May Day Closure

 

Much as we love your faces, please do not come into the archive on Monday 6th of May as we are CLOSED. We plan to spend the entire day like these peat-cutters from Stenness during their well earned half-yoke (break): lying back with a brew and a box of goodies. Happy May Day!

Image L10,481-1, Orkney Photographic Archive

Snowy Pictures and Sweaty Men

 What is more Christmassy than a snowy picture? We have many lovely examples in the photographic archive, some of which can be seen below. If you fancy making an Orcadian themed Christmas greeting or would like a print made of your favourite then do contact us and make us an offer we can't refuse. (Only kidding, a high resolution scan is £8.50 and an 8 x 6" photographic print will set you back £8.80. Some larger prints are available but will run out fast!)

Kirkwall images are by Tom Kent and Stromness images were taken by Robert H Robertson.

Alternatively, if snowy winter wonderlands fill you with disgust and you wish to adorn your walls and emails with images of sweaty, Orcadian men fighting over a ball, then perhaps some of these may tickle your fancy:

You can click on the galleries to enlarge them. 

Hoorah for Volunteers!

 

It is volunteers week and this gives us a chance to celebrate our wonderful band of helpers without whom, the archives would be so much poorer.

The Orkney Archive is heaving at the seams with historical data and yet a collections catalogue and dewey decimal sorted photographic archive can sometimes only scratch the surface for a researcher. The archive staff only really have time to give an idea of what a document can contain. It takes time, lots and lots of time, to really squeeze all the infomation out of each document.

This is where our volunteers step in.

For example: many of our visitors are looking for information about parents, grandparents or other relatives who spent part of their military service in Orkney. We do not hold any war diaries or individual military records (these are held at the National Archives), but we do have issues of the Orkney Blast which detail engagements, sporting events and other little mentions of folk, some snap shots taken of service personnel during their down time, grocery credit lists etc.

So we set up our Service Personel Database, in which our volunteers enter the name, rank and any other information about anyone they find mentioned in items dating from either World War.

Our beautiful Service Personnel Database 

This means that if your great grandfather came third in a darts competition at Ness battery or your granny got engaged at a New Years party at HMS Tern in 1942, then there may be a record of it in our SPD!

Another project which several volunteers are working on is the Photo Index database. This involves entering detailed information about each photo we hold such as people in it, location, objects and date (if we have them). This makes it much easier for visitors to search for individual images as we were restricted to searching by subject matter before.

The exquisite Photo Identification Database

But fear not! It is not all endless databasing - our own Balfour Blogger is a longstanding volunteer who has spent many hours of her life sorting, dating and, more importantly, identifying blogable snippets for us from the enormous Balfour collection:

We have a few volunteers helping to work through this collection.

These are just a few examples of the many projects volunteers have assisted with over the years and we are extremely grateful for all of their hours spent sorting, numbering, transcribing, summarising and compiling.

Our volunteers are not paid but we do make sure to try and feed them tea and cake now and then with coffee morning/afternoons to keep up their strength and to express our gratitude for their diligent work.

Three cheers for volunteers!

Hip, hip, hooray! 

Hip, hip, hooray! 

Hip, hip, hooray! 

Coronation Charles!

We don't know about you readers, but we have already cellophaned our platters of coronation chicken sandwiches and coronation quiche, organised our Pimms jugs and festooned the archive with bunting made only from royal-themed print outs from the Orcadian microfilms.

The library staff will be on duty this Saturday because they are traitors but the archive staff are all loyal subjects and will not move from our televisions until Charles III has been crowned. To recap: the library is open and the archive is dutifully closed.

If, like us, you cannot wait, then feast your eyes upon previous Orcadian coronation celebrations from 1902, 1911, 1937 and 1953 and then watch our delightful image gallery of His Majesty's 6 hour visit to Orkney in 1979 where he greeted crowds at St Magnus, visited a jewellery factory, opened Orphir primary school and met a time-travelling Cheryl Cole* at the fudge factory. 

He also visited with his parents in 1960 spending a peaceful afternoon picnicking on a holm (small island) with his sister whilst the Queen and Prince Philip attended to their Royal duties.

 *Prob. not Cheryl Cole.

Archive in a Pandemic A-Z: N is for...

 NEW YEAR

Happy New Year lovely readers! Some of you will be going through your third lockdown and are probably sick of the sight of your own home/spouse/fridge. We do hope that you are all managing and send you our good wishes and virtual embraces. (For those of you who are not huggers, we send you a firm and hearty handshake through the ether. No virtual air kisses though... we don't like those... )

Orkney is currently on level 3 restrictions which means that we cannot enter private homes to socialise but non-essential shops and the library and archive are permitted to remain open. We are very thankful to be able to continue working but, as the schools are currently closed, this makes life tricky for those of us with tiny little archivers. Some of us may be attempting to work from home again but, fear not, no precious documents shall be taken back to our pits of jam covered mayhem. 

