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Publication Account
Date 1997
Event ID 1017079
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1017079
There is much of interest along this very pleasant walk, from the ruined horizontal mills on the Burn of Setter to the 19th-century fishing booth near the church. Only the lower part of the walls survive of St Mary's, and they are thought not all to be of medieval date. The original church is likely to have consisted of the usual rectagular nave and chancel, which was later enlarged with the addition of transepts, thus creating a cruciform church. There is an old record of enlargement in the early 17th century, and St Mary's seems to have been replaced a hundred years later by a church built in the main Maryfield community on the west coast.
Gathered into the ruins of the church, there is a very weathered table-tomb, along with two 17thcentury tombstones, one commemorating 'ane vertuous & discreit gentlewoman', Agnes Gifferd who died in 1628. The other bears an inscription in Dutch to 'the brave commander', Claes Jansen Bruyn of Durgerdam, who served the Dutch East India Company and died in 1636. His ship is known to have been on its way home from Mozambique when it encountered severe gales and lost many of its crew through disease. Having reached the shelter of Bressay Sound, its unfortunate captain died the following day and was buried here.
The history of this church-site goes back into the 9th or 10th century, for an important cross-slab of that date was found sometime before the mid 19th century near the church. The stone had an extraordinary subsequent history, for it was first taken to Gardie House, then to the churchyard south of Gardie House, thence it was sent to Newcastle for exhibition in 1852 and twelve years later from Newcastle to the museum in Edinburgh (now in NMS). The design of the stone appears to copy many of the features of the earlier cross-slab from Papil, and it bears an inscription in ogham letters (see p.17).
Even earlier than its ecclesiastical use, there was an iron-age broch on the site, now marked by the large stony mound beneath the north-west corner of the churchyard.
Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: Shetland’, (1997).
