Diary of a Shopkeeper, 18th May
Broad Street, c1860. The man in the white apron is believed to be James Kirkness, shortly after he opened his shop at No 15.
I’m writing this on the morning of 18th May. It’s a special day, as 18th May 1919 was when the name Kirkness & Gorie was first announced to the world. The signs outside the shop say, ‘Whisky, Cheese and Wine, since 1859,’ which is a neat rhyme that we’ve long believed to be true. But recent research by our family historian, Bruce Gorie, has revealed that it’s more complex than that.
James Kirkness first appeared as a ‘Grocer and Spirit-Dealer’ in the Orkney Herald on 23rd May 1859. ‘WINES! TEAS!! GROCERIES!!!’ the adverts boasted. That was at No 7 Broad Street, where the Ola Gorie jewellery shop is now. It was only on 20th May 1886 that the business moved three doors down to No 15 – The Longship clothes shop – where it stayed for 115 years. James retired in 1899, with his son John taking over the business. Sadly, just six months after James’s death in March 1918, John died too, unmarried, leaving the shop without a shopkeeper.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and entrepreneurial families abhor a business without a leader. So James’s daughter, Mary, persuaded her husband, John Drever Gorie, to return with her to Orkney and take on the mantle of ‘Wine and Spirit Merchant, and Family Grocer.’ It was at this point – May 1919 – that the business name changed from James Kirkness to Kirkness & Gorie, as it has remained to this day.
John Gorie had been born and raised at Clestrain in Stronsay, but had moved south and established a successful career as a solicitor’s cashier in the boom town of Peterhead. A massive new harbour – built by convict labour from its handy prison – enclosed 300 acres, helping the Blue Toon become the most important fishing port in the UK. It must have been challenging to start an entirely new career at the age of 45. But maybe shopkeeping was in John Gorie’s blood: before moving to Stronsay, his grandfather, Patrick Gorie, had been a Kirkwall businessman with a finger in many pies. Patrick was a draper in Bridge Street, a maltster in Queen Street, and owned ‘ten sixty-fourths’ of a trading schooner called the Eclipse.
The 1919 change from James Kirkness to Kirkness & Gorie wasn’t news to me. What was a surprise was that the family business actually started quite a few years before 1859. Bruce has dug back through many dusty digital records to discover that its origins go back to Whitsunday, 15th May 1845.
I mentioned the founding of James Kirkness, Grocer and Spirit-Dealer, in 1859. But James wasn’t alone in the enterprise, being supported by his wife, Margaret Copland. In fact, it might be more accurate to say that James supported Margaret. At the very least, it was Margaret who provided the initial opportunity. She was the daughter of William Copland and Barbara Scott, who had bought 7 to 15 Broad Street in 1845, for £325. The funds for this appear to have come from William’s five years as a cooper with the Hudson’s Bay Company. In a letter home in 1826 he wrote, ‘it is my ernest wish if my time was out there is nothing that would keep me in the country it is very disagreeable. I am doing all in my power to save all I can as it is much needing there is no pleasure here at all.’
But maybe 1845 wasn’t the start of it all either, for William returned from Canada in 1829. What was he doing with his Hudson’s Bay savings for those 16 years? Initially he worked as a cooper, but when he pops up in official documents on 24th April 1838, it’s as a licensee. The following year, records confirm he was running a ‘Shop & premises Below the Bridge.’ And who was the Coplands’ neighbour? Patrick Gorie, Retail Trader!
Bruce deduces that the Gorie property was the one currently occupied by Orkney Photographic, adjoining what is soon to be Orkney’s newest licensed premises, Garden Square. The Coplands appeared to have lived in what is now the Nationwide – or at least part of it – adjacent to the dilapidated St Olaf’s Kirk, then serving as the town’s poor house.
Another near neighbour in Bridge Street was seven-year-old James Kirkness, who would later marry Margaret Copland, who would give birth to Mary Kirkness who would marry John Gorie, who would be the father of Patrick who would marry Minnie Swanson, who would give the world Ola Gorie (my mother in law) and her brother Bruce Gorie (my inspiration for writing this tangled tale.)
Did our family business begin on 23rd May 1859 when James Kirkness advertised his wine merchants? Or was it on 18th May 1919 when it became Kirkness & Gorie? Or was it 15th May 1845 when the Coplands opened a shop in the same Broad Street premises we still operate from, or even 24th April 1838 when William Copland is first recorded as having a license to sell beers, wines and spirits?
Whichever it was, it was a long, long time ago, and here we are, still selling the same stuff as our ancestors did 187 years ago. It makes you think. What it makes me think is: my head is spinning, I need a lie down. Or a stiff drink…
This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 23rd May 2025. A new diary appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations, and occasional small corrections or additions.