The Bishop’s Palace at Kirkwall, which stands in close proximity to the Earl’s Palace and the cathedral, is supposed to have been erected by Bishop Reid (1540-1558), on the site of an earlier building, in which King Hakon Hakonson died in 1263. A prominent feature of this building is its great length, originally about 196 feet, from which it is supposed that it formed, or was intended to form, one side of a quadrangle. Above what was originally the main entrance is the corbelling of a fine ruined oriel. There is a five-storeyed round tower at the north-west corner of the building, which contains in a niche of its exterior wall a statuette long erroneously believed to represent Bishop Reid. The chief apartment of the palace appears to have been about 26½ feet long by 24 feet wide. Part of the structure is still occupied. Overlooking the sea, in the extreme north-west of the Mainland, stand the ruins of the Palace of Birsay, erected by Robert Stewart, Earl of Orkney, about 1580, on the site of an old palace of the Norse Jarls. Less elaborate in design, and in a worse state of preservation than the building erected by his son, Earl Robert’s palace is sufficiently commodious and noble of outline to make one marvel at the passionate taste for fine buildings of a race which required two such imposing structures in two successive generations. Earl Patrick is said to have partly reconstructed his father’s building, modelling his alterations on Holyrood, but the building as it stands more resembles the later courtyard at Dunottar Castle. 17. Architecture—(_c_) Municipal and Domestic Kirkwall Municipal Buildings, a handsome three-storeyed structure in the Scottish style, erected in 1884, forms the one specimen of municipal architecture in the county that calls for mention. The buildings include a Council Chamber, a Town Hall, a meeting-room for the Commissioners of Supply, a post office, and four or five suites of offices for the burgh officials. The main entrance has a fine semi-classic door-piece, surmounted by two statues of the ancient halberdiers of the burgh in full uniform. [Illustration: Town Hall, Kirkwall] Down to past the middle of the nineteenth century many Orcadian landed proprietors possessed town houses at Kirkwall, in which they lived during the winter. Several of these houses were buildings of some architectural quality, and an interesting survival is Tankerness House, in the Main Street, the property of Mr Alfred Baikie of Tankerness. This building is, with some later additions or conversions, a quaint conjunction of several old residences which at one time constituted manses of cathedral dignitaries. The house has, however, been in the possession of the Baikie family since 1641. [Illustration: Balfour Castle, Shapinsay]