Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 4

KIRKWALL
Public Buildings, etc. — The oldest part of the town
extends along the shore of the bay, whence the
principal street, a very old one, winds away to the
SSW ; and though the causeway is now no longer so
rough as it once was, the street is still very incon-
venient, being in places so narrow that carts cannot
pass, and foot passengers have to take refuge from pass-
ing vehicles. All the older thoroughfares are equally
narrow, but the newer ones are wide and spacious.
Though the town, thanks very much to the cathedral,
looks best from the sea, the remark of Sir Walter Scott,
who was here in 1814, that it was 'but a poor and
dirty place, especially towards the harbour,' is now no
longer true, though improvement is still possible. The
completion of drainage, water supply, and paving
between 1876 and 1879, at a total cost of £S000 for the
two former and £2500 for the latter, has been a very
great improvement. The water supply comes from
Papdale. Man}' of the houses are very old, their crow-
step gables to the street, small doors and windows,
thick walls, and small, gloomy, and irregular rooms,
giving some parts of the town au ancient and even
foreign appearance, but the newer houses are much
such as may be found in any other burgh of the same
size, except that most of them are provided with much
larger gardens ; and the strangest articles to be seen in
the shops are the curious woollen work articles from
Fair Isle, and thin Shetland shawls. The old Town
Hall, dating from 1745, built with stones taken from
the King's Castle, and covered with slates taken from
the Bishop's Palace, stands in the vicinity of the
cathedral, and was built partly by subscription and
partly by a grant of £200 from the Earl of Morton, who
was then tacksman of the bishopric teinds. This sum
is said to have been the proceeds of a fine imposed on
the fiery Jacobite, Sir James Stewart of Burray, for
firing at a boat in which the Earl was crossing Holm
Sound. The structure is a very poor one with a piazza,
and previous to 1876 the lower portion served as the
county jail, and also provided accommodation for town
council chambers and for county offices and court room.
In the upper portion there is a large room still used for
council meetings, but in the year mentioned new
county buildings were begun, and these now form a
handsome block, with an excellent court room, in which
the county meetings are also held ; and in the prison,
which is sanctioned under the Prisons Act of 1878,
there is accommodation for eight prisoners. A proposal
to remove the old Town Hall and erect a new one, with
accommodation in the same building for both town and
county offices and post office, has not yet (1883) been
carried out. The handsome building occupied by the
Commercial Bank stands on the site of what was known
as Parliament Close, the quondam meeting place of the
Orkney magnates. The King's Castle was on the W
side of the principal street, opposite the cathedral. It
was a strong building, with very thick walls, erected by
Henry St Clair in the 14th century, and was held by
the burghers in resistance to the fugitive Earl of Both-
well in 1567. After the execution of Earl Patrick
Stewart (see Orkney) in 1615, it was by order of the
Privy Council demolished, and in 1742 the ruins were
almost entirely cleared away, as the Earl of Morton
gave permission to the Town Council to use the stones
in the construction of the town house and jail. A por-
tion of one of the walls remained till 1865, when it was
removed to make way for Castle Street, as is recorded
by the inscription on the front of the Castle Hotel :—
' Near this spot, facing Broad Street, stood, in the year 1865,
the last remaining fragment of the ruins of the Castle of Kirkwall
a royal fortress of great antiquity, and originally of vast strength,
but of which, from the ravages of war and time, nearly every
vestige had long previously disappeared. Its remains, consisting
of a wall 55 feet long by 11 feet thick, and of irregular height, were
removed by permission of the Earl of Zetland on application of
the Trustees acting in execution of " The Kirkwall Harbour Act
1859," in order to improve the access to the Harbour ; and this
stone was erected to mark its site, mdccclxvi.'
The Cathedral, near the S end of the principal street,
was founded, as already noticed, in 1137, and was
KIRKWALL
dedicated to St Magnus, a Scandinavian Earl of Orkney,
who was, in 1114, assassinated in the island of Egilshay
by his cousin Haco. It was not nearly finished by the
founder, and was added to by several of the bishops',
and hence the five different styles which, according to
Sir Henry Dryden, may be detected in it. As it at
present stands it is one of the three old cathedrals of
Scotland that now remain at all in perfect condition,
and one of the two, the other being Glasgow, that have
all their parts as built complete. One peculiar feature
of it is the largeness with which it stands out in all the
views of the place, so much so indeed from the sea that
Miss Sinclair is not far wrong in saying that it ' looks
almost as large as the whole city put together ; ' and
this always gives it the appearance of being very much
larger than it really is. 'After having stood,' says Dr
Hill Burton, 'for nearly 700 years, it still remains pre-
eminent both in dignity and beauty over all the archi-
tectural productions which the fingers of civilisation
and science have reared around it ; and even the
traveller from the central districts of the mighty
empire to which the far isle of Pomona is now attached,
looking with admiring wonder on its lofty tiers of
strong and symmetrical arches, and its richly mullioned
windows, must admit that old St Magnus is matched
by very few of the ecclesiastical edifices of our great
cities, and those few are also ancient. ' The appearance
given by the bulky pillars is that of strength rather
than heaviness. 'A few of the arches, ' says Hugh
Miller, ' present on their ringstones those characteristic
toothed and zigzag ornaments that are of not unfamiliar
occurrence on the round squat doorways of the older
parish churches of England ; but by much the greater
number exhibit merely a few rude mouldings, that bend
over ponderous columns and massive capitals, unfretted
by the tool of the carver. Though of colossal magnifi-
cence, the exterior of the edifice yields in effect, as in
all true Gothic buildings — for the Gothic is greatest in
what the Grecian is least — to the sombre sublimity of
the interior. The nave, flanked by the dim deep aisles,
and by a double row of smooth-stemmed gigantic
columns, supporting each a double tier of ponderous
arches, and the transepts, with their three tiers of
small Norman windows, and their bold semicircular arcs
demurely gay with toothed or angular carvings that
speak of the days of Rolf and Torfeinar are siugularly
fijie — far superior to aught else of the kind in Scotland.'
The building is cruciform, with side aisles and a
square tower over the crossing ; and the material of
which it is built is a dark red sandstone interspersed
with blocks of a white colour, especially on the W side.
The total length, from E to W outside, is 234 feet 6
inches, and the width 56 feet ; the transepts, from end
to end, measure 101 feet 6 inches, and the width is 28
feet ; and the present tower is 133 feet high. In the
inside the nave is 131 feet 6 inches long, and the choir
86 feet ; the length of the transepts is 89 feet 6 inches,
the breadth of nave 16 feet, the breadth of nave and
aisles 47 feet, and the height from floor to roof 71 feet.
The roof is supported by 28 pillars and 4 half pillars, all
18 feet high. The four large pillars at the crossing
supporting the tower are fluted, as are also the two half
pillars, and the two pillars on each side next them at
the E end. The half pillars at the W end are semi-
circular, and all those in the nave, as well as the two in
the choir next the fluted pillars under the tower, are
circular. The roofs are all vaulted and groined. The
tower was formerly topped by a lofty spire, but this was
in the beginning of 1671 struck by lightning 'which
fell upon the steeple heid of the Cathedral Kirk of
Orkney called St Magnus Kirk of Kirkwall, and fyred
the samen which burnt downward until the steeple heid
But, by the providence of God, the bells
thereof, being three great bells and a little one called
the scellat bell, were preserved by the care and vigi-
lance of the magistrates, with the help of the towns-
people.' The spire was then succeeded by the present
squat and very ugly pyramidal roof. The top of the
tower, from which an excellent view may be obtained, is
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