About
Corrigall Farm Museum is a beautifully preserved 19th-century Orkney farmstead that offers an unparalleled window into traditional agricultural life on the Scottish islands before the age of mechanisation. Located in the Harray parish in the heart of Mainland Orkney, Corrigall comprises a complete working farmstead of the kind that was typical across the islands for many centuries — a longhouse, barn, byre, and associated outbuildings arranged in the characteristic Orcadian style that evolved in response to the islands' climate, materials, and way of life.
The museum was established in 1980 by Orkney Islands Council, which recognised the exceptional survival of Corrigall as a virtually unaltered example of a pre-mechanisation Orcadian farm. The farmhouse, dating from the 19th century, is furnished and equipped as it would have been around 1890, with domestic utensils, furniture, textiles, and farm implements arranged exactly as they would have been in daily use. The effect is one of extraordinary authenticity — Corrigall feels less like a museum and more like a farm from which the occupants have simply stepped out for an hour.
The heart of the farmhouse is the central living area — the 'but-and-ben' of traditional Orcadian vernacular — combining kitchen, sleeping space, and social space in a single room organised around a central hearth. The absence of a chimney, characteristic of the earliest form of Orcadian longhouse, meant that smoke filtered through a hole in the roof, giving the interior a particular atmosphere quite unlike any other domestic arrangement. The bed-closets built into the walls, the box-beds, and the hand-made furniture all speak of a self-sufficient domestic economy far removed from the consumer culture of mainland Britain.
Companion to Corrigall is Kirbuster Farm Museum (also managed by Orkney Islands Council), believed to be the oldest unaltered farmhouse in Scotland, which is located a few miles away and can be visited on the same day. Together, the two farm museums present the most complete picture of traditional Orcadian rural life available anywhere. Corrigall is open from April to October, and its setting in the open Orkney countryside — with views across the farmland and lochs that have barely changed in a century — is magnificent.
Categories:
Highlights
The Corrigall Longhouse
The farmhouse at Corrigall is a 19th-century example of the Orcadian longhouse — an ancient building type in which humans and animals were accommodated under the same roof, separated by a cross-passage. Furnished as it would have been around 1890, the longhouse gives an immediate and powerful sense of domestic life in the islands before mechanisation or consumer goods transformed the countryside.
Every object — from the box-beds to the cooking pots to the hand-spun yarn — represents a life of skilled self-sufficiency in one of Britain's most remote agricultural landscapes.
The But-and-Ben Living Space
At the heart of the Corrigall farmhouse is the 'but-and-ben' — the Scots term for a two-roomed arrangement with an outer room (the 'but') serving as kitchen and working space, and an inner room (the 'ben') as the family's more private living space. At Corrigall, this arrangement is preserved in its original form, with the central hearth, the box-beds built into the walls, and the domestic equipment arranged exactly as they would have been in daily use.
The lack of a conventional chimney — smoke escaped through a hole in the roof — gives the space its most distinctive and ancient character.
Farm Equipment and Agricultural Tools
The barns and outbuildings at Corrigall contain an extensive collection of hand tools and agricultural equipment that document the farming practices of Mainland Orkney in the 19th century. Pre-mechanisation farming required a vast range of specialised hand tools for cultivation, harvest, threshing, and storage — many of them made or adapted locally to suit Orcadian conditions and crops.
The collection includes ploughs adapted for Orkney's shallow soils, hand-operated threshing equipment, and tools for the processing of grain and hay that were in use within living memory.
Textile Production Equipment
Spinning and weaving were central domestic activities in Orcadian rural life, and Corrigall preserves an excellent collection of textile tools — spinning wheels, hand cards for preparing fleece, hand looms, and related equipment. Orkney wool was worked into cloth both for household use and for sale, and the textiles produced in farmhouses like Corrigall were an important part of the island economy.
The tools on display represent traditions that persisted with little change from medieval times until the early 20th century, when factory-produced cloth finally displaced domestic production.
Collections
The Corrigall Farmhouse c.1890
Complete furnished farmhouse interior with domestic equipment, furniture, and textile tools
Agricultural Outbuildings
Byre, barn, kiln, and farmyard with agricultural tools and equipment
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.