WE HAVE THE ANSWER TO YOUR EVERY QUESTION. (on Orcadian local history.) (covered by a Fereday project.) (That's a smashing blouse you've got on.)

    ?

How has passenger travel across the Pentland Firth changed over the years?

Why did horses leave the land??


What was it like to live on Copinsay???


How have people in Orkney been affected by the changes in domestic fuel????


How has Highland Park changed over the years and, whilst we're on the subject, what is the story behind those elaborate gates at the Highland Park distillery???!!?


The answers to these questions and more can be found in this year's crop of Fereday Prize entries.


Nothing will lessen our esteem for this collection. A fantastic historical source which we turn to time and time again.


The thirteen year old authors of these papers may not be professional historians but they are often the only written source we hold on very specific, local topics. Past years have given us projects on early swimming in Orkney, the air ambulance, shops in the Hope, Dentistry in Orkney the histories of Woolworths, Argo's bakery and the Finstown post office as well as countless investigations into  individual lives and homes in Orkney.


The work's copyright, of course, resides with the author. We can let visitors see the projects but they cannot copy them without permission. The projects have been so successful that we now send out permissions forms to the pupils as soon as they hand in their pieces. If you have done a Fereday or know someone who has done one or just want to feel involved, please print out, fill out and send out this form.

More information about Fereday Prize can be found on the Orkney Heritage Society's website here

The Fereday Project

It is that time of year again. Again.

Every January the second year pupils of Orkney's two secondary schools complete a local-history themed project and often come here (HERE!) to research them. We cannot help but feel that this seasonal influx of new users, although very welcome, clashes badly with our desire to curl up on the ground behind the counter eating left over Christmas sweets and waiting for Spring.

Be gentle with us children for we grow older each year. Any time you are not in here being young, free and thirsty for knowledge we gently embrace each other whilst swaying along to this and feeding each other chocolates:

Fereday Prize 2011

We have now finished cataloguing the photocopies of this year's Fereday Prize projects. And what an interesting bunch of subjects this year! The best thing about these projects is that they often cover the history of businesses, people and places from the 20th century and they become a wonderful addition to our existing collections of archives from earlier in history.

This year, there were two first prizes, one from Kirkwall and one from Stromness. From Stromness, Thomas Penny wrote a brilliant account of the history of Motoring in Harray which includes information on the earliest cars and buses as well as interesting interviews with some of the residents of the parish over the years and much more. It's great to read about all their stories.

From Kirkwall, Douglas Corse writes with such feeling of the Longhope Lifeboat Disaster of March 1969, when the lifeboat was lost with all her crew. Douglas has included an interview with his great auntie which adds a personal view to this tragic event and finishes with the poem The Lament for the Longhope Lifeboat by Andrew B Irvine which, he tells us, was read out at the funeral.

Other subjects covered this year were the Rural Cinema Scheme; Uranium Mining; two on Scapa School; James Flett & Sons; Argo's Bakery; the Old Manse in Evie; Mousland Farm; Stromness Police Station; boatbuilder Ian B. Richardson; J & S Hay; Birsay Community Association; the Angel Family; Orkney Weddings; Skaill House; the Russian Convoys; Grain Farm, Kirkwall; Newark Farm, Sanday; The Ba; Sebay Mill; Travelling Studs; Life at Braebuster; Norwood Antiques; Refuge in Harray; James Sinclair, Botanist and The German Flower.

If you did not receive a prize from the Orkney Heritage Society for your project, but still would like to leave a copy in the archives, we would be delighted to receive it. Just drop by sometime and we'll take a copy and give you back the original.

If you would like to see any of this year's projects, the Archive Reference number for each one begins with D70/14.

Orkney at the Olympics

Photograph taken from Brittania.com

On the 3rd of August 1936, American track and field athlete, Jesse Owens, wowed the Berlin Summer Olympics by winning the 100 metre dash. He also took medals for the 200 metre dash, the long jump event and the 4 x 100 metre relay event that year.

