Harris, Rodel, St Clement's Church. View from NNW showing NNE and WNW fronts of tower.

Description Harris, Rodel, St Clement's Church. View from NNW showing NNE and WNW fronts of tower.

Date 1900

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

Catalogue Number SC 746775

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of IN 919

Scope and Content St Clement's Church, Rodel, Harris, Western Isles, from the north-west St Clement's Church, the most impressive of the pre-Reformation churches remaining in the Outer Hebrides, stands above the harbour at Rodel, a village on the south coast of Harris. Its solid, early 16th-century rectangular tower, a distinctive landmark unique in the Western isles, was photographed in 1900 by the Victorian photographer, Erskine Beveridge. The four-storeyed tower, built of pale sandstone imported from Carsaig on Mull, stands on higher ground at the west end of the main body of the church, with its ground-floor entrance on its west face. It has a cabled string-course of dark schist about halfway up, broken at the corners and centre of each wall face. Several carvings are set into the tower walls in spaces partially framed by the string-course; on the west face (right) there is a figure, possibly St Clement, above two unidentified men. The upper stage of the tower has a corbelled and crenellated parapet. Other carved panels on the tower include a squatting female figure nursing a child on the south face, a worn panel that may represent a boat on the east wall, and a bull's head on the north wall (left). Carved animal heads project from three of the four corners of the tower at third-floor level. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

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