bedroom, which was also decorated with columns and pilasters, would have been open to visitors when she had guests, although this was where she normally slept and dressed. The second floor, as well as three more bedrooms, contains a non-Palladian feature, the gallery, which stretches from the north to the south sides of the house. Galleries were traditional in English houses, providing display space for paintings and other art objects, and a place to exercise in bad weather.  The final floor was the attics, probably where servants slept. A stone staircase connected all four floors and was used mainly by servants.  The contents of the house, either recorded or on display, illustrate the interests and pursuits of the English aristocracy in the 18^th century – excellent paintings on the walls; tea-drinking and collections of porcelain used for serving it; elaborate dining; chinoiserie – there is a fine lacquer screen in the Great Room.

London was by far the largest city in Britain during the 18^th century, the location of Parliament and the royal court. So what was going on in the rest of the country, while royal courtiers built Palladian retreats along the Thames and collected Chinese porcelain? What about Scotland, united with England since 1707? Just over 500 miles to the north of London, Orkney and Shetland did not host a royal court, none of the 18^th century monarchs ever paid a visit, and there was no resident aristocracy. George Douglas, 13^th earl of Morton, who was earl of Orkney and Lord of Zetland, did not live there. But the much smaller houses built by the local gentry (lairds) in the 18^th century often had Palladian features and were expensively furnished. Unfortunately it isn't possible for the public to visit either of the following two examples at the moment, but they are well-documented.

The Hall of Clestrain in Orphir, Orkney, was built in 1768 by Patrick Honeyman, the laird of Graemsay. This estate was the largest in Orkney after the bishopric and earldom estates. Although small, the house is in the Palladian style and said to be ‘of exceptional quality’.  It was a square stone building, symmetrical in design, linked to low pavilions at each side by connecting walls (only one survives).These pavilions are usually drawn in two-dimensional reconstructions as if they were level with the front elevation of the house, but in fact they were level with the back and formed two sides of a courtyard of which the rear, north wall of the house formed the third. There are three bays to each elevation and three floors, if you include the attic and basement floors. Probably the reception rooms were on the middle floor, with bedrooms above and service/family rooms in the basement, reached via an internal stone staircase. Entrance to the house was by a graceful stair into the middle floor through the projecting central bay, which was probably topped by a pediment. It faces south, and had a walled garden, like most gentry houses in the Northern Isles. The laird’s family later moved to the mainland of Scotland and left the Hall of Clestrain to their factor or agent. This was John Rae, whose son, also John Rae, was the famous Arctic explorer. The house is a category A listed building. It had become derelict, although many important Georgian interior details apparently survive.  The building is now in process of restoration with a view to opening it to the public.

The 18^th century lairds** of Orkney were known as the ‘Merchant Lairds’ since they used  the goods such as grain, butter and kelp, which were paid to them as rent by their tenants, for trading purposes and became wealthy on the profits. They also benefited from rent paid in the form of free labour, useful in the kelp industry. Kelp was one of the most profitable commodities in the 18^th century. It was an alkaline product made by burning seaweed in pits on the beaches, and Patrick Honeyman was engaged in the kelp trade. A 1764 inventory made when another wealthy laird, James Baikie, 6^th Laird of Tankerness, died, listed expensive household goods: walnut and mahogany furniture, gilded mirrors, brass candlesticks, clocks, writing desks, and easy chairs. There was table ware of silver, pewter, delftware and stoneware, and large stores of linen napkins and tablecloths. The cellars held 10 gross of wine bottles and 14 ale casks. Robert Baikie, the 7^th laird, owned a fine library, paid for out of his kelp profits. It is reasonable to suppose that the Hall of Clestrain was furnished in similar style.

And at the farthest northern point of the British Isles, the island of Unst in Shetland, a small Palladian house was built in 1775 by Thomas Mouat of Garth, the son of a laird. Belmont House, now a Category A listed building with an important garden, was occupied until the mid-20^th century, when the family sold it and it fell into serious disrepair. It was restored over the years between 1996 and 2010 by local groups, and is now in private ownership. Like Marble Hill, it has a lovely view, facing south over an inlet of the sea dividing Unst from Yell.  It is two storeys high, with attics and basements, and two pavilions at the sides linked to it by connecting walls which surrounded the forecourt. To the north at the back of the house was a farmhouse. To the south were three walled gardens and a park, and an avenue leading down to the shore. Many of the garden features such as walls, remains of a summerhouse, footpaths etc. are still visible. It sounds absolutely lovely.

Perhaps Hall of Clestrain and Belmont House are not large enough to count as ‘stately homes’, but they are beautiful examples of a particularly graceful style of architecture which spread from south to north of the British Isles in the 18th century.

*Marble Hill English Heritage Guidebook 2023 Dr Megan Leyland & Emily Parker;

** Profit Not Loss The Story of the Baikies of Tankerness 2003 Bryce Wilson