St Margaret's Hope Accommodation

St Margaret's Hope is a village on South Ronaldsay, at the southern end of the chain of islands joined to the Orkney Mainland by road. It is much the largest settlement on South Ronaldsay — a few hundred people — and after Kirkwall and Stromness it is one of the bigger villages in Orkney, though small enough that the whole place is a ten-minute walk. It sits on a sheltered bay on the island's north coast, about 15 miles south of Kirkwall by road — around twenty-five minutes' drive, and one of the more interesting drives in Orkney.

That road is the Churchill Barriers, and the story behind it is worth knowing before you cross. On 14 October 1939 the German submarine U-47 slipped into Scapa Flow and sank the battleship HMS Royal Oak at her moorings. Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, ordered permanent barriers built to close the anchorage's eastern approaches. Work began in May 1940, the barriers were finished in September 1944, and they were officially opened on 12 May 1945. Four causeways carry the road from the Mainland to South Ronaldsay by way of Lamb Holm, Glimps Holm and Burray. Over 1,300 Italian prisoners of war, captured in North Africa, were brought to Orkney to work on their construction; the 550 held at Camp 60 on Lamb Holm built the Italian Chapel out of two Nissen huts in their own time, and it still stands beside the road you drive in on.

The village has a second role beyond the barriers. It is the Orkney terminal for Pentland Ferries, whose service runs across the Pentland Firth from Gills Bay in Caithness to St Margaret's Hope — a crossing the operator gives as 1 hour 10 minutes, and a shorter, more southerly route than the Stromness–Scrabster or Kirkwall–Aberdeen sailings. If you arrive that way, St Margaret's Hope is the first Orkney village you see rather than a day trip out from Kirkwall.

The Sands of Wright, a beach near the village, hosts the Boys' Ploughing Match on the third Saturday of August — a tradition the organisers say has been going for over a hundred years, in which children plough miniature furrows in the sand while others wear elaborate 'horse' harness costumes. It is one of Orkney's more distinctive local customs, and worth timing a visit around if it falls in your dates.

Accommodation here is on a village scale rather than a town one. Our listings cover six self-catering apartments, four holiday homes, a hostel and a guest house, most within a short walk of the harbour. The one hotel-style option is the Murray Arms Hotel and Seafood Restaurant on the Back Road, which carries far more guest reviews than anything else in the village. Choosing between St Margaret's Hope and Kirkwall as a base comes down to convenience against quiet: Kirkwall has the shops, the cathedral and the wider choice of places to eat, while St Margaret's Hope puts you next to the Barriers, the Italian Chapel and South Ronaldsay's coast, with the Gills Bay crossing on your doorstep if that is how you are travelling.