South Ronaldsay, Orkney : Historical writing

Descriptive gazetteer entries

These other entries in our collection of descriptive gazetteers are also about South Ronaldsay. You may be able to find further references to South Ronaldsay in the descriptive gazetteers by doing a full-text search here.

Place Type of entry Source
Ronaldshay, South island and insular parish Bartholomew
Ronaldshay, South an island Groome

Travel writing

This website includes the complete texts of books describing journeys around Britain, written between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries. Selecting one of the links below will take you to the first reference to South Ronaldsay within the selected text. This will not always be a description of a visit: travellers often mention places other than where they are, for example as a basis for comparison.

Traveller Section No. of Refs.
Thomas Pennant August 18-29: Sutherland and Caithness 1
Thomas Pennant Appendix V: Of Caithness, Strathnavern, and Sutherland 1

This website includes two large libraries, of historical travel writing and of entries from nineteenth century gazetteers describing places. We have text from these sources available for these places near your location:

Place Mentioned in Travel Writing Mentioned in Historical Gazetteer
St Margarets Hope 0 2
Burray 1 2
Swona 1 2
Flotta 1 2
Skerries 1 2
Scapa Flow 0 2
Pentland Firth 3 2
Holm 0 2
Longhope 0 2
Stroma 4 1
Walls 1 1
Duncansby 15 2
John O Groats 1 2
Orphir 0 2
Huna 1 1
St Andrews 0 2
Deerness 0 2
Kirkwall 1 4
Canisbay 4 2
Gills 0 2

Names from historical writing

The following appear as names for South Ronaldsay. Follow the links for what the author actually said:

Name Author Source
RONALDSA Thomas Pennant A Tour in Scotland 1769 (London: Benjamin White, 1776).
RONALDSHAY John Bartholomew Gazetteer of the British Isles (Edinburgh: Bartholomew, 1887).
RONALDSHAY SOUTH John Bartholomew Gazetteer of the British Isles (Edinburgh: Bartholomew, 1887).
F.H. Groome Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (Edinburgh: T.C. Jack, 1882-4).
SOUTH RONALDSHAW Thomas Pennant A Tour in Scotland 1769 (London: Benjamin White, 1776).
SOUTH RONALDSHAY John Bartholomew Gazetteer of the British Isles (Edinburgh: Bartholomew, 1887).

NB: These variant names come from our collections of historical travel writing and descriptive gazetteers:

  • The above links take you to the first reference to this particular version of the name within a book of travel writing, or to the relevant gazetteer entry.
  • Some names may derive from research by antiquarian writers such as William Camden and Thomas Pennant into the Roman, Saxon and medieval names of places. Their claims are not always supported by modern place-name researchers.
  • References by travel writers to the place using its "normal" name are not included. Descriptive gazetteer entries are included only if the name does not appear anywhere else.