This caused some embarrassment for the German Chancellor of the time, Adolf Hitler, who had been hoping to use the games to demonstrate the supremacy of, not only German athletes, but the Aryan race. Germany did top the medal table by the end of the games but Jesse Owens was the star of the hour.

Another, less well-known- participant at the 1936 Olympics was one Tom Ward, a wrestler from Orkney. Born at Scar House in Sanday, 1907, Tom started wrestling when working for the metropolitan police in London. The Orcadian was beaten on points by a Turkish wrestler so did not win a medal, but he represented Britain again at the 1938 Empire (now Commonwealth) games.

Tom Ward and Jesse Owens at the Olympic Village, Berlin 1938.

This photograph and the information in this post were taken from a Fereday project written by a relation of Tom's, Christie Ward. Reference D70/12/10

Yeah, cheese!

Fans of Orkney Cheese, rejoice! There is now a project on its history and manufacture which you can read whilst munching on a wedge of said tasty product. (Other cheeses are also available.)

Today, a glittering awards ceremony took place at Kirkwall Grammar School to celebrate the best of this year's Fereday Prize Projects. There were cakes and there were certificates. The archives were represented by the same member of staff who had served as a judge and she wept quietly in a sequined gown as youngsters received their prizes of book tokens. Her late and drunken return in a taxi, tiara askew, will not go unpunished.

There was some controversy as one of the winners attempted to use their time on the stage to protest against the new traffic slowing measures in the Quoybanks area, ("Speed bumps are for Chumps!") but they were quickly clubbed over the head and wrestled off stage in a sack.

Lisa Alexander of Stromness Academy was the overall winner with her project on Orkney cheese.

The Stromness runners up are: Robert Mathershaw, who wrote about the Commercial Hotel and Gareth Johnston, whose project was called Wartime Scapa Flow.

The top three from KGS were: Evie Peace's A History of Orkney Cinema (a personal favourite), Joanne Pirie's An Orkney Wedding Past and Present and Hamish Auskerry's A Crash on Auskerry.

We should be getting copies of all the projects in soon.

The Nominations are in...

We have had this year's influx of Fereday projects and, as ever, they are impressive. I have already used one to help answer a customer query and I expect to dig out that particular project many more times as it contains a lot of original information that came from field-research and interviewing and not just book-learnin'.

I will keep quiet about the subjects for now, as the winners are yet to be announced. I can reveal, however, that the winner shall not be a person who photocopied one of last year's winning projects and just stuck their own name on the cover. Neither will it be someone whose mum or dad did all the research in the archive. We are, of course, dealing with completely hypothetical situations here.

The archives always know children, the archives always know...

Judgement Day

The Fereday projects have arrived here a little earlier than usual as one of our staff members is acting as a judge this year. Her judgement shall be thorough, fair, considered, whimsical, knowledgeable, punctilious, logical and free from guile. Locked in a room without daylight, distraction or sustenance for as long as it takes (her choice), she will not emerge until justice has been done.

Our initial impression is that a lot of hard work has gone into a great variety of topics. Some of the students obviously have some fancy computer knowledge as this year's entries are noticeably snazzy.

Suffer the little children

Oh you poor Fereday projectors! You may have thought that you were getting the day off from school work, but some of you have been sent/taken to the Archive to research your subjects! Life can be cruel...

Busy Rascals

Good lord, we are busy in nearly every possible way today. Not only have I had approximately 199,777,446 Fereday project researchers through the doors before lunch, but SEVENTY EIGHT people have visited this blog in the last three hours.

Our usual daily average is about 15 and I think that the staff of Orkney Library and Archive probably account for most of that.

Is the blog coming up high on a google search? When it became known that our gorgeous staff had a photo session yesterday, did Orcadians rush to their computers to gaze upon our pulchritudinous perfection?

Lethal drizzle

It has been pretty busy the last two days. Yesterday there were queues of people! This maybe does not seem that outrageous considering that we are open to the public but, in the winter time, most of our customer service is conducted by email, letter or telephone.

It is Fereday time though, so a lot of kids have been in as well as parents and I suppose the ice and snow had been keeping some eager researchers trapped in their homes.

