March 2023

In the middle of Scapa Flow in Orkney lies a small skerry known as the ‘Barrel of Butter’. It is a tiny rocky islet rising a few feet above sea level, topped by a navigation light. It gets its name from the annual rent paid to the laird who owned it by local fishermen. In return for permission to catch seals there, they paid him a barrel of butter every year. And around the shores of the Flow, there are still a few of the girnels or storehouses where the various landlords stored the grain paid by their tenants as rent.

Norse farmers in Orkney originally owned their own land under Udal law. By the 17C, the vast majority no longer did so. They were tenants of the church, the earl, and a handful of landowning lairds. Until the 19^th century they paid their rent not in money but in produce, which the ‘merchant lairds’ then sold on to places such as Norway. The main items paid as rent and taxes were grain (bere barley, malt and oatmeal); and butter. This was poor quality butter used for grease not eating. 

This 17C girnel or meal storehouse with its lovely crow-stepped gables is in St Marys Holm on the south shore of Orkney mainland. It is known as the “Auld Store”. It has two storeys and a loft, and an external staircase or forestair on the west end. It dates from 1608, and was used originally for storing rents paid to the Meill Estate, later known as the Graemeshall Estate.

The Meill estate had been acquired in the early 17C by Bishop George Graham. Graham had become Bishop of Orkney in 1615. The bishop was a wealthy man, and also owned two mansions in West Mainland, Skaill House (now much altered) near Scara Brae in Sandwick, and Breckness (now a ruin) near Stromness. Graham resigned his bishopric in 1638, a prudent move, as the Kirk, enraged by the ecclesiastical policies of King Charles I, abolished bishops at an assembly that year. His tact allowed him to escape excommunication and continue a peaceful existence as a private landowner. He passed the Meill estate to Patrick Smyth, who had been brought up in his family and married his daughter. George Graham and Patrick Smyth built a new house on the Meill property in 1626, replacing an earlier one. There have been a number of renovations and extensions to the building since then. Patrick Smyth’s son sold the house to his uncle, Patrick Graham, who changed its name to Graham’s Hall. Graham’s son changed the spelling of the family name to ‘Graeme’. During the 18C and early 19C there was a succession of absentee landlords until a branch of the family from Sutherland decided to live there. They did so until the mid-20C. (See “Pateas Amicis: The Story of the House of Graemeshall in Orkney” Patrick Sutherland Graeme 1936).

The Girnel, in Kirkwall, is another 17C storehouse beside the shore in Kirkwall. It was built for the grain and malt paid as rent to the Earldom Estate. It has two storeys, a basement and an attic and a double staircase to the first floor. There is a house for the girnel keeper next to it, built in 1643, gable-end on to the harbour.  The nearby slipway into the harbour, known as the ‘Corn Slip', was built to bring the corn ashore.

The Girnel is mentioned as one of the Kirkwall buildings seized by Earl Patrick Stewart’s illegitimate son Robert while trying to re-establish his father’s authority over the islands, an act of rebellion against the crown. (See “The New History of Orkney” William P.L. Thomson 2008  pp 294 & 297). Earl Patrick’s father, Robert Stewart, was an illegitimate half-brother of Mary Queen of Scots, who was given the earldom of Orkney in 1581 by his nephew James VI. Earl Patrick was therefore the grandson of a reigning king and inclined to make rather a thing of it, as well as being financially incompetent, and being brutal to the people of Orkney. Although initially on good terms with his royal cousin, his over-the-top behaviour led him into serious debt and to his imprisonment and death for treason. Young Robert was hanged for treason in the same year, 1615, as his father was beheaded. He was in his early twenties and said to be tall and good-looking, so he got some sympathy. Earl Patrick died without legitimate children and there were no more Stewart earls in Orkney.

Another 17th C storehouse at Westshore, Burray village, was probably built to hold meal for the Burray Estate. It also has two storeys and a loft, and a stair to the second storey, and is roofed with Caithness Flagstones. The date on the skew-putt is 1645. It is Grade B listed.

From the late 16C to the mid-18C the Bu of Burray was the main property of the Orkney Stewarts. The Stewarts of Burray were created baronets in 1687. The third baronet, Sir James Stewart (1694-1746) is best known for the murder by his servant of Captain James Moody, 7th laird of Melsetter, in a political quarrel in Broad Street, just opposite St Magnus cathedral, in 1725.  Moodie was a Hanoverian while Stewart was a Jacobite like many of the Orkney lairds. Captain Moodie’s spectacles, which he was wearing at the time, are on display in the Orkney Museum. Pardoned for this crime, James Stewart got into trouble again in 1739 after another violent crime, and was fined £200. The money was used to build the Kirkwall Tolbooth or town gaol. Stewart later ended up being held in this facility himself after his arrest for treason, having taken part in the Jacobite rebellion in 1745. He died in prison in Southwark in 1746. He left no children and the baronetcy became dormant. The estate went to his relative, the Earl of Galloway. (See “Orkney: an Illustrated Architectural Guide” Leslie Burgher 1991, pp 62 & 96)

Apart from his disreputable habit of brawling, Sir James also tried his hand at agricultural improvements. He held land in Flotta and South Ronaldsay as well as Burray. Sir James created a large rectangular enclosure in South Ronaldsay known as the Park of Cara. The Park of Cara was surrounded by stone dykes and seems to have contained rough grazing for cattle, possibly on their way to St Margaret’s Hope for export. He apparently experimented with 2- and 4-wheeled carts, at a time when wheeled vehicles were rare in Orkney, and possessed seven English ploughs, and with a turnip-drill plough, although there is no record of turnips in Orkney at this stage. (See “The New History of Orkney” William P.L. Thomson 2008  pp336-7)

Although you cannot go inside them, all three of these historic buildings are well worth a look from the outside. But to see the Barrel of Butter you will have to hire a boat.