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Taransay, St Keith's Chapel

Chapel (Medieval)

Site Name Taransay, St Keith's Chapel

Classification Chapel (Medieval)

Canmore ID 10535

Site Number NG09NW 7

NGR NG 0304 9914

Datum OSGB36 - NGR

C14 Radiocarbon Dating

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/10535

Ordnance Survey licence number AC0000807262. All rights reserved.
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Digital Images

Administrative Areas

  • Council Western Isles
  • Parish Harris
  • Former Region Western Isles Islands Area
  • Former District Western Isles
  • Former County Inverness-shire

Recording Your Heritage Online

A cart track follows it down to Paible, the main village overlooking a natural harbour, with a fertile valley seamed with lazybeds running back into the hills. Enclosed by a wall, two chapel ruins, each with its own graveyard: Teampall Chè and Eaglais Tarain (the former, dedicated to St. Keith, the traditional burial place of the men, the latter, dedicated to St. Tarran, where the women were laid to rest). Farmhouse and steading, 1901, built on a hillock behind the village for the Berneray farmer, John Campbell, now self catering accommodation, along with the schoolhouse on the eastern side of the bay, which closed in 1935. These buildings formed the nucleus of the settlement created here in 2000 for the TV programme Castaway. Northeast, on the shore by Sgeir Mhor, lies the former village of Raa, with ruins of longhouses, some over 60 ft in length, barns, byres and corn drying kilns.

Taken from "Western Seaboard: An Illustrated Architectural Guide", by Mary Miers, 2008. Published by the Rutland Press http://www.rias.org.uk

Archaeology Notes

NG09NW 7 0304 9914.

(NG 0304 9914) St Keith's Chapel (NR)

OS 6"map, Inverness-shire, 2nd ed., (1903)

Although the RCAHMS states that nothing remains of St Keith's Chapel except a slight mound (21 x 12ft) oriented E-W, the stones having been removed, the Name Book (1878) says the foundations could be distinctly traced in 1878. The OS Reviser, in 1956, found the remains to comprise the foundation walls (6 x 4 metres) in the form of grass-covered banks, broken in parts and varying in height between ground level and 0.5 metre. A few loose stones were exposed on the N and E walls, but the feature was not obvious.

The Chapel was noticed by Martin in the 17th century (Teampull Che). RCAHMS 1928, visited 1914; Name Book 1878; M Martin 1934.

The greatly robbed remains of St Keith's. Chapel exist as vague turf-covered footings measuring about 6.3m E-W by about 4.5m transversely, with a maximum height of 0.3m It lies within the same disused burial ground as St Taran's Chapel (NG09NW 1).

Surveyed at 1/10,000 (See NG09NW 1)

Visited by OS (A A) 7 July 1969.

Activities

Field Visit (17 July 1914)

St Taran' s Chapel, Taransay and St Keith's Chapel, Taransay.

At Paible, a township on the south-eastern shore of the island of Taransay, are the sites of two early chapels. The stones having been removed, all that remains are two slight mounds within a few yards of the shore to the south-west of the township. Both chapels seem to have been orientated east and west, the mound of the west ern chapel, St Keith's, measuring 21 feet in length by 12 feet in breadth, while that of the other, St Taran's, which lies 38 yards to the east, is 32 feet long by 18 feet broad.

Martin says Taransay had "two chapels, one dedicated to St Tarran, the other to St Keith". He continues, "There is an ancient tradition among the natives here that a man must not be buried in St Tarran's, nor a woman in St Keith's, because otherwise the corpse would be found above ground the day after it is interred."

RCAHSM 1928, visited 17 July 1914

Harris xii (St Carran's Chapel)

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