Glimps Holm
Glimps Holm is a small, uninhabited island lying in the sheltered waters of Scapa Flow, the great natural harbour in Orkney, Scotland. Though modest in size, this sliver of land carries a disproportionate historical significance, for it serves as one of the anchoring points of the Churchill Barriers — a series of remarkable wartime causeways that permanently altered both the geography and the connectivity of the Orkney islands. Glimps Holm sits between Lamb Holm to its north and Burray to its south, and today the A961 road runs directly across and over it, making it one of the few places in the world where drivers unknowingly pass through an island without realising they have done so.
The history of Glimps Holm is inextricably tied to one of the most dramatic events of the Second World War. On the night of 13–14 October 1939, the German submarine U-47, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Günther Prien, navigated the treacherous tidal channels of Kirk Sound and slipped into what was supposed to be the impregnable anchorage of Scapa Flow. The U-47 sank the Royal Navy battleship HMS Royal Oak with the loss of 833 men. Shocked by the audacity of the attack and determined to seal off the eastern approaches to Scapa Flow, Winston Churchill personally ordered the construction of permanent barriers across the four eastern channels. Glimps Holm, straddling one of these channels, became a critical element in the engineering works that followed. Construction began in 1940 and was largely carried out by Italian prisoners of war housed in camps on nearby Lamb Holm, a story that adds further layers of human depth to this quiet landscape.
The Churchill Barriers were an extraordinary feat of wartime engineering. Thousands of massive concrete blocks, many weighing up to ten tonnes, were dropped into the channels alongside vast quantities of quarried rock. Glimps Holm itself was effectively enlarged and reshaped in the process, its natural outline merged with the built causeway infrastructure. The barriers were completed in 1944, just too late to serve their intended defensive purpose as the war in Europe was drawing to a close, but they went on to serve a peacetime function that has proven far more enduring — they connected the previously isolated island communities of South Ronaldsay and Burray to mainland Orkney by road for the first time, transforming the social and economic life of those communities entirely.
In person, Glimps Holm is a windswept, low-lying place of rough grass, exposed rock and the ever-present sound of Orkney's weather — wind, the call of seabirds, and the lapping or crashing of the sea depending on conditions. The causeways that connect it to its neighbours are flanked by extraordinary views across Scapa Flow, with the open water stretching away to the west and the low, rounded hills of the Orkney mainland visible in the distance. On clear days the light here has the particular luminous quality that Orkney is famous for, bouncing off water in every direction. On stormy days the drive across the barriers is dramatic, with spray sometimes reaching the road surface and waves breaking against the vast concrete blocks that line the edges of the causeways. The rusting hulks of old blockships, deliberately sunk in the channels before the barriers were built to provide an additional obstacle to submarines, are still visible on either side of the causeways at low tide, adding a haunting industrial archaeology to the scene.
The surrounding area is rich in interest for visitors. On neighbouring Lamb Holm stands the Italian Chapel, one of Orkney's most beloved and moving landmarks — created by the Italian POWs from the most meagre of materials (two Nissen huts, scrap metal, concrete and paint) and transformed into a place of extraordinary beauty and faith. It remains in active use and is maintained to this day. Burray, immediately to the south of Glimps Holm, is a quiet farming and fishing island with a small village, while the road continues south through South Ronaldsay to the village of St Margaret's Hope. Scapa Flow itself is of legendary status in naval history, not only for the Royal Oak sinking but also for the remarkable scuttling of the German High Seas Fleet in 1919.
Visiting Glimps Holm requires no special planning as such — you simply drive the A961 and you are there, passing through it between the barriers. Most visitors do not stop on the island itself but rather pause at viewpoints along the causeways to photograph the blockships or take in the panoramic views over Scapa Flow. The best time to visit is during the long summer days of Orkney, when the extended evening light creates spectacular conditions and the relative warmth makes standing on the windswept causeway more comfortable. Winter visits are entirely possible and have their own fierce drama, but Orkney's weather can be severe and the barriers can feel very exposed. Access is straightforward from Kirkwall, the Orkney capital, which lies roughly a twenty-minute drive to the north along the same road.
One of the quietly remarkable facts about Glimps Holm and its neighbouring causeways is that the concrete blocks used in their construction were manufactured right there in Orkney, with production facilities established locally to supply the enormous quantities needed. Another is that the Italian POWs who built much of this infrastructure, far from their Mediterranean homeland and confined in remote northern Scotland, left behind not only the chapel on Lamb Holm but also a tangible legacy of skilled craftsmanship visible in the barriers themselves. The story of those men — their faith, their creativity under hardship and their eventual reconciliation with their former captors — is one of the more quietly inspiring human stories to emerge from the Second World War, and Glimps Holm sits at the centre of the physical landscape in which it unfolded.