Sheena Wenham

~ Flo, a Young Victorian Lady
& her visit to Orkney in 1866 ~

Sheena Wenham's Story

When I was very young I discovered that I belonged to Orkney.

As was usual, we spent the Summer of 1939 with my grandparents and Aunt Alison in Orkney. When war was declared on 1st September, my mother decided to return home to England to be with my army officer father. My older sister and I remained at Graemeshall.

No one in the family seemed perturbed about us when six weeks later a German U-boat slipped past below the house and into Scapa Flow and caused such devastating loss of life among the crew of the battleship Royal Oak.

Sporadic enemy action from the air followed. However, on March 16th, 1940 fourteen German bombers carried out a dusk raid on the islands killing James Isbister in Stenness, the first civilian in WW2 to die in the UK as a result of enemy action.

That night at Graemeshall fifteen bombs fell around the house. The windows on the west side shattered and the kitchen door was blown in. I just remember being lifted out of my little bed and taken down to the library where I was puzzled to see all the grownups sitting on the floor by the interior wall being unnaturally jolly. I could not make out what was going on. Next day we found, among the animal casualties, our Shetland pony, its leg wounded by shrapnel. That did upset me.

Down in England my parents read of the raid in the morning newspapers. Graemeshall was named but as my grandparents had no telephone, it took some time for my mother to discover exactly what had happened.

Ten days later we were dispatched South to be reunited with our parents. I was most indignant at being uprooted from the place I now regarded as home. Each evening I packed my little case ready to return. That feeling has never left me.

My sister was nearly six years older than me and in 1943 I made the unwise decision to ride her pony which was really too big for me. It bucked. I fell off. With one foot caught in the stirrup I dangled upside down. At that point the pony bolted.

My left leg was considerably mashed up and I spent the next three weeks in the Balfour Hospital. After two operations I was discharged with my leg in a plaster cast which was eventually reduced to a roll of sticking plaster wound round and round the limb.

I remained in Orkney to convalesce. My Aunt Alison’s friend Marjorie (Joe Storer Clouston’s daughter) now made a big impression on my life. She was a wonderful storyteller who kept my six-year-old mind captivated with tales of old Orkney. One moment she could have me giggling, the next transfixed with dread. I was fascinated.

I remember spending the night at Smoogro ...

... her family home, sleeping in an attic bedroom full of old books. I was told I had to be careful not to make a noise to interrupt her father at work with his writing downstairs but, as to stories, I always wanted more.

During the war Marjorie and Alison drove the Church of Scotland mobile canteen around the various army camps, aerodromes and gun batteries in Orkney. I sometimes joined them, so was delighted when they told me that next day, as a treat, the mobile canteen would make a detour for me to visit the Ring of Brodgar and the village of SkaraBrae. However, first that sticking plaster twined around my leg had to come off.

By now little hairs on my leg had attached themselves and I was loath to allow anyone do anything more than tweak the edges. The result was we ended up in the mobile canteen parked at the Ring of Brodgar. We had reached an impasse – no visit to the circle of stones until the plaster was removed. My refusal ended with Marjorie pinning me down, sticking plaster torn off from round and round my leg with me screaming blue murder.

However, it all proved worthwhile. I was entranced by both stone circle and village. I was hooked on the history of Orkney.

Two days later my Grandmother had a stroke. On October 30th I said goodbye to her unconscious form and she died the next day. I was put on the plane to Inverness where my Mother had travelled up to meet me.

The yearning to return home to Orkney remained.

We continued to spend our summers in Orkney.  

I have vivid memories of a succession of ponies, beach picnics, rock climbing, hide and seek, card games, stories and walks around the loch with the smell of bog mint.

The Robson boys were our playmates and we had fishing trips out to the lobster creels with Johnnie Norquoy. Wet days were spent in the attic playrooms where wallpaper patterned with solemn Victorian sailors looked down on us.

Those rooms were full of interesting junk - my great uncle’s train set, Iron Age pottery, old swords and unwanted furniture. Then there was the library downstairs full of Orkney books. Over the years I read them avidly.

Eventually I grew up ...

... married and had my own family. My grandfather had died in 1958 after which Graemeshall was sold. Alison and Marjorie bought a house in Holm Village where we continued to holiday until 1974 when we bought a house of our own on the Scorradale road in Orphir for our future family holidays.

When my husband died in 1990 it became my full-time home. Then my children themselves got married and they and my grandchildren enjoyed their Orkney summers there.

Orcadian Studies

I was fortunate that in the early nineties the University of Aberdeen ran a course in Orcadian Studies. Willie Thompson was one of the lecturers. He became my mentor.

After I had qualified he encouraged me to write the three month history section ‘Orkney in the  Age of Improvement: tradition and change’. I taught it in person and also remotely to the Outer Isles.

With the increasing number of cruise liners visiting Orkney, Howie Firth and Kath Hogarth ran the first green badge Scottish Tourist Guides course in Orkney. Fifty of us enrolled and all fifty qualified. The course broadened our knowledge considerably, besides being tremendous fun.

Over the next years, besides being a tourist guide, I helped to organise new courses and acted as local assessor, all the while learning so much more about Orkney from colleagues, lecturers and students. I have also been privileged to play my part in the Orkney Heritage Society, the Fereday Prize and Holm Community Heritage at the St Nicolas Kirk.

With Willie Thompson’s encouragement, I wrote my first book, A More Enterprising Spirit for which the Graemeshall papers in the Orkney Archives proved an invaluable resource.

For its cover I chose a watercolour of Graemeshall painted by Florence Sutherland Graeme.

Bryce Wilson saw it and realised that he had ten other paintings by the same hand in the Orkney Museum and I discovered the journal Flo had written on a visit to Orkney in 1866. The paintings matched the journal account and Bryce encouraged me to turn them into a book.

It took me 20 years to get around to it. Work as a tour guide and responsibilities for elderly relatives intervened, both mother and aunt becoming centenarians, expiring at the ages of 105 and 102 respectively.

When COVID struck, time opened up and that got me going again with Flo’s story with the help of additional information I had collated.

It is no great academic exercise but I hope it gives an impression of Orkney in the Victorian age as seen through the eyes of a 22 year old young woman whose life proved shorter than it should have been.

Aunt Alison left me her house in Holm village and I now live there in the heart of a wonderful community. I am home.

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