Orkney Day 4 - Shapinsay

Galtness Battery, near Saltness, Shapinsay.

A trip to Shapinsay today, one of Orkney’s northern islands!

This low laying island seems peacefully rural, but during World War II it played a key role in the defence of Orkney. Galtness and Castle Batteries look out over the approaches to Kirkwall harbour. Today the remains of the military buildings were eerily quiet in the mist, the silence only broken by birds and gentle waves on the shore.

The austere Director Tower, its brutally functional architecture creates dramatic angles.

Receding perspectival lines in walls at Galtness are disrupted by debris and cracks in the concrete, the purely functional now undermined by decay.

As surfaces decay, like this roof-top, elaborate patina and patterns of decay are formed, which almost look like aerial photographs of islands.

Erosion is now undermining a search light at Galtness. Nature's forces will soon overcome this construction of human power.

Looking out across Shapinsay sound, the approaches to Kirkwall Harbour. The land and sea are framed in strangely beautiful ways by this austere look-outs.

At Castle Battery, also on Shapinsay. Here is a bolt ring to which the gun pedestal was bolted. The graduated ring allowed the gun to be laid on pre-determined bearings.*

Inside one of the 4.7'' quick fire gun emplacement buildings at Castle Battery. The unusual shape and construction of this emplacement is found no where else.*

* Information from: Orkney Coastal Batteries 1914-1956, Jeff Dorman, 1996.