Lamb Holm

Lamb Holm is a small, low-lying islet in Holm Sound between Mainland and Burray in the Orkney Islands, Scotland. It was linked to its neighbours by the wartime Churchill Barriers, built to protect Scapa Flow after the 1939 sinking of HMS Royal Oak, so it’s surprisingly easy to reach by road despite its diminutive size.

The island is best known for the charming Italian Chapel, created by Italian prisoners in nearby Camp 60 from Nissen huts and lavishly decorated by Domenico Chiocchetti; the chapel is now a protected and much‑visited wartime memorial. Otherwise Lamb Holm is quiet, largely pastoral with sheep grazing and small‑scale farming, and its economy relies on that rural life plus steady tourism drawn by the chapel and the dramatic wartime engineering.