Orkney Fossil and Heritage Centre

Posted on by Stephen Edwards

Burray, Scotland

I’m always a fan of unexpected travel finds. These are places that are not on the itinerary or listed as must-visits in guidebooks, but they offer a positive story, insight, or memory that makes them worth remembering when you reflect on the trip. In the Orkney Islands, a travel find for us was the Orkney Fossil and Heritage Centre in Burray.

The museum was proudly flying the Orkney Flag. The flag shows the islands’ Norwegian heritage, and the gold highlights instead of white are the key difference between the two flags.

We learned about the Orkney Fossil and Heritage Centre from a brochure in our Airbnb. We had visited the Italian Chapel that morning, but we wanted somewhere else to visit before heading back to our temporary home for lunch. The Orkney Fossil and Heritage Centre provided just enough variety to entertain us long-distance visitors. 

Simon is probably too big for the rocking horse, but I remember riding these when I was a kid. In the same room as the rocking horse are many historic documents about Burray and the Orkney Islands. The room overlooks Scapa Flow, and it’s a great way to learn about local history.

The museum has a sizable collection of impressive fossils and rocks. The collection includes ancient marine animals, fluorescent rocks, and other impressive finds from the Orkney Islands and beyond.

The three well-preserved fossils include a Sclerocephalus up top, an amphibian from 290 million years ago. In the center is Stenopterygius, an ichthyosaur that was an air-breathing reptile from 180 million years ago, and at the bottom is Steneosaurus ballensis, a member of the crocodile family from 165 million years ago.
The museum had a special room where you could watch the fluorescent rocks shift between light and dark.

The museum also has several World War I and World War II exhibits. Scapa Flow was a major British naval base, so several artifacts were directly related to the base. Burray was also home to one of the two Italian POW camps that built the Churchill Barriers. The museum has a great exhibit explaining the need for, construction of, and lasting impact of the Churchill Barriers.

Adrienne was having fun with the museum’s World War II-era air raid siren.

A third group of exhibits focuses on traditional rural life across most of the Orkney Islands. Even today, farming remains central to life on the Orkney Islands. Many of the featured exhibits include tools and household items Orcadians used to maintain their agrarian way of life.

The saws, grinding stones, hand drills, and clamps found here are similar to tools found in shops everywhere in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Orkney Islands were fairly isolated, so residents needed self-sufficiency to build and repair many of the items they needed.

The Orkney Fossil and Heritage Centre was a great travel find and a good place for a quick stop in Burray. Current admission (2026) is £7.50 for adults, £6.00 for concessions, and £20.00 for a family of four. The museum is also home to the Relic Cafe and to a decent-sized gift shop. We enjoyed our stop at the Orkney Fossil and Heritage Centre and were glad to learn more about Burray and the surrounding area.

The exhibit on the Churchill Barriers showed just how much the Orkney Islands have changed in a few short years. Being able to take the Ferry from Scotland to South Ronaldsay Island has been a boon to the Orkney Islands Tourism Board
A British phone booth, a farming implement, and Scapa Flow. The Orkney Fossil and Heritage Center’s collection was a great stop on our visit to the Orkney Islands and is worth a visit if you are on the Island of Burray.

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