We are also losing a member of staff to retirement so the archives will be a rather depleted place for the next few weeks. Sob! 

Still, the days are slowly getting longer and the sun now sets at a thrilling 3.43pm. Soon the wonderful day when we leave work at a bright and perhaps sunny 5pm will arrive. Always a day of great jubilation.

We leave you with some delightful images of lupins and puffins in anticipation of Spring. It's fun to say isn't it? Lupins and puffins, lupins and puffins, lupins and puffins... this may well be my mantra from now when things seem grim... lupins and puffins , lupins and puffins, can't wait to see some lupins and puffins...

Taken by Tom Kent. Negative no. TK 1067

Also by Tom Kent. Negative no. TK 1079

'the path through the wild lupins' - negative no. L150/2

Puffins (Tammie Nories) on the rocks at the back of Rousay. Negative L2367/1

..and why not look at this photo of a Dunlin taken at Scapa on the 2nd of September 1930 while you're at it??

Negative no. L10,293/3

All images are part of the Orkney Photographic Archive.

20 Days of Orkney Trees # 20

Merry Christmas Eve dear readers! Surely, there are few sights more Christmassy than trees heavily-laden with snow. Today we bring you some extremely lovely snow-scenes from the Orkney Photographic Archive..


First of all, here are some pictures taken by Ian Tulloch after a snow storm in 1955:

Negative reference L 9479/3

Negative Reference L 9480/3

Negative reference L 9479/4

And these delights were taken by Tom Kent c.1900:

Tom Kent reference 3423



Tom Kent reference 3403 (detail)



Tom Kent reference 3436



Tom Kent reference 3446

We hope you have enjoyed our Christmassy, yet stubborn refusal to accept the myth that 'Orkney has no trees.' We may not have many, but we cherish the ones we have and will surely be adding to their number as time goes on.

Ah trees! God bless them every one!

Merry Christmas!



20 Days of Orkney Trees #18

Just a couple of tree snippets today from our research this month:


First of all, even the birds became concerned about the lack of forests and began planting trees on Hoy...

Orkney Herald 10th February 1926

... and second, Stromness used to have a big tree too! Until 1926 that is...

Orkney Herald 24th February 1926

We checked the Stromness Town Council minutes for that time, but there was no mention of the tree removal. There is much talk about work being done in John Street to strengthen walls etc., so perhaps the tree was removed as part of that project.


We looked for a picture of the tree but unsuccessfully. Here is a lovely photo of tree-lined lovers' lane in Stromness instead:



Robertson collection 4596

20 Days of Orkney Trees #14

Most of the archive staff are not Orkney-born and so we often ask our Very Orcadian Colleague to enlighten us when puzzled by local dialect, confused by 'Orcadian ways' or curious about growing up in the County.

I asked VOC about his early tree memories and he talked about a small wood being planted outside his school. Said wood is now full of hefty -trunked trees but our colleague remembers them being 'nothing but sticks'.

I asked what year this could have been was told to mind my own beeswax. Undeterred, I looked through the Phoenix Photographic collection (Dougie Shearer's archive) and found this great shot of all the tiny, newly planted saplings with the path winding through them. I think this photo dates from the early 1960s but don't tell VOC I said that...

20 Days of Orkney Trees #7

In 2003, Orkney tree planting expert Jenny Taylor was asked about the then make-up of woodlands in Orkney. She gave the overall area of 105 hectares which was accounted for by 10 hectares of native woodland, 18 acres planted by the forestry commission in in the 1950s, 5 hectares planted on Flotta, 25 recently planted hectares and 47 hectares of woodlands planted pre-1920s around big estate houses such as Binscarth, Crantit, Papdale and others.

Binscarth woods is perhaps the most noticeable of these Victorian-era plantations. It is thought that the trees, which are visible from the Kirkwall to Stromness road in the parish of Firth, were planted soon after the building of Binscarth house in 1850 by owner Robert Scarth. The woodland was used for entertaining and leisure. Servants who worked at the house have told researchers about having to carry every single piece of a silver tea set into the woods so that the gentlefolk could have tea under the trees.

This section of 1882 Ordnance Survey map shows the spread of the woods by that date:

The picture at the head of this post was taken in the 1920s and was found in an album of photographs which were found in a skip! (A skip!) Thankfully, a passer-by fished it out and brought it to the photographic department to be lovingly copied and catalogued.


In 1952, the Orcadian dated 17th January tells us that hundreds of Binscarth trees were uprooted by the fierce storm of that year and the final number has been suggested to be 2,000. The next week's edition showed some of the damage:

The woods have been added to since by great, great grandson of Robert Scarth, Major Malcolm Macrae, who planted 2,500 trees in 1990 and a further 'shelter belt' in 1995. Tree varieties include sycamore, Swedish whitebeam, Sitka spruce, mountain ash (rowan) and larch.

