Recording Your Heritage Online
Event ID 564294
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Recording Your Heritage Online
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/564294
Kilfinnan Burial Ground, heralded by two enormous yews near an atmospheric jumble of old farm buildings above the Kilfinnan burn, the graveyard stands above the site of the former Church of St. Finnan. This was burnt down in 14 60, its ruins submerged beneath Loch Lochy, which rose about 10 ft when the Caledonian Canal was built. Macdonell (of Glengarry) Mausoleum, probably earlier 19th century, though the lofty, roofless rubble box is so excessively stark it is difficult to date. It houses Alasdair Ranaldson Macdonell's grave (he died 1828), flanked by a pair of re-sited late 17th-century grave slabs, finely crested and inscribed. Well of Seven Heads Monument (Tobar nan Ceann), erected 1812 by Col. Alasdair Ranaldson Macdonell, 15th Chief of Glengarry, in commemoration of the 'foul' Keppoch murders of 1663. Re-sited in the 1930s after road widening along Loch Oichside, the short, ashlar-plinthed obelisk bears inscriptions in many languages, confusingly inaccurate in their content. Its finial is a hand holding a dagger over seven carved heads, '... so grouped ... that they look as if they grew from the single neck of a Hindoo God' (Robert Southey, 1819).
[The hills of Glengarry Forest to the north of Loch Lochy are still traversed by the old funeral tracks by which the dead were brought - many over the shoulder of Ben Tee from Glen Garry - for burial at Kilfinnan.]
Taken from "Western Seaboard: An Illustrated Architectural Guide", by Mary Miers, 2008. Published by the Rutland Press http://www.rias.org.uk
