Bishop's Palace, Kirkwall, Orkney Islands

Bishop's Palace - Kirkwall, Mainland, Orkney

The town of Kirkwall (from Norse: Kirkiuvágr, the water near the kirk) is dominated by the noble cathedral of St. Magnus founded by Earl Rögnvald in 1137. W. Douglas Simpson has vividly evoked the impact on the small community of the building of the cathedral in the twelfth century:

"Let us picture in our minds the concouse of highly skilled imported craftsmen who must have settled down among the dry-stone and turf-roofed huts of the local inhabitants. There would be the skilled masons and imagers, the carpenters and plasterers, the glaziers and the tilers and the painters, the workers in metal, the jewellers and ena-
mellers and the makers or merchants of rich and costly vestments and altarcloths.

The advent of all these craftsmen-artists, and of the swarm of purveyors who supplied their needs, must have involved a social revolution in twelfth century Kirkwall. And into the midst of this hive of creative, artistic activity comes the great building Bishop himself with his court - the ordainer and deviser, under his noble patron, of the whole vast enterprise, transferring to the immediate neighbourhood of the rising cathedral his own episcopal residence from the outlying station of Birsay"

The bishop in question was William the Old (1102-68) and it has been suggested that the earliest part of the Bishop's Palace was his episcopal residence. The Bishop's Palace and the adjacent Earl's Palace are nowadays in state care.

The main rectangular block of the Bishop's Palace forms what is known as a hall-house, comprising a series of cellars, above which the major apartment or hall was built; only the lowest portion survives and we can only conjecture the arrangement and furnishings of the hall itself in which the Norwegian King Hakon died in 1263 after defeat at the Battle of Largs, but it may well have been a sombrely splendid residence.

In the second period of building, Bishop Reid (1541-58) reconstructed and heightened the main block and built the round tower at the north-western angle.The three buttresses of the west wall appear to be later addition. Simpson has suggested that the final reconstruction was carried out about 1600 by Earl Pattick Stewart, who made it into a detached part of his own palace and may even have housed in it some of the 50 musketeers he is said to have retained.

The visitor should try in his imagination to reinstate in the rather gaunt interior of the palace the timber floors of the upper levels, reached by the spiral staircase in the tower, and the attendant bustle and colour of the earl's court.

Castles I visited

Edinburgh	Eilean Donan	Duntulm	Dun Bheagan	Dunrobin	Cawdor	Blair Atholl	Braemar	Kirkwall	Strome	Knock	Moil

Armadale	Mey	Stirling	Tantallon	Thurso	Birsay	Kirkwall	Balmoral	Stuart	Corgarff	Stalker	Ackergill Tower

Inverness	Balvenie	Loch Lomond	Dun Sciath	Kilravock Castle	Elgin	old Keiss	new Keiss	Girnigoe	Sinclair	Urquhart	Old Wick

Carbisdale	Tongue	Kilberry	Tarbert	Stonefield	Sadell	Torisdale	Skipness	Carnasserie	Dunadd	Dunstaffnage	Barcaldine

Brodick	Lochranza	Dunaverty	Inveraray	Kilchurn				Ruthven Barracks	Fort William	Fort Augustus	Fort George