A More Enterprising Spirit

A detailed study of the social and economic life of the parish and people of Holm.

It is illustrated with episodes and incidents from the lives of a cross-section of the community: Holm lairds and ministers, merchants and tradesmen, emigrants and naval men, farmers and crofters, kelp makers and linen workers, servants and cottars, including those who eked out a precarious living beyond the boundaries of the township in turf huts built on rough land.

It is these stories that enables a clearer picture to emerge of what it was like to live in an Orkney parish during the eighteenth century at a time still well before the days of full-scale agricultural improvement.