Around the world

I have had to do with many human sanitary arrangements in my time, but I have never met quite such an enchanting one as the Hillswick public toilet. It started with the choice collection of 18C earthenware chamber pots I had to catalogue in a museum. At one point I collaborated with an artist to reconstruct a Roman public toilet from the excavated remains at Verulamium (see Hertfordshire Archaeology & History vol.17). Then there was the collection of plum and blackberry pips which had been tipped down a medieval cesspit in St Albans. I regularly walk past the stone outlet shaft of a medieval toilet in the Bishop’s Palace in Kirkwall. Before the reclamation of the foreshore it would have emptied onto the beach, cleaned up every high tide.

I have used an earth trench while working on an excavation in the French countryside, and taken my turn emptying the ghastly drum from a chemical toilet while working on another dig in the English countryside. The deal was that if the girls did their turn emptying the loo, they got a turn driving the dumper truck as well as the boys. During lockdown when there was a shortage of toilet paper, I investigated the ultra-modern Japanese toilet, which if correctly programmed (I understand foreigners often get it wrong) will automatically wash and dry your bottom for you. Or flood the cubicle.

But never have I met with such a charming bog-house as this community-run public toilet in Hillswick, Shetland, with its forecourt filled with lavatory pans used as planters. A flowery delight!

Orkney has many very beautiful wildflowers, some of them quite famous, such as the Northern Marsh Orchid, and Primula Scotica, the Scottish primrose. But my favourite is the Creeping Willow, Salix repens. Its lemon yellow puffs in spring have an unsung beauty.

The first thing a visitor to Orkney notices is the lack of trees. This dates from prehistoric times, when agriculture and climate change combined to deforest the islands. The second thing is that various species of willow make up quite a large proportion of what trees there are. They can withstand the gales which lash the islands every winter, and are often used as windbreaks to allow taller trees to get started. But very few people are aware of a minute species of willow growing under their feet as they take a clifftop walk.

Walking along the cliff tops in South Ronaldsay in the cool morning sunlight, with skylarks singing far above in the infinite sky, violets and primroses grow along the cliff edge, the first of the spring flowers. And almost hidden among the dried stems of last year’s grasses are delicate little pale yellow puffs, the tiny catkins of creeping willow. Its weeny stems with their dark-green leaves lie flat along the ground, interwoven with the grass stems. Most of the plants along the cliff edge are miniaturised, I suppose because of the shallow layer of soil covering the stone, and the constant strong winds. It’s like a natural bonsai garden.

Creeping Willow is a shrub-like member of the willow family found in northern and western Europe especially on sand dunes, coastal heaths, and moorland. I had never heard of it before. I have one in a container in my garden now. It grows upright in the shelter of my house, but the catkins are the same fragile little yellow puffs.

The first tourists tend to arrive when the earliest spring flowers are over. In any case they do not usually walk on the wilder cliff tops of South Ronaldsay. So I don’t think these exquisite little flowers are going to be appearing on postcards or fridge magnets any time soon.

The Flotta altar front is one of my favourite Pictish carved stones from Orkney. It was found in 1871, re-used in the wall of a medieval church on the island of Flotta. The stone slab, broken in two halves, is carved with a simple but particularly beautiful cross with an interlaced pattern. It measures 165cm by 81 cm by 9cm. It is believed to be 8^th century in date and to come from the front of a Christian altar or a tomb.  There are slots on the back of the slab where side panels were fitted. A second slab with incised lines, found in the nearby churchyard in 2017, may have been the back of this altar/tomb.

The Picts produced very beautiful ‘symbol stones’: stone slabs carved with birds, fish and animals, and stylised symbols such as rods, mirrors and crescents. The meaning of these symbols remains undeciphered to date. Later carved stones include Christian symbols, like the Flotta stone. The Picts were the first Christians in Orkney.

Another altar stone from Orkney comes from the tiny island of Papa Stronsay which lies just off the island of Stronsay. The name “Papa Stronsay” suggests a settlement or monastery of Pictish monks, who were called “Papae” or “Fathers”. The sandstone slab was found during excavations in the nave of the 12C chapel of St Nicholas by Headland Archaeology in 1998. It had been re-used in the floor of the nave. Only part survives, and one corner is missing. It would have been about 30cm by 27cm and 4cm thick, probably part of a portable altar. It is decorated with a small compass-drawn circle in the centre and one in each of the surviving corners. Each circle contains a cross: the central cross and two of the corner crosses are saltire or diagonal crosses, the other surviving corner cross is a Roman or vertical cross.

The Flotta stone is on display in the National Museum of Scotland. Worth a visit.

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.

Strangely enough, sometimes a gardener can enjoy the almost total absence of vegetation. As in karesansui, the Japanese Zen dry garden.

Karesansui are composed almost entirely of sand, carefully raked to give the effect of ripples on water, surrounding a few rocks. Occasionally there might be moss, a shrub, or a water feature. The gardens are small, and usually surrounded by buildings or a wall. The extreme simplicity and lack of colour are intended to be symbolic of the essence of nature and the world. They are intended to aid meditation or contemplation.

This is a very old form of garden, dating back to the 12^th to 14^th centuries, usually associated with Zen Buddhist temples and cared for as part of their duties by the monks. The outstanding example usually cited is the dry garden at the Ryoanji (‘Peaceful Dragon’) temple in Kyoto, a Unesco World Heritage Site. Here carefully raked sand is arranged around fifteen stones which are placed in small groups, each set in a small patch of moss. It is considered important that you cannot see all of the stones from any one viewpoint. The garden is surrounded by a wall on three sides and by one of the temple buildings on the fourth side.

Karesansui are popular outside Japan. There are a number in the UK, including one at Kew Gardens in London. They are even found in Scotland. The best known example is part of the Japanese Garden at Cowden castle near Dollar in Clackmannanshire. This garden was designed in the early 20^th century for a wealthy woman, Isabella Christie, a traveller and Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society. It was unusual in being designed by a Japanese woman designer, and was largely maintained by Japanese gardeners. Cowden’s Japanese garden was closed in 1955 after vandalism and neglect, but has been restored and is now open to the public again.

The natural world sometimes offers a similar ‘garden' experience. Around the cliffs and beaches of Orkney, a few dwarf plants often grow among the rocks and sand giving a very pleasing aesthetic effect, a spare beauty almost like a wild karesansui.

I tend to enjoy the simplest and most minimal in art of any kind. I find these gardens very peaceful and satisfying.