St Margaret's Hope is a village in the Orkney Islands, off the north coast of Scotland. It is known locally as The Hope or The Hup. With a population of about 550, it is Orkney's third largest settlement after Kirkwall and Stromness.[citation needed]
The village has a primary school, a small blacksmith's museum, a few shops and a cafe, a pub and a wine bar. Pentland Ferries run a reliable service from the pier in the bay to Gills Bay on the Scottish mainland.
It is also known for its annual Boys' Ploughing Match, a local tradition where young boys plough the sands at the nearby Sands of Wright, and girls (or boys, though this is now a rarity) wear traditional 'horse' costumes resembling a harness. The event, which incorporates The Festival of the Horse, is known to have been in existence for at least 200 years, and takes place on the third Saturday of August.[2]
Scant traces of an Iron Age broch can be found in a field off the Ontaft road above the village. The site could once be identified by Victorian OS maps, but with the passage of time and all but a 'crop mark' remaining, modern maps fail to show its location.
It is favoured by most in Orkney as being its prettiest village. The picturesque waterfront location being far superior to its West Mainland equivalent Stromness.[peacock prose]
References
^"Letter S". The Online Scots Dictionary. Archived from the original on 8 July 2010. Retrieved 1 January 2015.