'An unspoken closeness to creation'

LERWICK is the only town in Shetland, and therefore the northernmost town in the British Isles.

It is on a bay on the east side of the Mainland, with an excellent natural harbour, protected by the small island of Bressay. Its intimate and long-standing connection with the sea is reflected in its layout, with its main street (a narrow, winding one paved with local flagstone) following the edge of the harbour.

In the mid-19th century the houses of the town were described as: ‘They seem as if they had been dancing a country dance, and are out. there they stand. back to back, corner to corner, some uphill, some down’. At that time there were no wheeled vehicles in the place, but it was very busy.

Shetland’s links with Norway, in particular, are profound; it is nearer to Bergen than to Edinburgh and the distinctive Shetland dialect and music have much in common with those of that country.

Shetland was part of the Norse earldom of Orkney from the 9th century, but both island groups were transferred to the Scottish Crown in 1469 as a pledge for part of the dowry of Margaret of Denmark, James III’s Queen. Lerwick’s winter festival of ‘Up Helly’a’, with a torch-light procession culminating in the burning of a representation of a Viking ship, though fairly modern, is a conspicuous popular demonstration of the Norse links of the Islands.

Lerwick has long been a strategic place, as demonstrated by the celebrated Clickhimin Broch, on a lochan a little inland. Above the main street are the remains of an artillery fortification, Fort Charlotte. This dates back to the Dutch wars of the 1660s, but was largely rebuilt in 1781 under the direction of Captain Andrew Frazer, and named for George III’s Queen. Captain Frazer is better known in lowland Scotland as the designer of St Andrew’s and St George’s West Church in George Street, Edinburgh.

The town also contains many other reminders of its rich heritage, including a seventeenth-century tolbooth; the ‘Lodberries’ (a well-preserved example of a private pier and warehouse group) beside the harbour; a remarkable Victorian town hall with an outstanding collection of stained-glass windows, (recently conserved); and a superb modern museum of Shetland life on the side of a nineteenthcentury fishing harbour. But that is not all, for Shetland played a vital role in the development of the North Sea oil industry, and due to the foresight of its local authority has shared in its prosperity, ploughing back into its public realm much of what it has received in revenues.

Given the frequency and severity of its winter storms Lerwick (and indeed Shetland as a whole) is not a place for elaborate church architecture, so as my drawing shows St Columba’s is a modest but dignified building, classical in proportions but not in detail. The low-pitched hipped (piended) roof offers little resistance to the wind. It was built in 1826-29 to designs by James Milne of Edinburgh, and is described in The Buildings of Scotland: Highlands and Islands as ‘urbane’ and ‘well-detailed’. Internally it has a horseshoe gallery, supported on slender cast-iron classical columns, an up-to-date feature at the time. In 1895 it was remodelled, with its organ enlarged, a new pulpit installed, with a pair of stained-glass windows. The architect was John C Aitken. The naming of the church as St Columba’s is entirely appropriate, for the wondrous knowledge of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, was brought to Shetland during St Columba’s mission to the Northern Picts in the 6th century’.

As in Orkney one is always conscious in Shetland of an unspoken closeness to creation, and the love of which it is evidence. ¤