Reference
Date 2001
Event ID 928596
Category Documentary Reference
Type Reference
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/928596
The remains of a group of churches and chapels stand at the N edge of the township of Howmore and about 750m from the W shore of South Uist. The name of the settlement incorporates the Old Norse haugr, 'a mound', but the location and age of this feature are not certain. The largest of the buildings, the Teampull Mor, whose E gable preserves two windows of 13th-century type, was the medieval parish church of South Uist, and Caibeal Dhiarmaid, whose footings lie in the burial-ground to the E of the church, was probably also of medieval date (i). A detached chapel to the S may be of post-medieval date, and another to the NE was probably the burial-aisle erected by John MacDonald of Clanranald (d.1574) (ii). A graveslab of late medieval type was recorded in the burial-ground in 1866 (iii), and a cross-marked slab lies in the ruin of Caibeal Dhiarmaid.
The cross-marked stone is a tapered slab of diorite, broken obliquely at the foot. It measures 0.68m by 0.36m at the head and is 75mm thick. On one face there is an equal-armed outline cross, 0.38m high, whose arms extend to the edges of the slab and whose foot is open. The surface is flaked but the cross has been defined by firm U-section grooves, and the armpits are slightly round and bevelled.
Footnotes:
(i) RCAHMS 1928, No.367. These were presumably the churches recorded by Martin (1934, 88) as being dedicated respectively to St Mary and St Columba.
(ii) A Cameron 1894, 170-1. A MacDonald armorial stone, which was stolen from this building in 1990 and recovered in 1995, is now in the heritage museum at Kildonnan. A smaller chapel of uncertain date, to the E of the burial-aisle, was removed between 1855 and 1866 (T S Muir 1885, 51).
(iii) T S Muir 1885, 51.
I Fisher 2001.
