History
Westside Church, Tuquoy, is a roofless ruin dating to the 1100s. It was originally a rectangular nave, with a chancel. The surviving structure shows some of the finest Romanesque church architecture in Orkney.
An interpretation of the Orkneyinga Norse saga suggests Thorkel Flettir and his family were prominent landholders here in the 1100s, probably based at Tuquoy. Westside Church could therefore have been built by Haflidi Thorkelsson in the mid-1100s.
The Orkneyinga saga mentions other Orkney sites, most notably Cubbie Roo’s Castle and Earl’s Bu.