Ploughing On

 

Photo L9670/1 [388.342], by Ian Tulloch, from our Copy Collection

L9477/2 [551.645]

It’s been a beautiful morning in Orkney, the sky is blue, the sun is shining, and the birds have been singing their peedie hearts out.   Even us archive staff have been whistling a merry tune as we kick our heels down the strong-room corridor.  We’ve made it to the end of the month, and we’re also celebrating adding information about February blizzards and some lovely contributions from local people reminiscing about the ‘big snows’ to our current exhibition, 'Isolation and Desolation'.

George Mackay Brown in his Islandman column describes the snow's mischief in returning again so soon.  His column had been delayed by a week as he had been unable to get his copy from his home in Stromness through to Kirkwall where the paper was published.

“It seems, looking back on it, that the first thaw was too swift and sudden to be entirely wholesome.  While most of us were congratulating ourselves  on thick snow-banks visibly disintegrating under our eyes, a few of the wiser ones shook their heads.  The snow was up to no good when it decamped so rapidly.  It was merely going away to gather reinforcements.

And so it turned out.”

The Orkney Herald, Tuesday 8th March 1955 

The county had barely had a chance to thaw out from the January snow-storms when, on the night of Wednesday 16^th February 1955, another fierce blizzard caused chaos, cutting off telephones and power, and bringing all transport to a standstill.  For ten days, hundreds of men dug tirelessly again to keep the roads clear, before gale force winds and driving snow blocked them again with deep drifts.

The Orkney Herald, Tuesday 22^nd February 1955

We are very lucky to have copies of some fabulous photos, taken by Ian Tulloch, which show the County Council workmen trying to clear channels in the roads so that the snowploughs were able to pass.  These were all taken on Wideford Brae, between Kirkwall and Grimsetter airport on the Deerness road.

L9476/2 [551.645]

L9476/4 [551.645]

 L9477/4 [551.645]

At the County Council general meeting of 29^th March, the cost of snow clearing was estimated to be £18,500 – equivalent to just over £412,000 now – and the work of these valiant souls was noted:

 

“During the emergency the number of men employed amounted to approximately 600.

They worked under very difficult conditions - often soaked to the skin - for seven days a week and usually overtime each day.  A good deal of damage had been caused to lorries and ploughs by the heavy nature of the work, and the County Garage employees had done good work in keeping the machines in service, often working at nights in order to have the ploughs ready for the following day.

CO3/1/15 - Orkney County Council Road Executive Committee, 8^th March 1955, pg 256

Although daily life was hard work for people, some were able to take time to acknowledge the beauty of the snowy scenes:

 

L9479/3 [551.645], Trees at Wideford by Ian Tulloch

 

 There is nothing to equal the pure magic of the snow… All the surface of the snow had crystallised into unbelievable ferns of microscopic dimensions, the phone wires had a tinsel sparkle of frost crystals, every twig and stem of grass projecting above the snow bore the same breath-taking perfect frosting of transient feathery foliage.  Hoy looked more Fujiyama than ever, and the Orphir hills, rising above the misty white valley, could, with a little imagination, have been Alpine peaks.

 'JBG', in The Orcadian, Thursday 3rd March 1955

We’ve been so delighted to hear memories about the snowstorms, on social media and in person, and we would love to hear more. If you would like to contribute then you can reminisce below, send us your story on archives@orkney.gov.uk or come and visit, and we’ll add it to our display.

If you’ve not been in to see our exhibition yet, it will be on display until the end of March so do come on down - the price is right (i.e. completely free)!

Happy Valentine's Day

To celebrate we share with you some heartfelt words of love written in a letter in 1808.

The letter is written by Mary, Mrs William Balfour, 1788-1820, Captain William Balfour's first wife (and first cousin, daughter of William Manson). 

'It is extremely painful for me to communicate or correspond with you while my mind is in its present distress...'

She is writing to John Balfour, 3rd of Trenaby, William's uncle, begging him to help cancel her husband William's appointment to a ship in the south of England and wishes him to stay at home. 

Letter from Mary Balfour (nee Manson) to John Balfour page 1

She goes on to say: 

'To most married People the idea of being separated for a few months, appears trifling, but few, very few indeed, are so completely happy as we have been since our marriage. His affection has seemed to increase daily, and mine for him scarcely knows any bounds...as a husband he is exemplary, as a father no less so - think then what anguish must wring my heart when I bid him farewell, perhaps for ever! My feelings are too poignant for explanation - '  

Sadly she is unsuccessful!  

Letter from Mary Balfour (nee Manson) to John Balfour page 2

The letter is from the Balfour of Balfour and Trenabie papers, and is part of bundle D2/27/12. It was written on the 31st March 1808. This letter comes to you as part of our ongoing volunteer project to record every letter in every bundle in the 47 boxes of the D2 Balfour Collection by our six amazing volunteers. 

Saturday Closure

 Many apologies dear researchers, the archive search room and Orkney room will be CLOSED tomorrow -Saturday 1st of February.

We shall be open again on Monday the 3rd.

Please accept this image of a man riding a pig taken from William Aberdeen's map of Grain, Kirkwall dated 1766 in atonement:

'Isolation and Desolation'

 No, it’s not a description of how we are all feeling as we plough on through the seventy third day of January, but a headline from the front page of the Orkney Herald of 18^th January 1955.

It’s a wild day here today as the tail end of Storm Éowyn arrived last night; some staff have commented that matchsticks might be needed to keep eyes open after a restless night worrying about roof tiles and being woken by actual real scaredy cats (and dogs!).  We are very lucky here though to be north of the worst of this ‘once in a generation storm’ and spare a thought for our friends ‘sooth’ who have borne the brunt of it. 

