Kirbuster Farm Museum

[purplecat]

Kirbuster is a farmhouse built in 1723 that now houses a Farm museum organised more or less along the lines of "put stuff in a room and let people look at it". We picked it randomly for a visit from the tourist map which showed it as close to the Earl's Palace at Birsay.





Having been to Scare Brae the day before, we were suddenly very interested in dressers. The Museum had two!

We were also struck by the similarity of the sleeping arrangements with the box-like hypothetical beds at Skara Brae.

Kirbuster is, apparently, the only surviving example in Northern Europe of a "firehouse" - a dwelling where the hearth lies in the centre of the main room. To be honest, you can't really see that here since I was more interested in the shaft of light.



At the back of the house was a "Trow" garden. Trows appear to be the Orkney version of trolls. They had some standing stones and a little house.







This is the Stone O'Quoybune which is almost entirely unremarkable but we stopped to take photos of it since it was between Birsay and Kirkbuster and I feel, in principle, one should stop and look at minor standing stones as one passes them.

Comments

[cordeliadelayne]

Lovely photos! Looks like an interesting place.

[purplecat]

It was very charming and entirely free - I imagine it had funding from somewhere.