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St Mary's Kirk (Isbister)

Broch

<b>St Mary's Kirk (Isbister)</b>Posted by widefordImage © wideford
Also known as:
  • Grind
  • Skaill

Nearest Town:Kirkwall (10km SE)
OS Ref (GB):   HY39971872 / Sheet: 6
Latitude:59° 3' 5.3" N
Longitude:   3° 2' 47.61" W

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<b>St Mary's Kirk (Isbister)</b>Posted by wideford <b>St Mary's Kirk (Isbister)</b>Posted by wideford <b>St Mary's Kirk (Isbister)</b>Posted by wideford <b>St Mary's Kirk (Isbister)</b>Posted by wideford <b>St Mary's Kirk (Isbister)</b>Posted by wideford <b>St Mary's Kirk (Isbister)</b>Posted by wideford <b>St Mary's Kirk (Isbister)</b>Posted by wideford

Fieldnotes

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Take the bottom end of the Gorseness Road. North of the road is the Loch of Brockan, south of the road just before Grind is a steep-sided mound in the middle of a field. This is St Mary's Kirk in Isbister, Rendall, NMRS record no. HY31NE 2. On reading a 1941 newspaper account that the tenants were forbidden from clearing the field or removing stones I was happy to see from the road stones here and there, but once in the field it is obvious that this virtue has been undermined as cattle have started to trash it. The protection was not afforded to non-ecclesiastical monuments in the vicinity, as the 1880 Name Book reports that the farmer had demolished adjoining ruins, at which time this site showed the remains of two concentric structural walls. A 1941 newspaper report spoke of half-buried well-squared stones, and definitely by 1967 the O.S. saw neither walls nor structure. The approx 1.4m high mound had been squared off by ploughing to leave almost vertical sides - no way you can call them that now. But you can certainly see where some building has been on top of the mound, for at the northern end a slightly raised section of much darker grass covers a few remnants of Broch Age wall. Perhaps it's the kirk. What we have from St Mary's itself belong to the burial ground. The 1880 tenant excavated human bones and likely gravestones, and the 1967 O.S. mentions that nearby at HY39961870 the farmer at Grind found a pile of human bones between parallel stone walls topped by a flagstone. Sensibly he put things back where they were and again the O.S. could find no trace. wideford Posted by wideford
29th April 2015ce