Balfour Castle is a historic building on the southwest of
Shapinsay
Shapinsay (, sco, Shapinsee) is one of the Orkney Islands off the north coast of mainland Scotland. There is one village on the island, Balfour, from which roll-on/roll-off car ferries sail to Kirkwall on the Orkney Mainland. Balfour Castle ...
,
Orkney Islands
Orkney (; sco, Orkney; on, Orkneyjar; nrn, Orknøjar), also known as the Orkney Islands, is an archipelago in the Northern Isles of Scotland, situated off the north coast of the island of Great Britain. Orkney is 10 miles (16 km) north ...
. Though built around an older structure that dates at least from the 18th century, the present castle was built in 1847, commissioned by Colonel David Balfour, and designed by Edinburgh architect
David Bryce
David Bryce FRSE FRIBA RSA (3 April 1803 – 7 May 1876) was a Scottish architect.
Life
Bryce was born at 5 South College Street in Edinburgh, the son of David Bryce (1763–1816) a grocer with a successful side interest in buildi ...
. It is a Category A
listed building
In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...
and the landscape and formal gardens are listed in the
Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes in Scotland
The ''Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes in Scotland'' is a listing of gardens and designed landscapes of national artistic and/or historical significance, in Scotland. The Inventory was originally compiled in 1987, although it is a cont ...
.
As of 2021, the castle was operating as a hotel.
Prehistory
The small island of Shapinsay has been inhabited since prehistoric times, the most notable evidence being the extant
Broch of Burroughston
Burroughston Broch is an Iron Age broch located on the island of Shapinsay in the Orkney Islands, in Scotland (). The site overlooks the North Sea on the northeast part of Shapinsay. Excavated in the mid 19th century, Burroughston Broch is stil ...
, located not far from Balfour Castle to the northeast;
[C. Michael Hogan. 2007] moreover, the
Mor Stein
Mor Stein is a neolithic standing stone in the southeastern part of the island of Shapinsay, Orkney Islands, Scotland. Shapinsay is one of the two large inner islands of the Orkney group, and it is situated approximately two miles north of the ...
standing stone
A menhir (from Brittonic languages: ''maen'' or ''men'', "stone" and ''hir'' or ''hîr'', "long"), standing stone, orthostat, or lith is a large human-made upright rock (geology), stone, typically dating from the European middle Bronze Age. T ...
dating to the stone age is found also to the east of Balfour Castle, evidencing even earlier presence of man in the vicinity.
See also
*
Balfour, Orkney
Balfour is a village on the island of Shapinsay, Orkney. The village is situated on Elwick Bay, which was used as an anchorage by Haakon IV of Norway before sailing south to eventual defeat at the Battle of Largs in 1263. Today, the village sti ...
*
Mill Dam, Shapinsay
Mill Dam is a wetland in western Shapinsay, in Orkney, Scotland.
This water body was not shown on the 1840 survey map of the island, since it is a man-made creation from a damming in the 1880s.G.T, Masters, ''Orkney, Approaches to Kirkwall'', HMS ...
*
Vasa Loch
Vasa Loch is a brackish lagoon in southwestern Shapinsay, Orkney Islands. (Ordnance, 2002) This water body has been shown on early maps of the island in a very similar shape and size to its current geometry, separated from the North Sea by a narr ...
Line notes
References
* J. Gunn, ''Orkney, the Magnetic North'', Thomas Nelson and Sons, Edinburgh (1932)
*
*
* C. Michael Hogan
, ''Burroughston Broch'', The Megalithic Portal, ed. Andy Burnham, October 7, 2007
Castles in Orkney
Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes
Shapinsay
Country houses in Orkney
Category A listed buildings in Orkney
Castle, Orkney
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