Eilean Mor, St Cormac's Chapel. View of chapel from the south-west.

Description Eilean Mor, St Cormac's Chapel. View of chapel from the south-west.

Date 17/8/1898

Collection Papers of Erskine Beveridge, antiquarian, Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland

Catalogue Number AG 1679

Category Photographs and Off-line Digital Images

Copies SC 743226

Scope and Content St Cormac's Chapel, Eilean Mor, Argyll & Bute, from the south-west The ruins of an early 13th-century chapel dedicated to St Cormac stand on Eilean Mor, a tiny island in the Sound of Jura, 6km to the south-west of the tip of the Tayvallich peninsula. The chapel was photographed in 1895 by the Victorian photographer, Erskine Beveridge. The chapel, aligned in an east-west direction, lies close to an anchorage in a small inlet on the north side of the island. It is partly medieval, enclosing an earlier building, and has a barrel-vaulted roof over the chancel. It is constructed of rubble, and preserves areas of harling and internal plastering. Some of the turf roofing still survives. Early 18th-century alterations have left two small windows in the west gable (left). Eilean Mor, which in Gaelic means 'big island', is one of a group of islets known as the MacCormaig Isles which are gathered around the entrance to Loch Sween. The island was the retreat of St Abban mac ui Charmaig, an Irish saint otherwise known as St Cormac or St Charmaig, who founded a monastery at Keills on the Tayvallich peninsula, and was buried on the island in 640AD. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

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