Last week, we visited central Kirkwall, its beautiful medieval cathedral, and, next door to it, the lively cultural venue and music school that, sadly, closed during the pandemic — The Reel, directed by the virtuosic duo, the Wrigley Sisters.
This week, we’ll drive over a few of the Churchill barriers, the four causeways built during World War II, connecting the eastern islands of Orkney’s central body of water, Scapa Flow. These barriers sealed off this large natural harbor, which was important to the British fleet, from invasion by German submarines.
When we first arrived on the ferry to Orkney, we landed on the southern island of South Ronaldsay, where you might recall we saw the ancient Tomb of the Eagles. We then drove north over all four of the Churchill barrier causeways to get to the “mainland,” where Kirkwall is situated.
Two of the islands connected by the causeways were used during World War II to house 1300 Italian prisoners of war, whose labor was used to build the barriers. They’d been captured by the British in the North Africa campaign of early 1942.
These POWs lived in barbed-wire camps in rows of Nissen huts, the long, round, corrugated steel buildings that were easily manufactured and constructed wherever the military needed them. The Americans slightly revised the design to create the Quonset hut.
Below is a photo of the outside of a double-length Nissen hut which, in their spare time, the Italians transformed into a magnificent chapel on the inside.
One of the POWs was an artist named Domenico Chiocchetti. While imprisoned, he created a sculpture of St. George slaying the dragon. He designed and oversaw the painting of the Italian chapel.
Below are two wartime photos of the Italian POWs on Orkney. On the left is Chiocchetti’s sculpture, and on the right is a band formed by the more musical POWs for their own entertainment.
Below is the astonishing facade they built onto the front entrance of the long Nissen hut.
Inside, the chapel is entirely painted to appear as though it had tiled walls and amazing decorations. You have to look closely to realize they are just paintings.
On the left below is a lengthwise look at the chapel’s interior, with some of our group marveling at the detail of the altar up front. The middle photo shows some of the detailed tile-like walls, and on the right is the glorious altar painting, which was apparently based on a small image the artist was given by his mother before heading off to war.
[I’ve added an extra post featuring the great Scottish singer Karine Polwart singing “Freedom Come All Ye” inside the resonant Italian Chapel.]
A couple of islands south of the chapel is the home of another great Orcadian musician we got to visit. Douglas Montgomery was a fine host, and played tunes for us with Brian Cromarty, who plays guitar, mandola, and sings. Together, they regularly perform traditional and original tunes throughout Scotland and internationally, under the name Saltfish Forty.
Here is a photo of Douglas as he played music for us. He also invited his three kids to join him, which was good fun. On the right is Douglas happily playing with his two boys on fiddle. I don’t have a photo of his daughter singing and playing cello for us, but that was awesome too! The third photo shows our group joining Douglas for a wee session round the table.
Below is a 2017 video of Douglas and Brian playing a set of tunes, a song, and then a jazzy tune and song to finish. Between the sets, they say a few words about their music in response to brief questions from Simon Thoumire, who runs Hands Up for Trad. You’ll recognize the background from the photo above.
Join me next week as we take a look at some of the incredible neolithic sites and standing stones in Orkney, all of which have surprising stories to tell. Some are no longer open to the public, so we were lucky to be able to visit them.
Until then—
I saw Douglas and Brian play in London earlier this year - they were fantastic, and did a fiddle workshop too. The weekend ended with Orkney supergroup The Chair - have you seen them? What an experience!! 🎻🎻🎻🎻