Italian Chapel and Ness of Brodgar

Firstly I have to report that our little car no longer elicits grunts from its usual , well only,  driver.  Today was quite foggy when we left our hotel. Several times throughout the morning the driver was heard to say, reasonably politely, 'thank you' when reminded by one of the previously annoying loud beeps that he had left the lights on.

We went first to visit a building know as  the Italian Chapel.  During WW2,  several hundred Italian pow s were stationed in the orkneys to work on the Churchill Barriers.  These are concrete barriers  linking several islands making Scapa Flow harder to get into by enemy submarines. Now they form convenient causeways between some of the islands. One Italian built a statue of St George slaying the dragon and then a UK officer and  padre asked this guy, Dominic Chiocchetti,   to build a chapel in his spare time.  With the aid of other craftsmen,  he built a chapel out of 2 Nissan huts, joined together. The inside is beautifully painted with frescoes, the walls are painted to look like bricks, the lanterns are made from bully beef tins, a facade on the front disguises the huts etc. It has a lovely feel to it.

We drove over several more barriers and small islands to get to South Ronaldsay. We drove to Hoxa Head to look at one of the entrances of Scapa Flow and have coffee at a cafe with a view. By the time we finished the fog was just starting to lift and we could just see the adjacent islands through the gloom. We had a quick potter in a cooperative craft shop in a nearby town and then drove back , bypassing Kirkwall, to the site of a major current excavation at the Ness of Brodgar.

This site is amazing.  Discovered in 2003, it covers  a huge area along a promontory , between the standing stones of Stenness and the ring of Brodgar which we had previously seen. The present excavation area is about 40 m by 40m. This is a very small part of the complex they have yet to unearth. In the current area are about 8 buildings dating from 3200 BC to 2300 BC. Some of the older ones were remade. One we were told about , lies on top of 3 levels of other structures. They do not think that any of the buildings were domestic dwellings. They are far too big and grand compared to other neolithic buildings. They have worked out that these buildings definitely pre date stonehenge .

After that we drove around the southern  part of the island we are on, taking some pictures of Scapa Flow ( the fog had gone).  Noel has read much military history about Scapa Flow and was interested.  Our final stop was to look at the remains of a small 12th century chapel that would have been completely round.

Italian  Chapel

One of the Churchill Barriers