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Archaeology Notes

Event ID 647031

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/647031

HY74SW 7 7136 4363.

(HY 7136 4363) Peterkirk (NAT)

St Peter's Chapel (NR) (Site of) (NAT)

OS 6"map, Orkney, 2nd ed.,(1900).

No remains of the chapel are visible.

Close to the shore, however, is a small circular cavity of carefully built dry-stone masonry which has not been fully investigated but which may be a well. It has a diameter of 5' at the surface but contracts downwards. The chapel evidently stood on a prehistoric site as kitchen-midden deposits are exposed along the beach at points where the bank has been broken by heavy seas.

RCAHMS 1946, visited 1928.

At the site of St Peter's Chapel, known locally at Peterkirk, is a curving stony bank of uncertain purpose, c3.5m wide, which is truncated at both ends by coastal erosion and crossed by a modern field wall. Mr A Skea Esq, of Garbo, Sanday recalls his grandfather telling him of the rectangular foundations of the chapel within the area enclosed by the bank on the SE of the field wall, but there is now no trace of it. On the NW side of the wall is a well typical of those seen in brochs. It is a rectangular rock cut basin c1.5m by 1.1m by 0.8m deep at the base of an almost vertical dry-stone passage 3.0m deep down which access is by rough steps. Formerly choked with stones, it was cleared out by Mr Skea about two years ago and is now in good condition and the entry covered with slabs.

Midden material of shells and animal bones is visible in rabbit scrapes to the SW of the well in the eroded shoreline.

Surveyed at 1/2500.

Visited by OS(AA) 12 July 1970.

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