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Publication Account
Date 1996
Event ID 1016316
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016316
This is one of the finest of the early churches in the Northern Isles, dedicated to the earl who was murdered on the island c1116, Magnus Erlendsson. It is thought to have replaced an earlier church in which Earl Magnus prayed before his death, and the spot where tradition believes the fatal blow to have been struck (HY 470300) is marked by a monument set up in 1937, the octocentenary of the foundation of St Magnus Cathedral.
Although roofless, the church is otherwise virtually complete, and its elegant tower still dominates the island. Built in Romanesque style, probably in the second quarter of the 12th century, it consists of a rectangular nave with a square-ended chancel at its east end and a round tower at its west end; the doorways and the original windows have rounded arches, and the chancel has a barrel-vaulted roof. There was an upper floor to the chancel, where the priest could lodge overnight. The north door to the nave and all the windows (including two later lintelled windows) have been blocked up since the church went out of use in the early 19th century, but it is possible to see the bar-hole on the east side of the south door to the nave, which held the bar to close the wooden door from the inside in times of trouble. At such times the tower could become an invaluable sanctuary, for it could be entered only from within the church; as well as the ground-floor door, one on the first-floor gave access to an upper gallery in the nave, from which the priest's lodging over the chancel could also be reached. The tower survives to a height of 14.9m but it was originally higher, perhaps almost 20m high with four or five storeys, reached one from another by wooden ladders. The arrangement of windows in the tower is very ingenious: on the ground floor the window faces south, on the first floor it faces west, on the second east and on the third there a re four windows, one to each quarter of the compass. A sketch of the church in 1822 shows flagstone roofs, including a conical roof of the tower, and the gables still retain their crowsteps.
Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: Orkney’, (1996).
