Earl's Palace
Earl's Palace is one of the most impressive and evocative Renaissance ruins in Scotland, located in Birsay on the far northwestern coast of Mainland Orkney. The palace was built in the late sixteenth century for Robert Stewart, the illegitimate son of King James V of Scotland, who had been granted the earldom of Orkney. It stands as a testament to the ambition and extravagance of the Stewart earls, who transformed Orkney's political landscape during their controversial tenure. Despite its ruined state, the palace retains enough of its original fabric to give visitors a vivid sense of the grandeur it once projected, and it is widely regarded as one of the finest examples of Renaissance domestic architecture in all of Scotland.
The palace's origins are closely tied to the turbulent politics of sixteenth-century Orkney. Robert Stewart, who became Earl of Orkney around 1581, was notorious for his harsh and often tyrannical rule over the islands, and the construction of the palace at Birsay was very much an expression of lordly power designed to overawe the local population. It was his son Patrick Stewart, the second and final Earl of Orkney, who completed and extended the palace to its fullest extent in the early seventeenth century. Patrick was, if anything, even more despotic than his father, and his excesses eventually led to his downfall: he was arrested, tried for treason, and executed in Edinburgh in 1615. The palace was never completed to its intended grandeur and fell into disuse and ruin not long after Patrick's death. The tragic arc of the Stewart earls gives the site a powerful human drama that lingers in the atmosphere of the ruins.
Physically, the palace is arranged around a large courtyard and is built of the warm reddish-brown sandstone that characterises so much of Orkney's architecture. Even in ruin, the walls rise to a considerable height in places, and decorative architectural details survive that speak to the ambition of the original design. Large mullioned window openings, corbelled turrets, decorative string courses, and the remains of elaborate fireplaces can all be seen, giving a clear sense of how refined and substantial the building once was. A carved inscription above the main entrance, though weathered, once proclaimed the greatness of the Earl who built it. Visitors walking through the roofless chambers and corridors on a clear day, with the wind off the Atlantic and the cry of seabirds overhead, experience a profound sense of time collapsed — of grandeur overtaken by nature and history.
The surrounding landscape is quintessentially Orkney: wide, flat, and oceanic. Birsay sits at the extreme northwestern tip of Mainland, and the palace looks out over Birsay Bay toward the Brough of Birsay, a tidal island topped with the remains of a Norse settlement and a Pictish site of earlier still. The village of Birsay itself is small and quiet, with a scattering of farms and cottages. The coastline here is dramatic, with sea stacks, exposed headlands, and the kind of elemental weather that reminds visitors they are on the edge of the North Atlantic. A short walk from the palace brings you to the shore, where grey seals can often be spotted in the surf, and in summer the cliffs teem with nesting seabirds including puffins, guillemots, and razorbills.
The Palace is managed by Historic Environment Scotland and is accessible to the public throughout much of the year. Entry is free of charge, which makes it an excellent destination for independent travellers exploring the Orkney Mainland. Birsay is located approximately twenty miles north of Kirkwall, Orkney's capital, and can be reached by car along the A966 and related roads. There is no direct bus service, so a car or bicycle is effectively necessary. The site is partially open-air and the ground can be uneven, so appropriate footwear is recommended. The best time to visit is during the long summer days, when Orkney's famous golden light illuminates the sandstone walls in a particularly beautiful way, and when a visit can be easily combined with the tidal crossing to the Brough of Birsay at low tide.
One of the more fascinating aspects of Earl's Palace at Birsay is how it compares with the other Earl's Palace in Kirkwall, which Patrick Stewart also built. Kirkwall's version is often cited as the more architecturally complete ruin, but many visitors find Birsay's palace more atmospheric, precisely because of its remoteness and its integration into the wild coastal landscape. The contrast between the sophistication of Renaissance ambition embodied in the stonework and the bleakness of the Orkney headland is deeply striking. The site also sits close to an older Norse-era complex including the remains of a church associated with Earl Thorfinn the Mighty, one of Orkney's most powerful Viking rulers, meaning that the ground at Birsay has witnessed the exercise of power across more than a millennium of human history.