Field Visit
Date April 1984
Event ID 1082691
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1082691
This rocky island is situated 100m from the E shore of Caol Scotnish, a narrow tidal extension of Loch Sween, and is surrounded by deep water. It measures about 65m by 20m transversely and rises to a level summit about 5m above high-watermark.
The entire summit-area, 34m in length, is enclosed by a drystone wall about 1.2m thick and up to 1.3m high, which on the NW, where it is extremely ruinous, descends to the shore to enclose a boat-inlet. Access to the summit was probably by rock-cut steps above the boat-landing (C on fig.), in an area much obscured by vegetation. An alternative position SW of the boat-landing, where the wall returns to the summit, appears too constricted for convenient access. A gap in the NE side of a bastion-like projection of the SE wall (D) has also been identified as an entrance, but is probably a later break. The SE wall returns NE from this projection in an almost straight line for 19m, to a point where its continuation is offset 2m to the SE. Any evidence of the link between these two sections of wall has been obscured by erosion or the later construction of adjacent buildings. The masonry at the NE end of the enclosure, described by Christison as 'indistinguishable from ordinary prehistoric workmanship' (en.2), is greatly eroded but not perceptibly different in character from other sections. Various features of the wall, notably the straight SE length and the sharp returns at several points, indicate that it is of late- or post-medieval origin.
Within the enclosure there are the remains of two drystone buildings. The more substantial (A) measures 9.6m by 5.3m over walls 0.7m to 0.9m thick and up to 1.1m high. It has opposed doorways in the side-walls, which also include four probable cruck-slots, and in the SW end-wall there is a slot for an end-cruck. At right angles to and 2m N of this building there is a more ruinous one (B), 7.8m by 4.3m over all, which is featureless except for a doorway at the centre of the SW wall. It appears to have been built across the line of an earlier building, part of which was retained as an annexe to the NE.
No documentary references to this site have been identified, and no settlement is shown on Pont's map (en.3), although it names 'Yl(en) Kerk' and identifies the narrows to the SSW as 'Cheulis (caolas, 'channel') na Kerk'. Simpson, who knew the site only from Christison's description, interpreted it as an Early Christian monastery, with building B as its chapel (en.4). However, the enclosure-wall is more probably of late medieval date, and the buildings perhaps of the 17th or 18th century. The local tradition that it was formerly used as a refuge by 'the laird of Ob's is confirmed by its omission from a 1747 map of the Taynish estate, which included the farms on the W shore of Caol Scotnish. It was presumably attached to the lands of Oib Campbell or Oib Mor on the E shore.
RCAHMS 1992, visited April 1984
