St Margaret's Hope

A historical perspective, drawn from the Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland: A Survey of Scottish Topography, Statistical, Biographical and Historical, edited by Francis H. Groome and originally published in parts by Thomas C. Jack, Grange Publishing Works, Edinburgh between 1882 and 1885.

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S

t Margaret's Hope, a harbour and a post-office village in the island of South Ronaldshay, Orkney. The harbour is a small bay, projecting into the middle of the N coast of the island, and opening into the sound which separates South Ronaldshay from Burray. It is one of the safest and best harbours for small vessels in the kingdom. A fishery here, which drew regular visits from London lobster smacks, and engaged the capital of different English companies, was, for many years, the only regular fishery in Orkney. The village, standing at the head of the harbour, 13 miles S of Kirkwall, is the seat of an industrious population, chiefly engaged in fisheries. It has a post office under Kirkwall, with money order, savings' bank, and telegraph departments, a branch of the Union Bank, and a good inn. Pop. (1861) 260, (1871) 363, (1881) 412.

An accompanying 19th C. Ordnance Survey map is available.

Note: This text has been made available using a process of scanning and optical character recognition. Despite manual checking, some typographical errors may remain. Please remember this description dates from the 1880s; names may have changed, administrative divisions will certainly be different and there are known to be occasional errors of fact in the original text, which we have not corrected because we wish to maintain its integrity. This information is provided subject to our standard disclaimer.