May Day (no not an alarm call!)....

 

At 08.25 on the early May Bank Holiday in 1999 I set foot on Graemsay for the first time.  It doesn't feel like 22 years ago.  It feels timeless somehow.....  But that was the day we came to look at the house, having spent the weekend looking at various properties "in need of work" on the Orkney Mainland.  Now let's be honest, the Orkney Mainland is an island and that was island enough for me.  Till I saw Graemsay.... and there was a beach just yards away from the house, on which were seals........

Unfortunately the ferry schedule on a Monday at that time mean that we arrived at 08.25 and had to leave again at 10.45 to head to the airport for our flight.  But given the house had not been lived in for many years and was - er - uninhabitable at the time, taking a tour didn't take very long.  In fact it only took as long as it did as I waited while others went in front of me upstairs so if the floorboards gave way it wouldn't be me plunging down to the ground floor.  Hahahahaha!  Pigeons were the only residents, actually nesting and roosting in one of the bedrooms.  The windows were boarded up as the aforementioned pigeons were getting in through the roof and then flying out windows and smashing them - hence needing boarding up.

As we drove down the hill to the house, neighbours were at the post office, which at that time was run out of a small outbuilding attached to the house.  So we met one or two while others looked on in curiosity.  They had seen various folk come and go looking at the house with plans that came to nothing.  So they were reserving judgement I think!

Anyway after perusing the house and wandering down to the shore, it was up to the farm for tea and chat before heading to the pier again.  A shake of the hand on the pier as the ferry arrived and the deal was done.  It was a year before I was able to move up, and even longer before I could move in. But it was definitely worth it!! All of it...... well..... most of it ..... ;-)

So here are a few pictures from around that time.  The photo at the top was taken as we sailed back to Stromness on the ferry and looking back at what would become "home".  On seeing how close the lighthouse was to the house the first question I asked was did it have a foghorn? (No it didn't), and the second was does it have a revolving light (again No.  Not sure I could sleep with a revolving light through the bedroom!).

Estate agent's photo before all the windows were boarded up.  Red door was the post office.

View from the road in June the following year when I had moved up and was staying in the caravan parked in the garden...

Those seals on the beach! Sadly they don't haul out on the sand like this any more but are seen around on the rocks....

View from the skies. Photo taken by a neighbour when a passenger in a light aircraft flying over the island.

And this was how the house was originally back in the late 1800s.  It was a two storey maisonette with an external staircase for the upstairs flat.  Very unusual for an island or rural area even.  The outer staircase went in about 1905 we think.  But lots of history attached to the house....

And the house 22 years later - you can see in the stonework the outline of the old staircase!

And for those new to my blog, at the bottom of this page are the links to the story of how I came here and what we did to the house...

https://sianthom.blogspot.com/p/about-graemsay.html