The woodlands are no longer just for the use of the owners and are frequented by walkers, naturalists and school groups who greatly enjoy exploring the now well-established trees.

'Immediately a new world of green gloom received us, different to anything else in the islands. We were moving now through an intimate sylvan world, and the sense of space and light felt elsewhere in Orkney, was lost. But this new green world was not hostile. Rather the contrary. The brutality of nature, the vast forces of energy and ruthlessness which can be felt even on a peaceful afternoon at the top of a sea crag, were in this woodland muted and softened to a delicate gentle beauty. It was a world of silence and soft whisperings. The same kind of sacred gloom pervades the interior of St Magnus Cathedral'

Binscarth Wood by George Mackay Brown - Taken from Northern Lights, A Poet's Sources

 

Information taken from:


Orkney's Growing Green by Alan Hodge, Living Orkney #9
Orcadian newspaper.
Orkney Archive Reference D70/2/3 The History of Tree Plantations in Firth, Marie Sinclair
Orkney Archive Reference D70/7/16 A Brief History of Orkney’s Trees.  Alex Pendry.

20 Days Of Orkney Trees #6

Like much of Britain, Orkney used to have far more trees. It is thought that the islands were covered in woodlands but, around 5000 years ago, they began to disappear. Two things happened at around the same time; climate change leading to stronger winds and human Neolithic inhabitants.




Whether the trees and shrubs of Orkney were too battered by the strong, sea winds, or chopped down for fuel or gnawed by domesticated, grazing animals, the woodlands disappeared.




So how do we know they were there in the first place? Because they are still here. Orcadian naturalists discovered this awhile ago:






'...it is observable in many places, even under the flat sea-beech, where the storms or other accidents wash off the gravel or sand, that black peat-moss, stuck through with trees, seems to have been the original soil. Sometimes a whole tree has been found, and the smallest fibre so strong as to bear lifting. And in a peat-moss in Deerness, at the depth of four feet, roots of trees and hazelnuts have been dug up, the nuts quite entire. This would seem to indicate, that the country was not formerly as it is now.'




(St Andrews and Deerness parish entry in the Statistical Account of Scotland 1791-1799)

'There are a number of sunken sea beaches in Orkney where roots of trees are found in situ below the water mark'

'They had been laid bare by a Westerly gale but were still embedded in hard, black peaty substance below the sea'

(letters written to Old-Lore Miscellany IV, 1912)


'On the west coast of the Mainland of Orkney, about midway between Hoy mouth and the Westray Frith lies the Bay of Skaill... Mr Watt of Skaill, discovered, during the ebb, what was apparently a peat-moss, about an acre in extent. Partly embedded, and lying on the surface of this moss, in a horizontal position, were the stems of several small trees about 10 feet in length, and from 5 to 6 inches in diameter. They were in a very decayed state; but a piece of one of them was so fresh, that Mr Watt was able to ascertain it to be some kind of fir.'


(Notice Regarding the Submarine Remains of a Grove of Fir Trees in Orkney, Edinburgh Philiosophical Journal 1820.)

'We first dig through a layer of sand, from one to two feet in depth, and then reach a bed of moss, in which the decaying skeletons of trees lie in every conceivable position. It is a melancholy sight to look into the open grave of what had at one time been an umbrageous forest, blooming in all the sylvan beauty of stately trunk, spreading bough, and green leaves, where beasts roamed and fair birds sang.'

(The Encroachment of the Sea - paper read to the Orkney Natural History Society in 1893. by Walter Traill Dennison)




'I stood six feet down and heaved out the buried past of the earth. It was cold, as if the last of the ice-age lingered; and here were leaves in a perfect state of preservation, autumn-tinted, veined and with stems attached; tiny red seeds, and one lovely green glinting thing that could have been an insect wing-case or a scrap of alien flora. The peat broke across at the leaf-layer, and right at the bottom, bedded in the blue boulder-clay, were tree branches and twigs.'


Bessie Skea in A Countrywoman's Calendar, 1962

When organic matter is squished down into soggy, anaerobic conditions, peat is formed. Much of Orkney is covered by thick layers of peat and, in the absence of timber to burn, this was often used as a fuel.

Cutting peats.





Carrying peats



Peat is a kind of natural archive, preserving layers of pollen, organic matter and evidence of climatic conditions. The pollen found in Orkney peat suggests the presence of wide areas of woodland scrub after the Ice Age. Trees like aspen, downy birch, rowan, hazel, juniper and willow thrived alongside roses and honeysuckle shrubs.

So if you are ever stepping across a springy peat bank just think, you could be walking over ancient, submerged forests.

