Skara Brae
National iconA 5,000-year-old Stone Age village on Orkney, its stone houses, beds and dressers still in place where people left them
Open to visitorsa Historic Environment Scotland site — many are free to wander; staffed ones charge and keep set hours
Standing remainssubstantial fabric survives to stand in front of
On the shore of the Bay of Skaill in Orkney, farming families built a village of stone houses around 5,000 years ago — older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids — and lived in it for roughly 600 years before leaving. That village is Skara Brae, and it gives about as vivid a picture of Stone Age life as you’ll find anywhere. Blown sand buried the houses and sealed them, and the place lay hidden until a storm in 1850 tore the grass off the dunes and laid the walls bare.
Because the houses were dug into the ground and built of flat stone slabs, an astonishing amount survives. You can look down into snug, single-roomed homes linked by low covered passages, and see the stone box beds, the shelved dressers and the central hearths still in position, as if the owners had just stepped out. There is nothing else quite like Skara Brae in northern Europe.
The village is part of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site, and Historic Environment Scotland runs it, with a visitor centre and a full-size replica house you can walk inside before you see the real ones. It is a short drive from Stromness. The coast here is worth time in its own right: the cliffs at Yesnaby are a walk to the south, and Marwick Head, with its seabird colonies, is up the shore to the north. The Orkney Brewery is a couple of miles inland if you want to round the day off.
