Archaeology Notes

Event ID 824006

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/824006

NR35SE 9 3747 9172

(NR 3747 9171) Teampull a' Ghlinne (NR)

OS 6" map (1900)

Teampull a' Ghlinne - Church of the Glen - the remains of a probably medieval oriented building which is thought to occupy the site of a church dedicated to St Columba, who is said to have visited the spot. The building, of stone and lime and plastered internally, has measured 31' x 19' over walls 27" thick. Only the 8' high N and S walls remain, the gables having collapsed at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The doorway, splayed within, is in the S wall and there is a small window, 24" x 6" on each side. The remains of what may be an altar occur at the E end of the interior and in the NW corner is a small recess which may have been an aumbry.

The surrounding area displays the grave-covering cairns with head and foot stones typical of the unenclosed burial grounds of Colonsay. The site has not been in use for centuries, but funeral parties waiting for suitable tide conditions to cross the Strand to Oronsay are said to have used the building, although no sign of a fireplace is visible.

Tradition associates fairies and Robert the Bruce with the building.

W Stevenson 1881; S Grieve 1923; J de V Loder 1935.

This chapel is as described, its N and S walls remaining to almost original height. The stones at the E end of the interior are clearly the remains of an altar. The chapel lies within a burial ground defined by a stone wall now reduced to a grass-and-bracken covered bank with entrances in the NE and SW. It contains nine graves covered by small cairns though none has any grave markers.

Surveyed at 1:2500.

Visited by OS (JP) 21 April 1974