20 Days of Orkney Trees #13



Tom Kent image negative no. 2461

Another 'big house' garden today. Papdale house stands in central Kirkwall behind its namesake school. The children of the school have the use of a walled garden, known as 'the Secret Garden' which was attached to the old house. Home to many mature trees and allotments, you can read more about the garden, which has recently been renovated by Orkney Blide Trust here: https://theorkneynews.scot/2018/06/29/orkneys-secret-creative-garden/




Papdale house was built in 1807 by Malcolm Laing, (Advocate, historian and M.P. for Orkney from 1807-1812) and, in August 1814, he entertained an old friend from his legal days, Sir Walter Scott. As noted, in the article above, there is a rumour mentioned that Sir Walter was responsible for the avenues of Laburnam trees within the garden. He was only in Kirkwall for a couple of days, so it seems unlikely that he actually planted them himself. He did, however, note the scarcity of trees, so perhaps strong hints were made...

'All vegetables grow here freely in the gardens and there are one or two attempts at trees where they are sheltered by walls. How ill they succeed may be conjectured by our bringing with us a quantity of brushwood, commissioned by Malcolm Laing from Aberbrothock, to be sticks to his pease.'

Walter Scott in Northern Lights

Papdale walled garden on the 1902 OS map.



Malcolm Laing's childhood home was a town house in Kirkwall and was, according to his brother Samuel Laing's biographer Ray Fereday, 'remarkable in Samuel's youth for having three trees growing in its front yard. The house survives, with a ground-floor extension for two shops, and one decrepit sycamore remains, long known as the big tree.'


Earlier, in the same book, Samuel himself remembers the three trees as being plane trees:

'We lived in that house in Kirkwall a little below the broad street which is distinguished by two or three middling sized Plane Trees, which were planted by my father and are almost the only trees in the country.'

Perhaps the sycamore was planted after the Laings' residence.

The author of the preface to Samuel's autobiography, William P. L. Thomson was not just a historian, he also served as the rector of Kirkwall Grammar School from 1971-1990, living in Papdale House and, with his wife, tending the garden and its trees.

An aerial view of the Kirkwall Grammar School can be seen below, with the garden just behind it:

This photo was taken in the mid 70s and the walled area does seem quite sparsely treed compared to the garden today. The woodlands either side, however, seem in fine fettle and have been added to recently by pupils of the Grammar school.

Information taken from:

Northern Lights by Sir Walter Scott

The Autobiography of Samuel Laing of Kirkwall, edited & supplemented by R. P. Fereday with a preface by W.P.L. Thomson

Kirkwall Grammar School - From Sang School to Comprehensive, by W.P.L. Thomson

Who Was Who in Orkney by W. S. Hewison

Orkney's Secret Creative Garden in The Orkney News by Fiona Grahame







Harvest Home

It is harvest time in Orkney and the fields are full of beautiful, golden bundles. Gardeners are gathering up their vegetables and children will soon be piling up cans of soup and beans for their Harvest assemblies.




In celebration, we bring you an excerpt from Ernest Walker Marwick's The Lore of the Harvest which discusses the straw 'bikko' dog made from the straw in the last field. Below is an example of said 'bikko'.


We also found a J. Omond photo of some Orphir schoolgirls gathering peas, the sadly ruined harvest of 1909 (another Omond image) and a lovely harvest tea-break or 'half yoke'.




For more Orcadian harvest lore, click here.




The dreaded straw bikko - ultimate insult to a harvesting farmer.

Click to enlarge

Picking peas in Orphir.

Snow ruined the Harvest of 1909.

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A well-earned break.

Seeds of Interest Sown

Posted on behalf of Balfour Blogger #2

Volunteering in the Orkney Archive, getting hooked by an invoice for seeds

In Autumn 2018, I started to help with the cataloguing of the Balfour papers. These are a collection deposited in the Orkney Library in 1962 and are legal papers, letters, financial records and estate records and material relating to the family of Balfour of Balfour [Shapinsay] and of Trenabie [Westray], 1547-1921. There are over 100 books - including letter books, account books, pay lists and muster rolls. There are also 54 boxes of bundles of letters, notes, invoices, receipts, etc. Each box has between 11 and 20 bundles of papers.

