Symbister House

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Symbister House
Whalsay Secondary School
Symbister House, Whalsay - geograph.org.uk - 116087.jpg
Symbister House in 2008
Location Whalsay, Scotland, United Kingdom
Coordinates 60°20′20″N1°1′13″W / 60.33889°N 1.02028°W / 60.33889; -1.02028 Coordinates: 60°20′20″N1°1′13″W / 60.33889°N 1.02028°W / 60.33889; -1.02028
Built1823
Architectural style(s) Georgian architecture
Listed Building – Category B
Official name: Symbister House
Whalsay UK relief location map.svg
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Location of Symbister House
Whalsay Secondary School in Shetland
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Symbister House (Scotland)

Symbister House is a former country house in Symbister, Whalsay island, in the Shetland islands of Scotland. It was built in 1823 by the Bruce family [1] who were lairds (landlords) of the island for about 300 years from the 16th century. Since 1964 it has been the Whalsay Secondary School, after it fell into disuse following the death of the last of the landlord occupants of the house in 1944. Built in an elegant Georgian architectural style, it is categorized officially as a category B Listed Building and heritage structure. [2] [3] [4]

Symbister largest village and port on the island of Whalsay, Shetland

Symbister is the largest village and port on the island of Whalsay, Shetland. The population in 1991 was 797. The focus of the village is the harbour, which is home to small fishing boats as well as large deep sea trawlers. The village is overlooked by the granite mansion Symbister House, built by the Sixth Robert Bruce of Symbister in 1823. The harbour is also known by the names Bay Of Symbister, Symbister Harbour and Symbister Old Harbour.

Whalsay island

Whalsay is the sixth largest of the Shetland Islands in Scotland.

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Shetland, also called the Shetland Islands and formerly Zetland, is a subarctic archipelago in the Northern Isles of Scotland.

History

The Bruce family who came to Whalsay in the 17th century owned the entire island. They owned the island for nearly 300 years. They employed local people to carry out fishing operations for commercial purposes. This remains part of the island's folklore. [5] Ghost stories are also narrated of this place, including that of an old sailor who was murdered for arguing with the gardener of the house during a game of cards. [6]

The Bruce family took up the ambitious project of building Symbister House in 1823 in a grand Georgian architectural style with brown coloured granite stones chiseled into square blocks. They employed local labour for the construction, yet it cost the huge sum of £30,000, as they brought quarried granite stones from the tidal affected area of North Nesting. The house, which was the largest building complex on the island of the time, is also known as New Haa. Local stories mention that the landlord who built it did not want ownership to pass to his son, with whom he had strained relationship. This resulted in hard times for the Bruce family who inherited the property. Even to maintain it they had to take on boarders in the 1920s and 30s. The last of the lairds died here in 1944. The building then remained vacant for some years and was subject to deterioration. It was only in 1963 that the local council took possession of the building and refurbished part of the complex into a school. After renovation, the school opened in 1964 as the Whalsay Junior High School. [3] [4] It has been renovated in recent years by the council. [2]

The New Haa as originally built, had courtyards, a writing room, outbuildings, stables, byres, a farmhouse, a grinding mill (run by a water wheel of 16 ft diameter), a dovecote and a "high-rise", three-seater toilet outside. The local history group has plans to develop these buildings into a museum and a heritage complex. Water supply to the complex was from a reservoir. [4] [7]

Dovecote structure intended to house pigeons or doves

A dovecote or dovecot or doocot is a structure intended to house pigeons or doves. Dovecotes may be free-standing structures in a variety of shapes, or built into the end of a house or barn. They generally contain pigeonholes for the birds to nest. Pigeons and doves were an important food source historically in the Middle East and Europe and were kept for their eggs and dung.

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Saltness village in United Kingdom

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Sandwick is a hamlet, often considered part of the main village of Symbister along with adjacent Harlsdale, in the parish of Nesting in southwestern Whalsay in the Shetland Islands of Scotland. It is located to the south of the main centre of Symbister; Clate lies just to the south. The Holm of Sandwick lies off the coast. The British military established a radar camp in the vicinity during wartime and tanks and sheds built by the military were still in use in 1986. A Catalina bomber crashed in the vicinity in the early part of World War II. The Loch of Sandwick lies to the west of the village. There are burnt mounds in the lake area and caves along the coast here.

The Pier House Museum is a museum in Symbister, Whalsay, in the Shetland Islands of Scotland. The museum is located in the old Pier House, which was once the centre for trade with the Germans and the export of dried and salted fish to the Hanseatic League, an alliance of trading guilds that established and maintained a trade monopoly over much of Northern Europe between the 13th and 17th centuries. The Germans brought their goods, iron tools, seeds, salt and cloth to barter for dried and salted fish from the island. The old Hanseatic house which had been used by the Germans for several centuries until 1707, was refurbished for the museum, housing artifacts which date from the earlier trading period and providing an important insight into the economy of the Shetlands at the time. Architecturally it is described as "two-storeyed with crowstepped gables, and an external stone staircase." The house and port nearby are categorized officially as a category B Listed Building.

Shetland Library public library in Shetland, Scotland

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References

  1. ↑ "Symbister House, a Georgian house". Getty Images. Retrieved 2 February 2013.
  2. 1 2 "Whalsay Community Council Area Statement" (pdf). Official Website of the Shetland Council, Government of UK. Retrieved 2 February 2013.
  3. 1 2 "Symbister House". British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Retrieved 2 February 2013.
  4. 1 2 3 "Welcome to Whalsay". The Official Website of Shetland Hamefarin 2010. Retrieved 2 February 2013.
  5. ↑ Anthony P. Cohen (1 December 1989). Whalsay: Symbol, Segment and Boundary in a Shetland Island Community. Manchester University Press. pp. 235–. ISBN   978-0-7190-2340-8 . Retrieved 3 January 2013.
  6. ↑ Marwick, Ernest W. (1975). The Folklore of Orkney and Shetland. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Incorporated. p. 96. ISBN   978-0-87471-681-8 . Retrieved 21 February 2013.
  7. ↑ "Symbister House and Harlsdale" (pdf). Whalsay Shetland.com. Retrieved 2 February 2013.
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