Accessibility

Font Size

100% 150% 200%

Background Colour

Default Contrast
Close Reset

Publication Account

Date 1996

Event ID 1016310

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016310

"At that time there was a very able man named Kolbein Hruga farming on Wyre in Orkney. He had a fine stone fort built there, a really solid stronghold" - so records Orkneyinga Saga of events around 1150, and the same castle is described as a difficult place to attack in 1231 in Haakonar Saga. Although in the past there has been controversy over its date, the small stone castle surviving on Wyre is now genera lly accepted as that built in the 12th century by Kolbein, whose Norse nickname would have been Kobbie or Kubbie, hence the modern name, Cubbie Roo (Hruga has become Roo). It is thus one of the earliest stone-built castles in Scotland and certainly the best preserved, having been excavated in the late 1920s and later consolidated.

In its original design, the castle consisted of an almost square keep, about 8m across with mortared walls almost 2m thick, surrounded at a distance of about 8m by outer defences: a srone wall with an outer ditch and bank. Only the ground floor of the keep survives complete, but it must have risen at least two more floors to have achieve a good view over the island and the surrounding seaways; the narrow projecting ledge that supported the timber first floor can be seen on the inner face of the north wall. Access to the upper floors would have been by internal wooden ladders, and the sole entrance to the keep was at first-floor level, again reached by a retractable wooden ladder (although this doorway no longer survives, it was recorded in the late 17th century). The ground floor was probably used for storing supplies, as were those of later tower-houses, and a rectangular tank cut into the solid rock was presumably used either to store drinking water or to keep a living supply of fish. It is doubtful that the keep was a permanent residence; it seems more likely that it was used as a refuge in times of trouble, for its size is quite unsuited to the establishment of an important Norse family, and the name of the adjacent modern farm, the Bu of Wyre, suggests the existence of a separate Norse farmstead with its great hall and outbuildings. The church belonging to the 12th-century estate still survives (no. 42).

The enclosing defences survive only to the west, north and east of the keep, for elsewhere they have been obliterated by later building. The excavations identified at least five phases of subsequent building and modification around the keep, some of which may be as early as the 13th century, and the entire complex is testimony to the success of the original design. Neither of the other two fortifications mentioned in Orkneyinga Saga, at Cairston near Stromness and on the island of Damsay, survived so long.

Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: Orkney’, (1996).

People and Organisations

References