Orkney Image Library

Na Steven, Hagan's Folly would be more appropriate,

Some o yer fellow cooncillors should be ashamed that they let this happen.

To make a wartime allusion, it will surely be 'Golden Square'. These will be the most expensive house sites in Orkney - and we're all paying for them!

My Dad, whilst home on leave from the Navy at the beginning of the war got a weeks work with Balfour Beatty carting sand to the site where this building was to be built a few weeks later. He said it was good pay at £5 for the week. He was the lorry driver & teamed up with Robbie of Cringliefield, Tankerness. He and Robbie drove out to Sandside, Deerness and manually shovelled sand from the beach onto the lorry and drove back to the site and shovelled the sand off - making numerous trips of course. Later more men carted more sand to the site. The lorries were brand new Bedford ones that had been destined for our troops in France but the Dunkirk evacuation and the pulling out of UK troops from France meant the lorries were no longer needed there and Balfour Beatty acquired them. Dad said the odd thing was that the pile of sand he and Robbie carted was not used for the building work for some reason and instead levelled and scattered over the land nearby. He could remember someone who had either built a house or bought a house near there commenting to him that the ground there was very sandy and they wondered why.

It does look odd now that it is no longer there. I miss it as it was a landmark and doing nobody any harm. Hope they do not advance the project for housing and leave it as a green space. Maybe the Community Council will put up a wee plaque.

Can I still say, "I'm going for a walk around The Black Building"?

If new houses do go up, I hope someone builds a garage in a similer style - with that arch style door on the front - providing they get planning permission of course! -A mini black building!