gmb website - photogallery early gmb

GEORGE MACKAY BROWN

Photo Gallery ~ GMB's Homes

'The prospect of a flitting is very daunting to people of a certain temperament, like me.'
GMB
from Under Brinkies Brae

GMB was a homebody, and the places he lived were important to him, not intrinsically but for comfort and convenience, perhaps safety, which gave him the security and space he needed for his work, for 'interrogating the silence' that was so vital to him, and especially towards the end of his life for the silence which he found has been eroded everywhere.

Click Here
to read more about where GMB lived
in A Marvellous Journey: a peedie look at the life and work of GMB
'Flitting'
by Sue Tordoff

1921-1927/28
80 Victoria Street/Clouston's Pier,
Stromness

The room above the shop in Victoria Street
was also part of the Brown's house.

"His earliest memories are of living in a little house on the corner of Victoria Street and Clouston's Pier, with views over the harbour to Orphir and Scapa Flow. A fisherman's pier and slipway was at one end, Stromness's main shopping street at the other."
from A Marvellous Journey

looking up to Victoria Street from Clouston's Pier,
a newly renovated No. 80

	1927/28 - 1933/34 Melvin Place, Stromness "the family moved around 1927-28 to Melvin Place, a small square opposite the library. Here for the first time, they had a flower garden and the loan of a vegetable patch. " from A Marvellous Journey by Sue Tordoff
"Broad steps go up from the street. The close suddenly narrows, climbing still. I remember a little hidden garden on one side, full of dew and flowers." from Rockpools and Daffodils © GMB 1992

1933-34 to 1968
6 Well Park, Stromness

The Browns stayed for some 34 years in a new council house at Well Park now called Guardhouse Park. When the name changed, so did the system of numbering houses: No. 6 would be on the left, maybe the second block from the far end.

George's Mother died in 1967 and he was left alone in the house. In Autumn 1968, he "flit from the delightful neighbourhood of Well Park to a kind of watchtower house at Mayburn Court." [from Rockpools and Daffodils].

1968 to 1996
3 Mayburn Court, Stromness
the 'watchtower house' overlooking Museum noust and pier.

GMB remained at Mayburn, where he did some of his most exceptional writing, until his death.

"In April 1996, the strange little watchtower of a house lost the light from its windows"
from A Marvellous Journey

GMB's last resting place

Kirkyard at Warbeth, just outside Stromness,
overlooking Hoy Sound and the hills of Hoy

George Mackay Brown
1921 - 1996

'Carve the runes then be
content with Silence.'