Scientists are still examining these marine woodlands as you can see here: https://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle-2-15039/archaeologists-survey-scotland-s-forests-under-the-sea-1-4672611

Information taken from:

Growth in Britain's Most Northerly Wood by Chapman and Crawford, 1981

The Encroachment of the Sea by Walter Traill Dennison

Old-Lore Miscellany Volume IV

The Statistical Account of Scotland 1791-1799

Orkney Woodland Project website

20 Days of Orkney Trees #4

Our last post showed an image of trees being planted for St Magnus Cathedral's Octocentenary. Eagle-eyed readers will have noticed some trees already in the background of the photos.

We found these earlier, rather fabulous, images of Provost Slater and other dignitaries planting trees in their full Council regalia and we thoroughly approve.

Any captions for these photos will be heartily welcolmed and added to this post and we may even send a sweetie (possibly pre-licked) to the reader who makes us laugh the most.

We do not have a definitive date for these photographs but they must pre-date 1936 as they were taken by Tom Kent and they probably date post 1925 as that is when John M. Slater became Provost of Kirkwall.

But what about the trees in the background of these images???? We have also found some articles from the Orkney Herald newspaper discussing trees in the Willows in 1922:

20 Days of Orkney Trees #3

Our last post was about the Norwegian gift of a tree which graces Kirkwall's Cathedral every Christmas. The tradition originally began in 1987, the year of St Magnus Cathedral's 850th anniversary.


50 years previous to this, some trees were planted in the Willowburn area of the town to commemorate the building's Ocotocentenary:

Anyone familiar with the Willows wood will be surprised to see them in such a sparse state. Now, the burn is surrounded by mature trees, many of which are home to crows and surrounded by flowers in the Springtime.


This photo, taken by Dougie Shearer in the early 1980s, shows how full the trees became. Many are sycamores, like the Big Tree of Albert Street.

These aerial photographs, also by Dougie Shearer, show how many leafy tree tops were bubbling up between Kirkwall's buildings by the latter part of the 20th Century:

Land of the Midnight Dim...

We have a long, dark Winter in Orkney but are rewarded in abundance come Summer time. Our Northerly skies are bright from 4am until 10.30pm and the hours in between are never fully dark.


This long twilight is known as the simmer dim. The sun merely dims and never truly disappears.


The photograph of Kirkwall Harbour below was taken by Tom Kent on the 25th of June at Midnight:

The ability to garden until 10 and go for long evening walks well past tea-time makes up for the fact that, six months from now.. but no. Let us just enjoy the lovely, long nights whilst they last.




UPDATE: Apparently simmer dim is the term used in Shetland. A suggestion of grimleens has been offered, deriving from the Norwegian grimla, - to gleam, shimmer.

Great Tait

There were many exhibitions on Margaret Tait's life and work at the end of last year to celebrate her centenary. We recently received the last archives back from an exhibition at GOMA and they are being unpacked and put back in their boxes, much to the relief of Dusty. (She is the archives' doting mother. If she could make them hot toddys and beat up their bullies, she would)


One of the items is a small photograph album with some rarely-seen images of Margaret as a young women; before she qualified as a doctor, before she began Ancona films with fellow students in Italy and before she became the first Scottish woman to direct a feature film.

Margaret and her brother Maxwell in 1921/2. She would have been about 3.





Age 18 in 1936.

Margaret as a slightly older child

In N. France with a friend, aged around 20.

Portrait, no date.

Looking glam in Dundee, 1940.

Blue Black Permanent was released in 1992 and was nominated for a Scottish Bafta for Best Film.

Old Orkney Photograph Phun

Dusty and I began our morning when our Very Orcadian Colleague invited us to inspect these fantastic photos. He often brings through examples of interest, mirth or mystery and these delighted us.


The first is a positive image printed on glass of a group of four.

Photographs of this vintage rarely include people smiling as the exposure times were too long for sitters to hold a smile for. Dusty and I thought the woman looked particularly grim and wondered if she was having a bad day. VOC informed us that they were 'probably all in clamps' to keep them still (photographers used posing rods and neck rests to help sitters to remain static) and wondered why we were not more intrigued by the fellow on the right who was feeling his fellow sitter's ear and holding what appeared to be a small pipe.

What's his deal?

The instruction not to smile clearly caused this wee lass some mirth and we were amazed by how modern this picture seemed. It could have been taken yesterday. VOC thought it was early twentieth century and guessed from THE WALL BEHIND HER that it was taken on the isle of Westray.

The Orkney Photographic Archive comprises of close to 70,000 images of people, places, transport, archaeological digs, sporting events, terrifying creatures, mystery (poo-like) objects and many, many more subjects and/or events. Most of these are available to peruse in the Archive Search Room on the first floor of Orkney Library.

We can photocopy and scan images we own the copyright of and VOC can makephotographic prints for you in his Tardis-like darkroom.

Update: VOC investigated the origin of this photograph and it was indeed taken on Westray.