Desk Based Assessment

Date 9 August 1976

Event ID 883940

Category Recording

Type Desk Based Assessment

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/883940

(NS 0348 6125) St Ninian's Chapel (NR) (Rems of)

OS 6" map (Prov) 1957

Excavations in 1952 and 1954 showed that this site was first occupied by a pagan burial ground of long cists, diversely placed with a tendency to lie N-S. One burial was accompanied by a fragment of an undatable jet armlet. A circular enclosure with a wall of stones and turf, 72' in diameter, was then formed, leaving some of the graves outside. It had been completely removed on the NE, but on the SE, where best preserved, it was 3' thick and 3' high, its top just below modern ground level. On the ESE, the enclosure wall incorporated a fragment of an older wall running at right angles to it, but there is no evidence to show what type of structure it belonged to. Most of the graves now lying within the enclosure are oriented. At a time when some at least of the oriented graves had collapsed, a small oratory, St Ninian's Chapel, some 21' x 13' within 4' thick walls, was built. Its altar of rough masonry faced with slabs, had a fossa or cavity for relics at the S end.

Two kitchen middens containing large quantities of shells and bones were piled against the enclosure wall in the SE, and a similar midden occupied the site of the wall in the SW. No datable finds were made.

The chapel, founded from Whithorn, was built in the 6th or early 7th century and Radford suggests, from its simplicity that it was abandoned with the arrival of the Norse in the 9th century. Thomas, however, states that it must have continued to be a cult centre through the Middle Ages, as only this would account for the survival of the name.

Information from OS (IF) 9 August 1976

W G Aitken 1955; C A R Radford 1967; C Thomas 1971