A medieval Norse settlement on Westray, begun as a small farmstead between about 900 and 1000.
People lived on this one hectare of Westray for a thousand years without a break. Quoygrew began as a small Norse farm somewhere between 900 and 1000 AD and was still occupied in the early twentieth century, which makes it one of the most continuously used sites in Orkney.
On the ground it reads as two low mounds, one by the shore and one seventy metres inland. Nineteenth-century records call the place Nether Trenabie. Underneath are dwellings of the late Viking Age and the medieval period, middens, and the remains of a medieval soil system — ground deliberately built up over generations to make thin island soil worth ploughing.
The building sequence is unusually legible. The earliest house was turf and stone, put up between 1000 and 1200; around 1200 a larger stone building went up directly on top of it, with four rooms, and it was then remodelled and expanded in nine separate stages before being dismantled in 1700. Nine phases of alteration to a single farmhouse is a very detailed record of a household changing over five hundred years.
The middens were kept apart, and that separation is informative in itself. A coastal one of peat ash, shell and fish bone dates from the tenth to the twelfth centuries; a farm midden was found inland. Sea waste in one place, land waste in another.
Historic Environment Scotland scheduled the site in 2014.
What follows is drawn from published sources, with each claim labelled by how firmly it is established.
History
Quoygrew on Westray is the site of a medieval Norse settlement, established as a small farmstead most likely between 900 and 1000 AD and expanded around 1200. It was continuously occupied until the early twentieth century — a thousand years of unbroken use on one hectare of ground. Very few sites anywhere in Britain can show occupation running that long without a break. The ruins were known in the nineteenth century as Nether Trenabie. They read on the ground as two low mounds, one near the shoreline and the other seventy metres inland to the east of it. Two mounds and a field is all a passer-by would see.
The monument includes dwellings of the late Viking Age and the medieval period, middens, and the remains of a medieval soil system — the deliberate building-up of cultivable ground that made farming possible on thin island soil. Building soil deliberately is a serious investment of labour and marks a community intending to stay. Excavation established the sequence. The earliest dwelling was built of turf and stone between 1000 and 1200 AD, and a larger stone building was put up on top of it around 1200, so the later farm sits physically on the earlier one.
That stone building had four rooms and was remodelled and expanded in nine separate stages before being dismantled in 1700. Nine phases of alteration to a single farmhouse is an unusually detailed record of how a working household changed over five centuries. Two middens were excavated. The coastal one, composed of peat ash, shell and fish bone, has been dated from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, and a separate farm midden was found inland — waste from the sea and waste from the land, kept apart. Middens are the least glamorous and most informative deposits on any settlement site.
Historic Environment Scotland scheduled the site in 2014, protecting a settlement whose significance lies less in any single building than in the continuity of occupation across it.
Cultural influences
-
The settlement developed from a small Norse farmstead into a long-lived medieval farm, with houses, middens and deliberately improved soil.
Connections
-
Photo: Otter / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 Quoygrew and Links of Noltland document different chapters of Westray farming: Quoygrew is a Norse farmstead, while Links preserves Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement on the same island.
-
Photo: Otter / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 Noltland Castle is Westray’s unfinished sixteenth-century fortified house; Quoygrew’s Norse farmstead provides a much earlier rural settlement counterpart in the island’s long occupation sequence.
-
Photo: Unknown / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 Knap of Howar and Quoygrew bookend Westray’s early farming history: Knap preserves Neolithic stone houses, while Quoygrew shows a later Norse farm with successive turf-and-stone buildings.
Discovery & excavation
Excavation established a turf-and-stone house of 1000–1200, a later four-room stone building and nine subsequent remodelling phases.
What to look for
-
Two low mounds
One low mound lies close to the shore and another about 70 metres inland.
-
Settlement sequence
The later four-room stone building was erected over an earlier turf-and-stone house.
-
Separated middens
A coastal midden of peat ash, shell and fish bone contrasts with a separate inland farm midden.
Plan your visit
- Location
- 59.3387°N · 2.9800°W
- Nearest settlement
- Westray
- Access
- Open access
- Terrain
- Easy going
- Time needed
- About 30 minutes
- Best time
- Daylight hours
- What survives
- Two low mounds mark the shoreline and inland parts of a settlement occupied from the Norse period into the early twentieth century.
Opening & admission
No managed admission arrangement is published; confirm access locally before travelling.
- The scheduled settlement survives as low coastal and inland mounds. The excavation area is not a staffed visitor attraction.
Nearby places
Settlement · Prehistoric
Links of Noltland
Orkney Islands
Links of Noltland is a settlement with late Stone Age and early Bronze Age, roughly 2500–800 BC, when metalworking spread, dwellings, protected by…
- Some walking
Building or ruin · Medieval
Noltland Castle
Orkney Islands
A castle of the later sixteenth century near Pierowall on Westray, never fully completed.
- Near Pierowall
Settlement · Prehistoric
Knap of Howar
Orkney Islands
A farmstead of the first farming age on Papa Westray that may be the oldest standing house in northern Europe.
- Easy path
Tomb or burial place · Prehistoric
Holm of Papa Westray Chambered Cairn
Orkney Islands
A chambered cairn twenty metres long: a burial tomb of stone-built compartments under a mound: on an uninhabited islet of twenty-one hectares off P…
- Easy path
The setting
Excavation at Quoygrew’s Norse settlement on the Westray shore.
Photo: John Tustin / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0
The lane and grazing fields at Rackwick, Westray, near Quoygrew’s coastal settlement.
Photo: Alpin Stewart / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.0
Questions people ask
- How long was Quoygrew occupied?
- From roughly 900 to 1000 AD until the early twentieth century — about a thousand years of continuous occupation on one hectare.
- What can be seen?
- Two low mounds, one near the shoreline and the other seventy metres inland. The ruins were known in the nineteenth century as Nether Trenabie.
- What did excavation establish?
- That the earliest dwelling was turf and stone, built between 1000 and 1200 AD, and that a larger four-room stone building was raised on top of it around 1200, then remodelled in nine separate stages before being dismantled in 1700.
- What were the middens?
- Two, kept separate. A coastal midden of peat ash, shell and fish bone dating from the tenth to twelfth centuries, and a farm midden inland.
Sources
The Ancient Codex, in your pocket
Get the Pocket Codex app
Carry the directory with you — Quoygrew settlement, Westray and thousands of ancient places across Britain and Ireland, offline, wherever you roam.