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Field Visit
Date May 1977
Event ID 1168910
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1168910
NR 374 917. The ruins of this medieval chapel stand in an unnamed glen at Garvard, close to the road which, about 750m further S, continues across the tidal strand to Oronsay. The chapel measures 8.0m in length from E to W by 4.2m transversely within walls 0.85m in average thickness. The walls are constructed of lime-mortared random rubble masonry comprising slabs and split boulders, and are based on a rough plinth. The end-walls, which were presumably gabled, survive only in their lowest courses' but much of the N wall and the W end of the S wall stand to an original wall-head of over 2m in height. The doorway, which is lintelled and has splayed ingoings, is placed towards the W end of the S wall. At the E end of the N wall there is a slit-window with a lintelled and splayed embrasure and a stepped sill, and there are traces of a splayed window-ingoing in a corresponding position in the opposite wall. An aumbry is contained within the NW angle, and against the centre of the E wall there are the remains of a possible altar-base.
To the S of the chapel there is a group of roughly circular mounds, possibly burial-cairns; the largest of them contains a short, narrow channel of unknown purpose, but evidently not the flue of a corn-drying kiln.
The chapel stands immediately S of a steep rock face which forms the N boundary of an associated D-shaped enclosure. The boundary is elsewhere defined by the remains of a stone-and-turf dyke which is 0.5m in average height and over 1m in width. The principal entrances are in the E and W sectors.
Tradition records that this building was principally used by travellers and funeral processions waiting to cross the strand to Oronsay Priory. (Loder states that the E wall collapsed about 1875 and that the fall of the W wall occurred in the earlier part of the 20th century) It may also have served parishioners in the S half of Colonsay, but the chapel has no recorded history and the dedication is not known.(Stevenson 1881) The surviving architectural details are similar to those of the earlier phases of Oronsay Priory (RCAHMS 1984, No. 286), and on these grounds the chapel may tentatively be attributed to the 14th century.
RCAHMS 1984, visited May 1977.
