Timetravel: Old Orkney, farm life in the 1800s

Full day tour

What was it like to live on a farm in Orkney in the 1800s? Timetravel back and find out!

This timetravel adventure takes you to Orkney’s last surviving horizontal wheel water mill, known as a Click Mill. We thereafter visit a real, working watermill: Barony Mills in the parish of Birsay. Here, we will see how the ancient type of barley, known as bere, gets milled into flour, ready to bake delicious bannocks.

We have lunch where we get to taste some Orkney produce.

After lunch, we visit the farm museum, where we experience the everyday life of an Orkney farming family in the 1800s, and the various tasks that needed to be done around the farm.  We try our hand at making home made butter!

There will also be traditional storytelling around the peatfire.

We finish the day by going to pay the landlord – or laird as they are known in Scotland – at the magnificent Skaill House mansion. Here, tenants had to off-cap to the laird and pay their rent in butter, or later in money.

This tour is ideal if you for example  have Orkney ancestry and have come to Orkney to discover the place they came from and how they lived.

I do this tour on demand as a private booking. The terms and conditions are the same as for other private tours.  The tour takes place in your own or hired vehicle.

Clickmill, or horizontal water mill, near Dounby. Mills of this type were once common in Orkney, and a Norse example has been excavated in Orphir.
Clickmill, or horizontal water mill, near Dounby. Mills of this type were once common in Orkney, and a Norse example has been excavated in Orphir.
Barony Mills in Birsay is a working watermill using bere, an ancient form of barley.
Barony Mills in Birsay is a working watermill using bere, an ancient form of barley.