Day 24: Kirkwall, Orkney - Saturday, 21 September

Weather: 11º - 13º - Cloudy and cold

Accommodation: Home on Orkney, Kirkwall 

We had a terrific day despite the cold, bleak day. It would have been perfect weather for a long walk. Our day centred around being at the Maeshowe Chambered Cairn Visitor Centre at 1.45pm for a booked visit. 

Our morning plan was to see more of the southern part of the mainland and visit The Italian Chapel on the small uninhabited island of Lamb Holm. We crossed a number of causeways to arrive at the unique and beautiful chapel which was built by Italian POWs in WWII. It is now a main attraction for Orkney. Under the leadership of POW artist Domineco Chiocchetti, the POWs transformed two Nissen Huts from anything the prisoners could get their hands on into an ornate chapel. An impressive facade was added to the outside of the huts to make it look more like a church. 

Behind the altar is Chiocchetti’s masterpiece, Madonna and Child, which he copied from a holy prayer card that his mother gave him and he carried with him all through the war. The varied talents of the other POWs were used including a wrought iron worker called Palumbi.

My sister, Sandra, had told me of the sad love story of one of the POWs which she heard when visiting Orkney a number of years ago. I was keen to find out more. I asked the woman at the entrance and she said the story is not formally documented but retold the story. Palumbi who constructed the rood screen was allowed to go to the mainland and met a 20 year old woman and they became friends and often had meals with the family. When Palumbi had to return to Italy he told the woman he had left a message for her in the middle of the chapel. In the floor is a small metal stop that the gates of the sanctuary close against. It’s in the shape of a heart. Palumbi and his wife had one daughter and the daughter named her daughter after the Orkney woman. Palumbi never returned to Orkney and died aged 69 in 1980.  I felt like crying when the woman finished telling me the story.

At the last Mass before the Italians went home they played a gramophone record of the bells and choir of St Peter’s in Rome. 

From the chapel we recrossed the causeway built by the Italian POW’s. The building of the causeways to block enemy entrance to an area of water between the Orkney Islands known as the Scapa Flow was the main purpose the Italians were on Orkney. The area had immense capacity to harbour a large number of of ships. The barriers are called the Churchill Barriers because of Churchill’s role as First Lord of the Admirality during WWII and his insistence on the building of them to create permanent barriers. They now serve as vital road links between South Ronaldsay, Burray and Mainland Orkney.

We tried to visit a photographic exhibition on the building of the barriers at nearby St Nicholls Kirk, Holm but unfortunately it was closed. However, the church had an amazing, crowded graveyard overlooking the water and the barriers. I loved the lichen growing on the gravestones and the surruonding dry stone wall.

We had a delicious local seafood lunch at the Murray Arms Hotel in the lovely little harbour village of St Margaret’s Hope. It’s where we will catch the ferry on Monday afternoon to return to the mainland. There were two main streets - Front St which was on the harbour wall and Back St which ran parallel to it. At times the houses on Front St become flooded because of storm surges and we saw sandbags and other means of keeping the water from entering the buildings. 

Our visit to the Neolithic Maeshowe Chambered Cairn was special. It dates back to 2800BC. We were told by the Information Centre that we were very lucky to get two tickets so late as it is usually booked out up to three weeks ahead. They insisted we arrive 15mins prior to the visit and when we arrived at the Visitor Centre we found that we were in a group of 20 and we had to go in a mini-bus to the site which left at 2.00pm. When we arrived we could see that Maeshowe was a large mound on a flat plain. 

Our guide was very knowledgeable having done the job for over twenty years. There wasn’t a question from the group he couldn’t answer. We had to go through a long, dark entrance of eleven metres and only one metre high. Some of the group had trouble sustaining the low walking bend for the length of the entrance and had to crawl. 

We weren’t allowed to take photos of the large  internal burial chamber. It is made up of great slabs of sandstone making a beehive shape and on the winter solstice the rear wall of the central chamber is illuminated through the only entrance. 

When we returned to the Visitor Centre we decided that it was time to go back to our cosy cottage as it was late afternoon. We had dinner at home courtesy of Tesco. It was a great day of contrasts from Neolithic to WWII.