William Morris Archive

11 July 1871 Kirkiuboe [1]

Martin Stott, photographer

‘We turned another spur of the hills soon, and then the land on our side fell back, the long island aforesaid ended suddenly and precipitously, and there was a wide bay before us bounded on the other side now by the steep grey cliffs of another island: the hillsides we were on flattened speedily now, under steep walls of basalt, and at the further end of them close by the sea lay the many gables (black wood with green turf roofs) of the farm of Kirkiuboe (Kirkby), a littlewhitewashed church being the nearest to the sea, while close under the basalt cliff was the ruin of a stone medieval church: a most beautiful and poetical place it looked to me, but more remote and melancholy than I can say, in spite of the flowers and grass and bright sun: it looked as if you might live for a hundred years before you would ever see ship sailing into the bay there; as if the old life of the saga-time had gone, and the modern life [had] never reached the place’ (IJ pp 14-15).