I am working on Box 24 which contains letters to John Balfour MP received in 1825 and invoices for a variety of years. Bundle 11 of Box 24 consists of invoices and receipts for the estate of Charlton Grove near Blackheath in Kent. These include, amongst other items, statutory Poor Rate Tax, building work, invoices for journeys to London, and the rent of the estate. My favourite in this bundle is D2/24/11/3/3a which is the invoice and receipt from 'Thomas Gibbs & Co., Nursery and Seedsmen to the Honorable[sic] Board of Agriculture', Corner of Half Moon Street, Piccadilly' for the year 1824. The total bill is for £16 and 5 shillings (£16 5/-). According to data from the Office for National Statistics, that is equivalent to about £1,444 in 2017 prices.

D2/24/11/3/3a page 1

The quantity and variety of the listing is astonishing. For example:

2 quarts of Magazan beans (cost 1 shilling). I had to look up what these are. It turns out they are the 'smallest and most delicate species of the Windsor bean.

Windsor beans, long pod beans, negro beans and liver coloured beans.

Varieties of peas include early Charlton, Prussian, blue imperial, and white Prussian

Included in the list is 2 quarts of Prickly Spinage[sic] and 2 quarts of round Spinage.

Then there is scorzonera which may refer to black salsify, especially as it is immediately next to salsify in the listing.

Onions (3 kinds including Deptford).

Herbs include knotted marjoram, sweet basil, curld[sic] parsley.

Cabbage varieties include early Battersea, early York and Cornish.

Broccoli, 7 varieties in all - white, Belvedere, early Cape, late Cape, sprouting, late Portsmouth and late Danish.

Apart from vegetables, there were '25 paper flower seeds' costing 12 shillings and sixpence (12/6), 12 pounds (lbs) of fine mixed grass seeds for lawn costing £1 and 16 shillings (£1 16/-); and a variety of sundries including 9 canvas bags (5/-) and 1 large hamper (2/6). The most expensive items are yew trees, 18 in all at a cost of £4 10/-.

D2/24/11/3/3a part of page 2

This is one year's invoice from Gibb's. There are several more from this company in Bundle 11. There is a large variety among the invoices. The building work is extensive, including the roof of a dairy. I could spend months on just this bundle, but I have 13 other bundles in this box. Of course, there are another 30 boxes to be completed, luckily not all by me.

I Beg Your Pardon...Do You Garden?

Gunnie Moberg:Double exposure images made in the garden at Don. These ones date between 1996 -2003. The scans are made from Gunnie’s test prints.

We complain about the weather a lot on this blog and typical Orkney has provided plenty of grist for our grumpy mill this year with thunder, torrential rain, heat-waves and icy winds. Sometimes all in one morning.


The mood is definitely more Summery now though and we have had a lot of lovely days. We should probably do our gardens but we will probably just lie around eating twixes instead. (Other chocolate bars are available... like wispas....or snickers.... or, oooh, the yorkies with raison and biscuits in... mmmmmm)




It has been over a year now since Rebecca Marr left the Gunnie Moberg Archive but her lovely blog about the process of cataloguing the collection is still active and it is worth taking a look at this post on Gunnie's beautiful Stromness garden if you are feeling gardeny yet lazy.




You can look at Rebecca's own photographs here.

Panting for Planting

Plan of old garden at Orphir House, Gyre.

Well hello there archive-I-stumbled-upon-today! Could you delight us any more? I think not.

a) It is a beautiful spring day and you are a plan of trees and list of plants for the garden at Orphir House (which was rebuilt in 1886.)

 List of plants growing in the layer rockery at East Cottage on 5 May 1895.

b)You are the record of the old garden, a garden past, which makes us feel mournful and wistful... which we love.

Plan of trees in the old garden.

c) As great fans of luuuurve, and romance the rubbings taken of initials carved into trees made us squeal with delight.

Rubbings of initials carved into the bark of trees.

Well done Orkney Archive Reference D15/21/21. A sterling job.