The Castles of Scotland by Martin Coventry | Goblinshead | A comprehensive guide to 4,100 castles, towers, historic houses, stately homes and family lands
The Castles of Scotland by Martin Coventry | Goblinshead | A comprehensive guide to 4,100 castles, towers, historic houses, stately homes and family lands
The Castles of Scotland
The Castles of Scotland 

Earl’s Palace, Birsay

Orkney: About 12 miles north of Stromness on Orkney, on minor road just north of A966, just east of Birsay Bay, north-west of Loch of Boardhouse, at Birsay.

 

HES   HY 248279   OS: 6   KW17 2LX

 

OPEN: Access at all reasonable times.
Tel: 01856 721205/841815   Web: www.historicenvironment.scot

Earl's Palace at Birsay on the mainland of Orkney is an impressive and once sumptuous ruinous courtyard castle and palace, built by Robert and Patrick Stewart, infamous Earls of Orkney. Earl's Palace, Birsay (MacGibbon and Ross)

Once a fine and stately building, the Earl’s Palace at Birsay is a roofless but largely intact 16th-century courtyard castle. It consists of two-storey ranges of buildings, enclosing a courtyard, with taller towers at three of the corners. The walls are pierced by many shot-holes and gunloops. The entrance to the courtyard was through the basement of one of the ranges.
  The basements were vaulted. A long gallery occupied the first floor, above the entrance, and another range contained a kitchen with a large fireplace. A description of 1701 records that, although by then the palace had begun to deteriorate, the upper floors had been ‘prettily decorated, the ceiling being all painted and for the most part with scheme holding forth scripture histories of Noah’s flood, Christ’s riding to Jerusalem etc’.
  ‘Byrsa’ is marked on Blaeu’s map of Orkney.
  The palace was started by Robert Stewart, Earl of Orkney about 1574 and completed by his son, Patrick Stewart, before 1614. Father and son oppressed the islanders, and taxed them to pay for the palace at Birsay and at Kirkwall. Earl Patrick was charged with treason and executed in 1615 after his son, Robert Stewart, had risen against the Crown and seized the palace here. The rising was put down by the Earl of Caithness, and Robert was also executed. Cromwell’s forces garrisoned the palace in 1653. The building was badly damaged in a gale of 1868.
  Nearby [HY 239285] on an island is the Brough of Birsay, a Pictish settlement, which was later used by Norsemen.

New sixth edition in preparation: more than 1,500 additional sites, hundreds more illustrations, comprehensive online maps and indexes, and much much more.

Due for 2024, and still a huge amount of work to do … more info to follow soon.

Check any and all opening and access information with the sites themselves…

Contact

Goblinshead

Cockenzie House
22 Edinburgh Road
Cockenzie

EH32 0HY

 

Email: info@thecastlesofscotland.co.uk

 

Or use our contact form.

Spring is here, Red tulips from Cockenzie House Spring is here…
Print | Sitemap
© Martin Coventry