Publication Account

Date 1981

Event ID 1018476

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1018476

In Hakon Hakonson's Saga we are informed that the dying king came to the bishop's palace, which would indicate the existence of such a building as early as 1263. Indeed, W. Douglas Simpson dated some of the primary masonry of the Palace to the mid-twelfth century (1961, 70). Major sections of the Palace are datable from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with much alteration done by Bishop Reid about 1550, including the construction of a large round defensive tower, embattled and pierced for guns (Simpson, 1961, 73). A tower which existed in Barry's time, the square Mense, or Mass tower, is now gone (RCAM, 1946, II, 145). Although through the centuries reconstructed several times, the Bishop's Palace is now quite ruinous, its roof presumably sold in the eighteenth century.

Information from ‘Historic Kirkwall: The Archaeological Implications of Development’ (1977).