ST. PETER’S CHURCH, on the Brough of Birsay, a holm of about 40 acres, separated from the mainland by a channel about 150 yards wide, and dry at low water, consists of nave, chancel, and apse, all well defined, and apparently built at the same time, the material being a grey whinstone. The total length of the building is 57 feet. The nave is 28 feet by 15½ inside, and the chancel about 10 feet square. There is but one doorway, in the west end of the church. It has parallel jambs without any rebate for a door.[192] There are the remains of a window in the north wall, 3 feet high by 10½ inches wide, square-headed, and splaying both internally and externally to a width of 22½ inches. Only the foundations of the apse remain. The floor was originally level to the end of the apse, but subsequently there had been a reredos which blocked off the apse, and then there were steps to the altar, some portion of which still remains. A stone projection or “seat,” 14 inches high and the same in width, runs all round the nave. In the north-east and south-east corners are two circular spaces, 5½ feet in diameter, in one of which are the remains of a spiral stone staircase. In all probability the church was twin-towered, like many of the Scandinavian churches dating from the 13th century. Barry states that this church was dedicated to St. Peter, but the dedication seems to have been unknown in the locality[193] in 1627. There are the remains of a chapel similarly situated on the Brough of Deerness, at the east end of the Mainland. The Brough of Deerness is an outlying rock, nearly 100 feet high, and covered with green sward on the top. The chapel stands near the centre of the area, and is surrounded by a stone wall enclosing an area of about 60 feet by 45. The chapel, which is a smaller and ruder building than that on the Brough of Birsay, is a simple parallelogram of not more than 17 feet by 10 inside, the walls being from 3 to 4 feet thick. The doorway is in the west end, and there are the remains of a window in the east end, but the heads of both are gone. Around the chapel there are the foundations of about a score of stone-built huts scattered irregularly over the area of the Brough. They are irregularly built, with a tendency towards the rectangular form, the walls being from 2½ to 3 feet thick. Several of them are nearly as long as the church, but not so wide, the internal area measuring about 18 feet by 6. Low[194] states that in his time, notwithstanding the difficulty and danger of the access to the Brough, “even old age scrambled its way through a road in many places not six inches broad, where certain death attended a slip.” Jo. Ben, in 1529, mentions that people of all classes and conditions were in the habit of climbing up to the top of the Brough on their hands and knees to visit the chapel called the “Bairns of Brugh;” and when they had reached the top, “on their bended knees and with hands joined they offered their