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.

Call The Midwife! (The Orcadian Edition)

Well this is an interesting book. Jannet Mowat of Victoria Street Kirkwall kept a midwifery account book from 1830-1855.

She started as a nurse and so the first few entries are for 'giving ingections' and 'attending you as a sick nurse', but soon the entries list the boys, 'lasses' and 'girrels' that she has delivered across Orkney. (Kirkwall, Evie, Sanday, North Ronaldsay and PapaWestray are all mentioned.)

Sometimes the baby's name is listed and sometimes they are listed as still born or 'to be a still child.' Prices seemed to vary from customer to customer with most paying about 5 shillings for Jannet's services but the rate rises to £2 or even £3 for some customers.

Does anyone have an idea of why this would be? (It's not inflation as it happens throughout the whole book and it doesn't look like some were paying in installments.)

P.S. She wrote her married name more than once on the back page of the notebook like girls do with boys they fancy at school!

P.P.S. We NEVER did this.

A Catch-up.

We do apologize for the relative lack of posts lately. We have been pretty short staffed and it is Fereday time again so there has been much less time to update.

This is annoying, because two excellent blogging opportunities arose this week and we were forced to let them slip through our busy fingers.

First of all, there was Valentine's day. Wait! Come back! Look at these plays and novels written for the Minervian Library by the children who used to live at Tankerness House where the Orkney Museum can now be found:

D98/1/4/12 and D98/1/2/28

D98/1/2/11 and D98/1/2/27

D98/1/2/11

D98/1/2/27

They are contained within hand-stitched covers and some contain lovely illustrations. We like to say the titles by replacing the word 'love' with 'luuuurrrveee'. Try it, it's fun: 'The Effect of Luuuurrrve' by C. Cowan, 'A Tale of True Luuurrrve' by C. Cowan, 'Cecelia Chantry's Luuuurrrrve'  by C. Cowan and 'To Gain His Luuurrrve', A Novel.

Well it makes us laugh.

Also, yesterday was the birthday of Ernest Shackleton. One of the documents in our John Mooney Collection is a telegram signed by Shackleton himself. Erlend Mooney, John's second son, was one of two boy scouts chosen to travel as cabin boys on Shackleton's last expedition.

Unfortunately, Erlend was terribly sea-sick. So much so, that he had to be sent home. Shackleton writes "....regret necessary action, solely in boy's interest he was always willing. "

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