In our current archive display we turned our minds back to some other extreme winter weather.  Being so far north, many expect Orkney to be cold and snowy in winter, but our maritime climate and the impact of the gulf stream means that we don’t often get our sledges out.  The toboggans would have been well used seventy years ago though when Orkney was paralysed by wintry storms.  A blizzard in mid-January 1955, followed by another a month later, trapped the county beneath snow which drifted to ten feet deep.  The islands were brought to a standstill for ten days on each occasion.

On Wednesday January 12^th heavy snow fell all day, driven by 70mph winds.  By early afternoon, almost every road was blocked, cars were abandoned in deep drifts and over 100 schoolchildren were trapped at schools across the county.  The The Orkney Herald on Tuesday 18^th January 1955 painted a bleak picture:

“The general picture is one of isolation; town and country are separated from each other by deep drifts of frozen snow, and hundreds of farms have become completely detached units…

The paper reported that six snow-ploughs and 150 men struggled in vain to open the mainland roads.  The Stromness to Kirkwall road was cleared for one hour on Saturday 15^th January allowing stranded schoolchildren to return home, before being filled again with drifts. 

“First contact between Kirkwall and Stromness in two days was established by two men on Friday who foot-slogged it through the deep snow. They set out from Stromness on Thursday afternoon and reached Kirkwall 24 hours later…

…They walked right over one van without at first realising it was there.  The snow rang strangely hollow beneath their feet and on investigating they found they were on top of a Post Office van…

…The two foot-sloggers did their good turn too when they pulled to safety sheep which were smothering in drifts.”                                                                                        

In some areas, supplies were air-dropped by the RAF and the lifeboats were also put to good use taking people to hospital and work, and transporting supplies to areas which had been cut off by the snow.  The Stromness lifeboat was called out on Tuesday 18^th January to transport provisions to Sandwick in the West Mainland, which had been completely isolated for 6 days, and four men rowed out in two small boats from Skaill to meet it. 

Freddie Isbister and Jim Linklater collect supplies from the Lifeboat

L4095/4 614 

L4095/2 614 

Both photos by J S Baikie

One of the lovely things about working in the archive is the satisfaction gained when we tie threads together and although we held several photos of this event in our Copy Collection, we had no information about them.  By using the local newspapers and a school project from 1990 about the local shop (D70/12/2 Fereday Project, 80 Years of Isbister Bros by Erin Davidson) we now have the date and the names of the hardy rowers - Freddie Isbister, Jim Linklater Senior, Jim Linklater Junior and Tommy Spence.

Another chance comment helped us to gather more information about the day the first blizzard hit:

The Orcadian, Thursday 20^th January 1955

One of the Archive’s regular users and volunteers, Patricia Long, saw the display and reminisced about her mother’s experience.  Kathleen Leask was one of the passengers on this bus but wasn’t named in the newspaper report above.  We are very fortunate that Kathleen’s memories were recorded by her daughter, and serialised in Living Orkney magazine. 

“There was no sign of any snow until we were past Finstown but the sky over Stromness was jet black. I’ve never seen a sky like it. We came into the snow then and by the time we were passing Tormiston it was so thick that we couldn’t see the telegraph poles at the side of the road. Then, right at the foot of the kirk road, the bus got stuck in a drift.

“I think there were seven of us on the bus: me, John Garson, Archie Bevan, Isa Robertson, two commercial travellers and an old wife on her way home from hospital. She wasn’t going to be able to walk through the snow so two of the men walked over the field to the farm of Barnhouse and two of the servant-men there came with a blanket and carried her to the farmhouse,

“The rest of us followed and were welcomed into the house by Andrew Rendall and his housekeeper Mrs Scollay. They gave us tea, made us comfortable in the sitting-room and were making arrangements for the night when my cousin, Jean Muir at the Stenness Post Office, rang saying she had two spare beds, because her daughters, along with all the other country bairns at the academy, were stuck in Stromness.”

Kathleen’s husband-to-be, Peter Leith, walked the half-mile down the hill to the Stenness shop and Jean sent him to Barnhouse to collect Kathleen. The snow had stopped falling by then so they managed the quarter-mile walk through the drifts in the early evening without much difficulty. Archive Bevan decided to walk with them and then kept going to Stromness, arriving home very late that night.

The snow plough didn’t get through until Saturday and the bus passengers weren’t the only travellers marooned in Stenness. A cartload of wedding guests spent a couple of days at Tormiston, on their way home from waving Robbie and Elsie Sutherland off at the airport and Mrs Heywood took in a lorry load of council workmen at the Stenness Hotel.

The snow lingered for weeks and Stromness was completely cut off, as the road was thoroughly blocked at the junction where the Sandwick road meets the Kirkwall-Stromness road. A fishing boat carried passengers and supplies between Stromness and Scapa and that’s how Kathleen got back to work some days later.

            From Living Orkney, ‘A peep into the past’, Part 3

                            Pages 33-34, Issue 54, May 2010

Tying together the newspaper snippet with Kathleen’s reminiscences gives a much fuller picture of the event.  It would be lovely if we could also name the poor lady returning from hospital too!  The stranded wedding guests were also mentioned in the local papers:

Orkney Herald, Tuesday 18th January 1955

We are hoping to gather more information about these blizzards from people who remember the events or have been told stories from parents and grandparents through the years.  If you would like to contribute then you can reminisce below or send us your story on archives@orkney.gov.uk and we’ll add it to our display.

Stay safe and warm out there, and don't forget to tether your trampolines and barricade your wheelie bins!