June 2022

When I was a young woman, the systematic study of Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) stone tools was just taking off. At that point, experiments to replicate the objects found on excavations were crucial in distinguishing deliberately-shaped tools from natural objects which just looked as if they ought to be tools. My fellow students and I were encouraged to practice flint-knapping and we were allowed part of the college basement for practising our knapping. There were a lot of cut fingers and rude words, and I don’t like to think about the amount of silica dust we probably inhaled, but we did learn how just one small flake could tell you a lot about the tools the Stone Age people were making.

Like the prehistoric tool-makers we were trying to understand, we didn’t only use the flint found in the chalk of southeast England and across the Channel. You can use any rock or man-made substance that is fine-grained and fractures equally in all directions. I have tried glass (highly dangerous, the fine splinters go everywhere); porcelain insulators from electricity cables (works very well); Greek obsidian (lovely) and red chert, also from Greece (good but a little tough). I have a row of rocks on my mantelpiece dating from various parts of my life, which includes pieces I have knapped, or pieces knapped by others more expert than myself.

One of the most interesting pieces on my mantelpiece is a small flake of silicified sandstone. It is a handaxe trimming flake (the handaxe was a modern replica) and it has a characteristic thin, slightly curved shape. If you find these at a site, they show that someone was making the tools often referred to as “handaxes” (bifaces), even if you don’t find any handaxes. “Handaxes” are large bifacial tools which are given their final flat shape by removing a series of these very thin flakes with a bar of bone or antler. They are extremely difficult for a beginner to make, although I have seen an expert polish one off in about two minutes. I stood amazed as he did it – it usually took me half an hour to make a rather clumsy replica, and I had to plan every blow of my hammerstone. He didn’t even look, just kept chatting to us as he worked.

Making stone tools ourselves taught us not only how to classify the tools we were digging up more accurately, but also that sometimes you can infer the presence of a particular kind of Stone Age tool from the shape of the waste produced during its manufacture, even if the tool itself wasn't there. What you have found can tell you about what you haven’t found.

**Drawing of handaxe is from “Man the Primeval Savage”, Worthington G Smith 1894 fig. 151

What a popular subject the Tudors are all over Britain! Henry VIII, Bloody Mary, Elizabeth I – there seem to be just as many books about them in Waterstones in Edinburgh as in Waterstones in London. Not many people realise that we had members of the family in Orkney as well.

James V of Scotland was the nephew of Henry VIII of England. His mother was Henry’s sister, Margaret Tudor.  So genetically he was half-Tudor himself. James appears to have closely resembled his uncle in that he was a great man for the ladies, but unlike Henry, he was fertile, and managed to father not one but nine known illegitimate children by different noblewomen of his court, as well as his legitimate daughter and heir, Mary Queen of Scots. One of James’ natural children ended up in Orkney.

Robert Stewart (1533 – 1593) was the illegitimate son of James V and Euphemia Elphinstone, who had a brief fling with the king before going on to marry someone else. There is very little evidence about his youth and education, but it seems that after he left the nursery he was educated as a nobleman with several of his illegitimate half-brothers in St Andrews. All of James’ bastard sons were taken care of, usually by having them educated and given the revenues of various abbeys and priories as ‘commendators’. Commendators were laymen in charge of the administration of an abbey, who during the 16^th century increasingly took over the direction of these abbeys from the abbots themselves. Robert Stewart was made commendator of Holyrood Abbey in 1539 – i.e. when he was six years old. Hmmm… It must be supposed that he couldn’t have done anything to earn his money at that age.

His father died when he was nine years old, and his infant half-sister became queen. After a few years in France in his teens, completing his education, he returned to the Scottish court and took up the life of a minor noble. He seems to have made himself rather unpopular from the start.

Robert’s official connection with Orkney began in 1564, when his half-sister, Mary Queen of Scots, made him sheriff of Orkney (the role was taken away from him shortly afterwards), and granted him lands in the islands. At this point he was not an earl, just plain Sir Robert Stewart of Strathdon. He arrived in Orkney for the first time in 1567, after his half-sister had lost her throne. He now took back the sheriff’s role, and seized both Kirkwall Castle and Noltland Castle on Westray. He consolidated his Orkney landholdings in 1568, when he forced the bishop of Orkney to exchange his estates in Orkney for the commendatorship of Holyrood.

This included the land in Birsay in West Mainland where Sir Robert built the ‘Earl’s Palace’ between 1569 and 1574. It lies close to the sea in Birsay village.  It had two storeys and was built around four sides of a central courtyard with a well. The kitchen and other domestic facilities were on the ground floor, while the bedrooms and great hall were upstairs. Although the upper storey had large windows, the ground floor had small ones and holes to fire muskets through, and there were three towers, so it was clearly built for defence as well as a palace for a Renaissance prince.

There is a 17^th century line drawing (see “Orkney A Historical Guide” Caroline Wickham-Jones 2015, page 162 figure 55, referenced The Stationary Office) with a plan of the palace, showing all the proper facilities for a nobleman’s residence of the time: walled flower, herb, kitchen and plant gardens on the east side of the palace buildings, as well as a bowling green, archery butts, rabbit warrens and a deer park to the north.

I wish there was more information about the gardens, especially the flower garden or pleasaunce. Earl Robert was following in the footsteps of his father, James V, and his grandfather, James IV, who embellished their palaces at Holyrood and Stirling Castle with formal gardens. Measured from the copy of the 17^th century plan given in Wickham-Jones, the flower garden appears to be approximately 50 feet by 35 feet, i.e. 0.04 acres, i.e. quite small.   Since it was walled, there were probably trees, as there are today in the walled gardens attached to Orkney gentry houses or in towns wherever there is shelter from the wind. Maybe it had gravelled walks, flower beds in geometric patterns, a stone sculpture or two, maybe a sundial and a fishpond, perhaps an arbour draped with honeysuckle or roses over a seat. One can imagine the earl, dressed in silk and velvet with gold embroidery, leaning against a tree sniffing at a flower, à la Nicholas Hilliard. Or exercising with a game of bowls or practicing his archery. Very suitable exercise for a semi-royal prince – both his sister Mary and his cousin Elizabeth enjoyed bowls and archery.

Sir Robert was a married man, with nearly 20 children. In 1561 he had married Lady Jean Kennedy, the daughter of the Earl of Cassilis. Contemporary comment was that he was really in love with her, and they had nine children. However, his wife never came to Orkney, preferring to stay in the centre of civilisation in Edinburgh, which didn’t please Robert at all. Following in the tradition of his royal father and great-uncle, he is also said to have had at least ten children out of wedlock.

Uncle Robert went on to ingratiate himself with his nephew James VI, who reinstated the earldom of Orkney for him in 1581, and also made him Lord of Shetland. He is therefore usually referred to as Earl Robert Stewart. However he later fell out with him. Earl Robert had several terms of imprisonment, on charges of treason and misuse of power, but he managed to duck out of them.  He had a bad reputation for untrustworthiness, land-grabbing, and mistreating the islanders. But he died peacefully in his bed in 1593. The earldom of Orkney was forfeited in 1614 when Robert’s son Earl Patrick, who built the even bigger and better Earl’s Palace in Kirkwall and was even more unpopular, overreached himself and was executed for treason.

By the mid-17^th century Earl Robert’s castle in Birsay had fallen into disrepair. The ruins still stand and are well worth a visit.