Field Visit
Date May 1973
Event ID 1121915
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1121915
Parish Church, Iona.
This church was built in 1828, being one of a series of 'Parliamentary kirks' erected in the Highlands at that time according to plans and specifications furnished by the Inverness architect James Smith and approved by Thomas Telford. The total cost, which included the adjacent manse, was £1503 4s (1).
Apart from the omission of the usual central wing at the rear, the building conforms closely to Telford's published design for a Highland church (2). The coursed rubble masonry is of pink Ross of Mull granite with dressings of buff coloured sandstone. The roof is slated, the s gable being surmounted by a bird-cage belfry capped with a pyramidal finial. The principal, or E, elevation incorporates a pair of large four-centred arch-headed windows flanked by corresponding doorways; the windows retain their original cast-iron mullions, transoms and frames, which contain small lozenge-shaped panes. In the original arrangement of the interior, which survived until 1939, the pulpit stood against the centre of the E wall, and a long Communion table was aligned along the main axis of the building; there was no gallery (3). The original pulpit, which is preserved at the Highland Folk Museum, Kingussie, has panelled sides and back and a sounding-board (4).
The church is traditionally said to occupy the site of Cill Chainnech, a burial-ground or chapel dedicated to St Cainnech (5), and an Early Christian cross-decorated stone found near the manse (No. 6, 9) was assumed by Drummond to be from this site (6). A late medieval tombstone which stands outside the E wall of the church, probably the one discovered 'behind the church' in the late 19th century (7), and a cross-shaft of the same period preserved in the vestry, are described supra (No. 6, 195 and 213).
RCAHMS 1982, visited May 1973
(1) 'Sixth Report of Commissioners for Building Churches in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland' (Parliamentary Papers,
1831, 9),4, 14-15,36-7; Telford, Life, 186-7,490-1; Maclean, A M, 'Parliamentary Churches in the Highlands and Islands', p. 89 (unpublished Edinburgh University thesis, 1972, copy in NMRS); (2) Telford, Atlas, pl. 58; (3) Hay, Post Reformation Churches, 181, fig. 55; (4) A measured survey of the pulpit is deposited in NMRS; (5) Adamnan, Columba (Reeves), 41 7; MacMillan, Iona, 35-6; Ritchie, Iona, end-map; (6) Drummond, Monuments, pl. ii , 2; (7) MacMillan, Iona, 36.
