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Deerness

Part of Orkney, Scotland

Summary

Part of Orkney, Scotland

Field	Value
official_name	Deerness
scots_name	Derness
other_language_name	Dyrnes
other_language	Old Norse
static_image_name	Chapel on the Brough of Deerness, remains 2014.jpg
static_image_caption	Brough of Deerness showing the remains of the chapel
country	Scotland
coordinates
pushpin_map	Scotland Orkney
unitary_scotland	Orkney Islands Council

Deerness (, , Old Norse: Dyrnes) is a quoad sacra parish (i.e. one created and functioning for ecclesiastical purposes only) and peninsula in Mainland, Orkney, Scotland. It is about 13.5 km south east of Kirkwall. Deerness forms a part of the civil parish of St Andrews and Deerness. There is a shop/post office and a community centre and the Deerness Distillery.

Deerness is connected to the rest of the Orkney Mainland by a narrow isthmus, known as Dingieshowe. Deerness parish consists chiefly of the peninsula, but also takes in its surrounding islets of Copinsay, the Horse of Copinsay and Corn Holm. The Brough of Deerness is the site of an early Christian monastery near the north eastern tip of the peninsula. The Gloup is a sea-cave approximately 40 m long and 25 m deep just south of the Brough.

''The Crown of London'' shipwreck

The Covenanter's Memorial at Deerness, commemorating the loss in a shipwreck of 200 covenanters en route to the New World of America (as a punishment), was largely paid for by Robert Halliday Gunning. The inscription on the monument reads "For Christ His Crown Covenant, erected by public subscription Aug. 1888 to the memory of the 200 covenanters who were taken prisoners at Bothwell Bridge, and sentence to transportation for life; but who perished by shipwreck near this spot on 10th December 1679."

John Blackadder recorded that a prisoner related the following:

It was found, by some who examined those that escaped, that many of them had refused to take the bond. Yet a few of those who had not taken it were drowned; albeit this is soberly marked because these outward things fall much alike to all. It was, however, a puzzling dispensation like many others."}}

Deerness Folklore

In the early 1890s an unidentified creature visited Newark Bay on Deerness 'and was seen by hundreds of sightseers'. It came to be known as the Deerness Mermaid. There is also a selkie legend associated with the parish.

Notable people

Edwin Muir was born in Deerness in 1887.

References

;Citations ;Sources

References

Marwick 2011, pp. 24–25.
Marwick 2011, p. 28.

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

parishes-of-orkney orkneyinga-saga-places mainland,-orkney persecution-of-the-covenanters

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