Orkney Heritage Society

23/06/2026

Friday 26 June: 10am-5pm
Looking for some inspiration? Keen to share your experiences with your peers? Join the folks at Sustainable Island Heritage at the St Magnus Centre in Kirkwall on Friday for a gathering which brings together community groups, heritage professionals, and local change-makers from across Orkney.

Read more in the link.

(Orkney Heritage Society has no affiliation with this event or this group)

Looking for some inspiration? Keen to share your experiences with your peers?

08/06/2026

We're sorry. Tickets to visit Eynhallow have now sold out. 😢
However, we'd like to point you to this fascinating document on Trove.Scot, 'The Landscapes of Eynhallow' by Matthew Butler, mainly because in it Matthew shows a map of the field names of the island 🤯 (p36).

Not bad.

https://www.trove.scot/archive/1498944

05/06/2026

It will soon be the 110th anniversary of the loss of HMS Hampshire close to Orkney's north-west coastline. 737 men died. There will be an informal gathering at the Kitchener Memorial, Marwick Head on Friday 5 June 2026 at 8.30pm to mark the 1916 tragedy. Everyone is welcome to reflect, share and discuss. There will be a two-minute silence at 8.45pm, the time the ship struck a mine. This year also marks the centenary of the unveiling of the Kitchener Memorial.

29/05/2026

On Thursday 2nd July, the Birsay Drama Group will be re-enacting the highly successful foy performed as part of the St Magnus Festival in 2016, the 100th anniversary of the loss of HMS Hampshire. It is from 7pm when you will be greeted with free tea and coffee at the Birsay Community Centre. Not only will you get to see the foy again, you'll hear from OHS board member Neil Kermode, who was absolutely instrumental in the building of the commemorative wall beneath the memorial, and from Emily Turton, who will talk about the most recent research and show photographs of the way the wreck looks today.

It is completely free, though there will be an exiting collection on behalf of the Birsay Heritage Trust. Please, join us in this commemoration of the loss of this fine ship and her even finer crew, on the 100th anniversary of the building of the memorial, and the 10th anniversary of the commemorative wall, upon which the name of all of the crew are inscribed. It's not just the Kitchener Memorial, it's a memorial for everyone aboard the HMS Hampshire, and the ill-fated Laurel Crown who went down in the same minefield the following week.

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30/04/2026

There is a tradition that people passing a mound below Mirland in Deerness were followed by a crying child. (A girl at Mirland long since was thought to have had an illegitimate child when she destroyed and buried there.) On one occasion 3 teenage boys were staying at an old house about a quarter of a mile from the mound. During the night they were wakened by a child’s crying, but there could have been no child living in the vicity. A local man was going past the mound on his way home from the pub at Smiddybank (shut around 1880s) when the child came wailing after him. He turned and said “Hadd away wi thee Bare Arse.” The child immediately disappeared. The inference was that the unnamed child had at last got a name and was content.

29/04/2026

Last night, our Secretary gave a talk jointly with the UHI Institute for Northern Studies at UHI. You can find her recorded talk on their channel, or by clicking on this link:

Public Seminar Series Did Nobody Die Rousay and Egilsay Kirk Sessions