I was delighted to read last night that 'the Turkey Lady' finally made it back home. Yes indeed, it is drizzly, damp and dark again and everything is back to normal.

Fereday strikes again...

This is the time of year when our clientele gets a little younger-looking. The Fereday Prize, which this year is being entered by students from both Stromness Academy and Kirkwall Grammar, is due sometime around the end of this month. We expect to see most of the kids on the last Saturday of the month as it was ever thus.

We have more staff on at weekends in January in order to provide for Fereday students as they are unlikely to have time to visit us during the week.

Part of the Fereday mandate, however, is for the projects to bring new material into the archive. Interviews, personal photographs and chats with family members are therefore just as valuable as information from books, archives and websites.

Each year we are amazed anew at how eager some parents are to *ahem* help their children. In my day, you had to do your homework yourself...

Calling all Fereday prize-winners!

Did you complete a Fereday project whilst at school? Did you win a prize for your efforts? If so, a copy has probably been lodged here at the Orkney Archive.

The projects are a great resource for study and we are frequently asked to make copies of them for private research. We can only do so however if we have the author's permission. It is getting increasingly difficult to track down the writers of older projects.

Pictured above is a copyright permission form which can be downloaded, printed out and completed. This form gives us permission to photocopy your project for interested customers. Simply hand it in or post to: the Orkney Archive, 44 Junction Road, Kirkwall, KW15 1AG.

19th May 2009 - Fereday Prize Winner

We have now received the last of 2009’s Fereday award prize-winning essays; ‘Lord Kitchener’ by Adam Johnston. Adam’s project is an in – depth and humorous study of Kitchener’s life and makes excellent use of both primary and secondary sources. The most interesting section contains the testimonies of relatives of Orkney residents who took in survivors from the sunken HMS Hampshire and evidence of their continued friendships with the young men who they fed, warmed and clothed that night in 1916.

20th April 2009 Fereday Prize Projects

Today we received, as always, the top Fereday Prize projects to catalogue as part of the Archive. The Fereday Prize was devised by headmaster W.P.L. Thomson who was inspired by Dr Ray Fereday, former Principal Teacher of History at Kirkwall Grammar School. Its purpose is to encourage pupils in 2nd year history pupils to go out into their communities and conduct their own research. The prize is organised by the Orkney Heritage Society in collaboration with the teachers of Kirkwall Grammar School and Stromness Academy.

The best projects investigate under-documented local topics using both archival records and field research.

Over the years we have received projects on Harray Stores, Rendall Football Club, Children’s games and pastimes in 20th century Orkney, the Papa Stronsay Monks and the History of Robertson’s Orkney Fudge. Fascinating pieces of Orkney’s history all; nonetheless, they are not the type of subject to be tackled by any serious scholarly tome. This is especially true of the many projects that chart the history of a pupil’s house or are studies of a grandparent or other relative’s life.

Therefore, the Fereday projects form a very important part of the archive and are often brought out for interested visitors to read.

We have not received the top project yet, (Adam Johnston’s study of Lord Kitchener) but we do have the joint winners of second place, Shannon Arcus’s look at the history of the West End Hotel and “Ga’an to school in Birsay, Harray and Sandwick” by Andrea Wishart. Both projects make excellent use of archives, original interviews and photographs and are great sources of information.

Also received were ten highly commended projects:
Erin Davidson’s ‘80 years of Isbister Bros, Quoyloo.’
David Hourie’s ‘The Rev. Charles Clouston.’
Thorfinn Johnson’s ‘The Royal Oak: A Survivor’s Story.’
Abbie Lyall’s ‘The Stronsay Herring Fishing.’
Lauren Nicolson’s ‘Harray: the Heart of the West Mainland in the years gone by.’
Kieran Rendall’s ‘The Barony Mill.’
Colin Sinclair’s ‘Sandwick Young Farmer’s Club 1937 – 2009.’
Christie Ward’s ‘Tom Ward 1907-1986.’
Jake Watson’s ‘Lyness in WWII.’
Danielle Wick’s ‘Stromness Shopping Week.’