Earl's Palace, Kirkwall

An impressive, imposing ruin but also a memorial to a very bleak and dark period in the history of Orkney.

Earl Patrick Stewart was one of the notorious Stewart family who ruled Orkney in 16th and 17th century. Cruel, despotic men.

Construction began in 1600, using forced labour to quarry and ship in the stone. However, by 1606 Earl Patrick was heavily in debt. The Earl's Palace was completed the following year but shortly after that Earl Patrick was arrested and imprisoned. In 1615 he was executed.

His grand scheme to incorporate the Bishops Palace and the Earl's Palace in a massive palatial complex never came to fruition.

The Earl's Palace became a residence for bishops until the 1680s. The building then gradually fell into disrepair, maybe not helped by the Town Council selling the roof in the eighteenth century.