A More Enterprising Spirit
by Sheena Wenham

When George Low made his tour through Orkney and Shetland and visited the parish of Holm he commented on “the more enterprising spirit” of its inhabitants. He was describing an important change which was beginning to affect the Orkney economy and Orkney society at that time. The Graemeshall estate, which included nearly all of the parish of Holm, was in the forefront of these changes.

We usually think of Orkney emerging into the modern world in the mid-19th century when the landscape was squared, hill land reclaimed, new farm steadings built, and an economy based on cattle exports was introduced. This can sometimes create the impression that the pre-improvement period was a backward age-old society where nothing changed. That is a mistake: this book describes the equally important changes in the late 18th century when the foundations of modernisation were laid.

The “more enterprising spirit” which Low noted in Holm was the result of the first phase of the Industrial Revolution bringing an expansion of handicraft industries into rural areas. As elsewhere in Orkney, people in Holm made kelp, but it was for the spinning and weaving of linen that the parish was pre-eminent. Fishing, whaling, service with the Hudson’s Bay Company and with the Royal Navy were other sources of employment. A diversified money-based economy developed; there was plenty of work, and labour was in short supply.

One result of this new money income can be seen in the way people coped with harvest failure. In the previous century a run of bad harvests had resulted in famine of Third World proportions, with deaths from sheer starvation running into hundreds, if not thousands.

Sheena Wenham’s book includes a careful study of the bad harvests of the 1780s. Harvest failure now brought hunger – but not starvation; it brought distress – but not death. A money income shielded people from the worst effects of destitution. At worst a money income allowed people to run into debt, but it was a debt which they were generally able to clear without too much difficulty over the course of a few years.

The other effect of a money income was a standard of living beyond the reach of previous generations. Margaret Vedder who lived in the township of Easterbister was widowed, or perhaps deserted by her husband, and she eked out a living by collecting the small payments from tenants for the use of the laird’s mill. However, she also made money from linen. Although she lived in modest circumstances, the auction of her possessions after her death revealed an astonishing collection of rich gowns, petticoats and plaids.

The Graemeshall estate was well served by its lairds, but they were often absentees. Patrick Graeme was a lawyer who spent much of his time in Edinburgh, and his brother Alexander Graeme was a one-armed admiral in Nelson’s navy. Management by absentee landlords, no matter how well meaning, might easily have gone wrong, and the “enterprising spirit” of the estate owed a good deal to the next level of estate management, the estate factor David Petrie, and Jean Chancellor, the mother of the absentee lairds.

There is the impression that ‘Lady Graemeshall’ knew everything that happened in the parish – nothing escaped her. She supervised the entire linen-making process, the purchase of barrels of lintseed, the retting, scutching, spinning, weaving and the final despatch of bales of linen cloth aboard the smacks which carried lobsters to the London market. Although linen was also made in other parishes, her efforts ensured that Holm was always pre-eminent.

This book is the result of a thorough study of the voluminous Graemeshall papers in Orkney Archive. Sheena Wenham has already shown their potential in other publications, and also in the course “Orkney in the Age of Improvement” which she contributed to Aberdeen University’s Orcadian Studies programme.

The Graemeshall papers are Sheena Wenham’s family papers, but the book she has produced is much more than just a family history, or even a local history. She describes the lairds, their mansion house, their garden, servants and kitchen, but she deals equally with the tenant farmers, kelp-makers and linen workers, and with parish institutions such as the church and school.

Holm people will find a whole series of memorable characters who have the same surnames as themselves, and are no doubt in many cases their ancestors. That will be one of the attractions of the book. They will also find a host of good stories and sharply delineated character sketches.

You will read about John Wylie who took his son to sail a toy boat on a Sunday morning instead of attending church, and found himself in trouble with the Kirk Session when neighbours reported that he took out his own boat to retrieve the toy vessel when it was swept out to sea. And there is the long dispute with John Mowat, the agriculturally-minded Holm schoolmaster, whose pupils were liable to find themselves used as herds; Mowat had only two acres of land, but contrived to keep five cattle, two horses, seven pigs and 60-70 sheep by grazing them on the common and on his neighbours’ stubble.

The result is a unique picture of an Orkney parish in the second half of the 18th century when people still lived in an unimproved landscape of planks, tunmals and quoys, but were taking their first steps into the modern world. They stand rather nearer to ourselves than to the world of the medieval Norse earls.

Bellavista Publications are to be congratulated on yet another volume which has been produced to the highest standards. It is copiously illustrated with maps and with many contemporary drawings and sketches.

WPLT