Field Visit
Date June 1981
Event ID 921814
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/921814
This medieval chapel is situated on the SE shore of Nave Island (c.42 ha), at the head of the sloping shingle beach of Port na h-Eaglaise which provides a convenient boat-landing opposite the mouth of Loch Gruinart. The dedication is unknown, and the chapel is first mentioned in 1549 by Monro (Munro 1884), but on architectural grounds it may be ascribed to the first half of the 13th century. The ovoid enclosure within which it stands, however, may be of Early Christian date, and although Skene's identification of the island with Elena Insula, mentioned as the site of a monastery by Adomnan in his Life of Columba, is speculative (Adamnan in Skene; Adoman, Anderson), the discovery of a cross-fragment of probable 5th-century date strengthens the possibility of a monastic origin. (on Nave Island, the discovery of part of a cross as similar date to that at Kildalton and Iona supports an Early Christian origin for the ovoid stone-walled enclosure round the medieval chapel, which is comparable in size and character with the inner enclosure on Eileach an Naoimh. RCAHMS 1984)
Some 45m NE of the chapel the island is traversed by Sloc na Maoile, a perpendicular-sided gully about 6m in average width, created by the erosion of a basalt dyke. An area of almost 2 ha is enclosed between this gully and a curving turf dyke which runs from the SW side of the chapel-enclosure to the head of a second gully on the NW shore. Within this large enclosure there are extensive remains of rig-cultivation. Nave Island, which along with the adjacent estate of Ardnave was a property of lona Abbey until the Reformation, was described by Monro in 1549 as inhabited and cultivated, and 18th-century estate-rentals refer to its agricultural value. (Exch. Rolls 13 (1508-1513), 219; Coll. de Rebus Alban., 3, 163, 171; Monro 1884, 60; Islay Bk., 89, 91, 476-7, 484, 507, 543). A number of buildings at the N side of the burial-ground were probably associated with this agrarian activity, but some may belong to the final phase of occupation, towards the middle of the 19th century, when a group of kelp-burners erected a furnace with a chimney some 8.5m in height in the NE angle of the chapel, and are said to have laid waste the burial-ground (Muir 1885, 16; Muir 1861, 128; Graham 1895, 49).
The site is sheltered on the W by rising ground, and although most of the burial-ground is level the enclosure-wall in the W sector takes the form of a revetment running just below the scarp. In this area the enclosure is subdivided by a wall, of uncertain age, at the foot of the slope. The original enclosure measured about 46m from N to S by 34m transversely, and its drystone wall is best preserved immediately SE of the chapel, where two courses of basalt blocks remain in the outer face and it has a maximum thickness of 2.6m. South of the chapel the course of the wall cannot be traced for some 20m, and it was interrupted by a rock outcrop whose N face is cut into by two probable quarry-pits. Above this outcrop, the wall can be traced from a point 18m SW of the chapel (fig. A, RCAHMS 1984), running NW as a turf-covered mound about 2m thick, with intermittent facing-stones. A turf dyke running SE from the same point towards the shore is probably of recent origin, and the dyke of the large enclosure described above also begins at this point. On the sloping ground in the W sector there are traces of a structure (B) about 3m square abutting the boundary-wall. In the NE sector the course of the wall is overlain by the remains of two subrectangular buildings (C, D). These, together with a similar building (E) and a larger and better-preserved one retaining two pairs of cruck-slots (F), both situated a few metres N of the enclosure, probably belong to the period of agrarian occupation described above. A building within the enclosure (G), which measures internally 6m from E to W by 4m transversely, differs from the others in having square internal angles, and may be of earlier date. To the S of building G, and some 9m NW of the chapel, there is a low rectangular platform (H), measuring about 3m by 2.2m, which is bounded by a kerb of basalt blocks and is covered with small stones including many white quartz pebbles. This platform may have marked a grave of special importance, or been a prayer-station of the type known in Ireland as a leacht (Thomas 1971, 58-64, 144, 168-75. Cf. RCAHMS 1984, 177, 179).
The chapel is built of local basalt rubble, much of it quarried in oblong blocks and neatly coursed with small pinnings. The furnace in the NE angle has a rubble base, while its chimney was built of small and poorly fired bricks. The entire building was heavily repointed during the 19th-century period of industrial use, and it appears to have been roofed with slate at that time. It measures 6.75m by 4.1m within walls 0.9m thick, and was entered by a doorway, of which only a few stones of the E jamb and part of the semicircular rear-arch survive, near the W end of the N wall. It was lit by a splayed N window, now blocked by the furnace, and by a two-light window at the E end of the S wall, which is an interesting version, in local materials, of a type commonly executed, at Kildalton (RCAHMS 1984, No. 367) and elsewhere, in freestone.
The junction of the splays was formed by regular blocks of basalt set obliquely, and the sloped sill of the E light, the only one not filled by later blocking, was carefully shaped to receive the jambs of the daylight-opening. The arch-heads, which were formed by thin rubble slab-voussoirs, appear to have been semicircular but are now incomolete. Towards the S end of the E wall there is an aurnbry, and above it a shelf formed by a thin slab which extends to the S wall, resembling a feature in a similar position on Eileach an Naoimh.
Outside the S wall of the chapel there was a rubble-built lean-to annexe some 3m in internal width. When first built its W end was open, and it may have served as a cart-shed, but following the insertion of a W wall faced externally with brick, the only access was by an opening broken through the S wall of the chapel. Probably at the same time, the annexe was subdivided by a partition-wall which blocked an earlier window in its S wall. These alterations were probably made at the period when the furnace was built, while the original construction of the annexe may belong to the first phase of industrial activity, or to the last period of agrarian use of the site.
With the exception of the cross-fragment described below, no carved stones are now identifiable in the burial-ground or reused as building-material, and the belief that the kelp-burners destroyed a number of late medieval effigies and graveslabs is probably based on a misapprehension. (Graham 1895, 49, quoting NSA, 7 (Argyll), 650, where the section beginning 'the gravestones...' probably applied to the whole parish of Kilchoman, rather than to Nave Island alone.)
Cross:
A fragment of the arm of a free-standing cross, probably of 5th-century date, was identified among the rough paving on the floor of the chapel during the present survey and is now in the Museum of Islay Life, Port Charlotte. Carved of local green schist and now heavily worn, it measures 0.46m by 0.33m by 38mm in incomplete thickness. Like the nearby cross at Kilnave (RCAHMS 1984, No. 374), it had a broad flat margin, measuring in this case 70mm, within which an ornamental motif was set on a background of knitted interlace. On the Nave Island fragment this motif was a lozenge within a rectangular panel whose spandrels contain ornament, possibly of foliaceous character, incorporating pellets. The measurement across the constriction of the arm, some 390mm, was almost 100mm greater than that of the Kilnave Cross, and the Nave Island carving may have been correspondingly higher than the latter.
RCAHMS 1984, visited June 1981
