Tankerness is a district in the St Andrews parish in

Mainland, Orkney The Mainland, also known as Hrossey and Pomona, is the main island of Orkney, Scotland. Both of Orkney's burghs, Kirkwall and Stromness, lie on the island, which is also the heart of Orkney's ferry and air connections. Seventy-five per cent of O ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...

.Wenham, Shiela "The East Mainland" in Omand (2003) p. 198 Essentially a peninsula, it is about south-east of

Kirkwall Kirkwall ( sco, Kirkwaa, gd, Bàgh na h-Eaglaise, nrn, Kirkavå) is the largest town in Orkney, an archipelago to the north of mainland Scotland. The name Kirkwall comes from the Norse name (''Church Bay''), which later changed to ''Kirkv ...

and east of

Kirkwall Airport Kirkwall Airport is the main airport serving Orkney in Scotland. It is located southeast of Kirkwall and is owned by Highlands and Islands Airports Limited. The airport is used by Loganair. History The airport was built and commissioned in ...

."Get-a-Map"

Ordnance Survey Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of 1745. There was a ...

. Retrieved 15 July 2010. The origin of the place name is uncertain, but it may derive from the Norse personal name "Tannskári". A "ness" is a promontory.

Geography

Tankerness is bounded to the north and west by Inganess Bay, to the east by Deer Sound, and to the south by the A960. Inganess Bay and Deer Sound meet at the prominent headland of Rerwick Head. Loch of Tankerness, which is just under in size, lies in the central area. The landscape is more gentle than the hilly terrain to the west and is fertile farmland. Bordering Inganess Bay is the Long Ayre, a kilometer-long gravel

tombolo A tombolo is a sandy or shingle isthmus. A tombolo, from the Italian ', meaning 'pillow' or 'cushion', and sometimes translated incorrectly as ''ayre'' (an ayre is a shingle beach of any kind), is a deposition landform by which an island becom ...

enclosing a

tidal pool A tide pool or rock pool is a shallow pool of seawater that forms on the rocky intertidal shore. Many of these pools exist as separate bodies of water only at low tide. Many tide pool habitats are home to especially adaptable animals that ...

Geology

The Tankerness peninsula is underlain by Rousay flagstones, an

Old Red Sandstone The Old Red Sandstone is an assemblage of rocks in the North Atlantic region largely of Devonian age. It extends in the east across Great Britain, Ireland and Norway, and in the west along the northeastern seaboard of North America. It also exte ...

of Middle Devonian age, that were deposited in Lake Orcadie.Brown, John Flett "Geology and Landscape" in Omand (2003) pp. 4-5. These lacustrine rocks were laid down when the land that now forms Orkney was 16 degrees south of the equator within the Southern Hemisphere's desert belt. The flagstones show a marked cyclicity in their sedimentation, which is interpreted as representing regular climatically driven changes in lake level caused by Milankovitch cyclicity.

Prehistory

A charred hazelnut shell, recovered during the excavations at Longhowe in 2007, has been dated to 6820-6660 BC. This pushed back the earliest confirmed date of the occupation of Orkney by 3,000 years.

Mine Howe Mine Howe is an Iron Age subterranean man-made chamber dug 6 meters (20 feet) deep inside a large mound. It is located in the Tankerness area of Orkney, Scotland, about 5 miles (8 km) southeast of Kirkwall, the capital of Orkney. The origin ...

, at Toab in the south of Tankerness, is a prehistoric subterranean man-made chamber dug into a large mound. Its walls are lined with stones fitted to form an arch over the cavity and 29 steps lead to a rock floor. These steps descend to a half-landing where they turn back on themselves and a further steps descend to a chamber. This chamber is only about in diameter but is over high and has a corbelled roof. The mound is surrounded by a substantial causewayed ditch. The origin of the howe (from

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlemen ...

word ''haugr'' meaning barrow) is not perfectly understood, although it is thought to date from the

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostl ...

. There is some similarity to the well inside the Broch of Gurness. The Howie of the Manse is a ruined broch on the southern shore of Loch of Tankerness. Further east at Taing of Beeman there is a scattered prehistoric settlement, the remains of which are of unknown provenance. In 1867 at nearby Groatsetter a fringed woollen hood was discovered lying in

peat Peat (), also known as turf (), is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation or organic matter. It is unique to natural areas called peatlands, bogs, mires, moors, or muskegs. The peatland ecosystem covers and is the most efficient ...

. It has thought to date from the late Iron Age and may be the oldest textile ever found in Britain.Wenham, Shiela "The East Mainland" in Omand (2003) p. 199

History

The Orkney Museum is located in Tankerness House, Kirkwall. This town house was acquired by James Baikie of Tankerness in 1641. Baikie was a successful Kirkwall merchant and a descendant of Paul Baikie, navigator to King Håkon IV of Norway. To the south of Loch of Tankerness, is the Hall of Tankerness. This is a 19th-century farm steading on the site of the 12th-century drinking hall of Erling of Tankerness. Nearby is a pier, once used by the herring fleets. Rerwick Head is the site of a

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

battery. A variety of concrete buildings remain, including those that housed two six-inch guns salvaged from the battleship HMS ''Iron Duke''. The guns, supported by powerful searchlights, guarded the approaches to Shapinsay Sound.

Wildlife

The Greenland white-fronted goose is occasionally seen at Loch of Tankerness. In 1960s 50-100 geese were regularly found there in the winter but there has been a sharp decline in numbers since 1974/75 probably as a result of reclamation of moorland and an increase in shooting in the area. The decline at this site matches an increase in the size of the wintering flock on Stronsay.

References

;Notes ;Footnotes ;General references * Jenkins, D.T. (2003
''The Cambridge history of western textiles''
Volume 1. Cambridge University Press. * Omand, Donald (ed.) (2003) ''The Orkney Book''. Edinburgh. Birlinn.

External links

Visit Scotland - Tankerness
{{Orkney Islands Villages on Mainland, Orkney