Tammaskirk

Also known as:
Hall of Rendall and St Thomas's Kirk
Nearest town:
Kirkwall (19km SSE)
OS reference:
HY42502907
OS sheets:
5, 6
Latitude:
59° 8' 41.51 N
Longitude:
3° 0' 18.64 W
Added to TMA by

Images

Image of Tammaskirk (Ancient Village / Settlement / Misc. Earthwork) by wideford

mound from main road – there is a short arc of material between the front and back fieldwalls.

Image credit: wideford
wideford
wideford Oct 13, 2021
Image of Tammaskirk (Ancient Village / Settlement / Misc. Earthwork) by wideford

LH side; flag wall coming out of mound at right-angle, perhaps marking end of site

Image credit: wideford
wideford
wideford Oct 13, 2021
Image of Tammaskirk (Ancient Village / Settlement / Misc. Earthwork) by wideford

from above looking along cliff-face with Gairsay in the distance (site is opposite Holm of Rendall, nothing apparent there)

Image credit: wideford
wideford
wideford Oct 13, 2021

Articles

Tammaskirk

wideford
wideford Oct 13, 2021

NMRS record no. HY 42SW 12. The way I went to the site requires low tide. By the Hall of Rendall the millburn enters the sea and you follow the shore from there. Some general features are apparent with a variety of construction techniques. It feels like the cliff isn’t natural but all mound material, and this appears to be born out by the rise to a low promontory at the N end close to the kirk site. Antiquarians deemed it a broch, though nowadays the more generic term of Atlantean roundhouse is preferred (“2 main sections of massive walling” with “coursed masonry and vertical slabs” seen as intra-mural). An alternative conjecture specifically related it to the Knowe of Nesthouse chambered mound, though the similarities strike me as superficial from a distance. From the main road you can make out the short arc feature between the field walls at the south end that shows on Canmap. If this were a roundhouse settlement you would expect more of these even with what is left of the site. If it is all we have of a broch tower perhaps the promontory is the outer bank for the outworks. We needn’t stick with any of the above, seeing it instead as a sequence of various Iron Age settlement types rendered higgledy-piggledy by time and erosion

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