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Archaeology Notes
Event ID 647040
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Archaeology Notes
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/647040
HY63NE 8 6537 3920.
(HY 6537 3920) Church (In Ruins) (NAT)
OS 6"map, Orkney, 2nd ed.,(1900).
The ruins of the former church of Cross parish, built on a site formerly occupied by a prehistoric structure.
The building which may date from the late 17th or early 18th centuries measures externally 60' 6" by 22' with walls about 2'9" in thickness the north wall being almost entirely destroyed. The others show that it has been plastered inside and harled outside.
The graveyard was still in use in 1879.
The nature of the prehistoric site is uncertain, but kitchen-midden deposits containing fragments of rude pottery are clearly visible along the face of the bank above the beach on the south side of the church-yard.
RCAHMS 1946, visited 1928; Name Book 1879.
The church is as described and planned by the RCAHMS, and the graveyard is still in use.
According to Mr J D MacKay, the School-house, Sanday there was a pre-Reformation Chapel here dedicated to the Holy Cross, but there is now no trace. Possibly the present 17/18th century ruins incorporate fragments of the earlier church.
A fragment of dry-stone walling and a few limpet shells exposed in the cliff face at HY 6540 3915 are all that remain of the prehistoric structure.
Visited by OS(NKB) 9 July 1970.
