Archive of the Month

February 2009

Ref. D1/37/2 - Two folders of miscellaneous photographs of Orkney life and people

This month’s highlighted archive is a collection of photographs and postcards showing Orkney life and people from 1855 – 1930.

Subjects range from the Kirkwall Town band in 1890, the men’s ba’ of 1909 and the first aircraft to land (accidentally) on Orkney to various landscapes, buildings and family groups. Fish packing and kelp burning are also represented.

The two images pictured both show ‘Big Tree’ of Albert Street which has been causing concern for many years. Ernest Walker Marwick wrote the history of this solitary sycamore for the Orcadian edition for November the 18th 1965 (reference D31/7/1).

In researching the tree, Marwick discovered that it had once been part of a trio of sycamores which stood in a garden behind a 20 foot wall. It was planted around 1800 and by the 1860s had reached maturity. The house whose garden the Big Tree belonged to was bought by a Kirkwall chemist, Thomas Sclater, who removed two of the three trees and the garden wall to allow street access to his shop. In 1875 Sclater sold his right to the tree to Kirkwall Town Council for £5.

There have been concerns about the tree’s health from as early as 1910 and Ernest Walker Marwick prepared a tributary radio script to be broadcast in the event of the sickly specimen being felled. The Big Tree lives on, however, and in November 2009 a steel support was fitted to its interior to enable a few more years of fame.

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