Scotland · Region
52 places in Orkney Islands, from the deepest prehistory to the medieval world.
Settlement · Prehistoric
Orkney Islands
Settlement on the site began sometime between 500 and 200 BC, when an Iron Age community raised a stone broch tower — once probably around 10 metre…
Settlement · Pictish & early medieval
Orkney Islands
The earliest settlement on the tidal island is thought to date to the 6th century, perhaps by Christian missionaries.
Tomb or burial place · Prehistoric
Orkney Islands
Cuween Hill is a Neolithic chambered cairn on the Orkney Mainland, dating to around 3000 BC and built by Neolithic farmers as a burial place. It is…
Tomb or burial place · Prehistoric
Orkney Islands
The tomb was plundered at an unknown date by breaking an opening through the roof of the chamber; the hole had been noted by the 16th century and w…
Tomb or burial place · Prehistoric
Orkney Islands
The chambered cairn was built around 2800 BC by Neolithic farming communities of central Orkney, associated with the Grooved ware pottery tradition…
Tomb or burial place · Prehistoric
Orkney Islands
Midhowe is a Neolithic 'stalled' chambered cairn of the Orkney-Cromarty type, on the south shore of Rousay, Orkney. The cairn appears to have been…
Tomb or burial place · Prehistoric
Orkney Islands
Quoyness is a Neolithic chambered cairn on the Elsness peninsula of Sanday, Orkney, of the Maeshowe type and probably built around 3000 BC. Origina…
Carved stone · Prehistoric
Orkney Islands
The Ring of Brodgar is a Neolithic henge and stone circle on the narrow isthmus between the Lochs of Stenness and Harray on Mainland, Orkney. It is…
Settlement · Prehistoric
Orkney Islands
Ten roofless stone houses survive with their built-in furniture still in place — hearths, dressers, box-beds — occupied for roughly six hundred yea…
Carved stone · Prehistoric
Orkney Islands
The Stones of Stenness are a Neolithic monument and may be the oldest henge site in the British Isles; radiocarbon dating indicates work on the sit…
Tomb or burial place · Prehistoric
Orkney Islands
The chambered cairn was built sometime between about 3400 and 2800 BC (on the evidence of nearby tombs) as a Neolithic burial monument on a promont…
Fortified place · Medieval
Orkney Islands
It is the ruined seat of Robert Stewart, 1st Earl of Orkney, an illegitimate son of James V, and a rare surviving example of a fortified sixteenth-…
Fortified place · Medieval
Orkney Islands
One of Orkney's finest surviving tower houses, a heavily gun-looped Z-plan castle built by a courtier of Mary, Queen of Scots, and left unfinished…
Sacred place · Medieval
Orkney Islands
As the only wholly medieval cathedral surviving in Scotland, it preserves nearly nine centuries of Norse and Scottish religious history in remarkab…
Briefer entries — recorded and worth knowing, with fuller pages to come.
No places match those filters.
