Courthill House, St Donan's Chapel, Cemetery

NG84SW 1 8304 4058.

(NG 8304 4058) Chapel (NR) (site of)

OS 1:10,000 map, (1971)

"Seipeil Donnain" or St Donan's Chapel stood in the burying-ground at Courthill.

W J Watson 1904.

The turf-covered foundation of the W half of this chapel survives with the interior occupies by graves. The inner face of the wall can be seen intermittently giving a width of 3.5m. The N wall can be traces for a length of 7.0m and the S wall for 4.0m. The E half appears to have been destroyed to make room for modern graves. The dedication is not known locally.

Some 5.0m S of the chapel stands a tapering pillar 1.2m high by 0.2m square with a small latin cross inscribed on its S face. Alongside lies an oval stone 0.35m by 0.25m by 0.1m thick, which bears a cup-like hollow 0.12m in diameter and 0.06m deep, possibly a socket stone. The graveyard has been extended and is still in use.

Surveyed at 1:2500.

Visited by OS (A A) 22 May 1974.

The site of a chapel dedicated to St Donnan is situated about 30m from the E shore of the tidal inner reach of Loch Kishorn and 150m SW of Courthill House (1). The pentagonal burial-ground (2) stands at the edge of a field about 15m above the shore, and there are slight traces of a possible building. A cross-marked pillar stands in the burial-ground, and a small knocking-stone lies close to it.

The cross-marked stone is an irregular pillar of Torridonian sandstone, 1.21m in visible height and tapering upwards from 0.25m to 0.22m on the carved face and from 0.28m to 0.12m in thickness. It bears a Latin cross with slightly expanded terminals, 135mm in height and span and incised with a 20mm U-section groove.

Footnotes:

(1) For the dedication, and a supposed moot-hill N of the burial-ground, see W J Watson 1904, 193. Neither was recorded in Name Book, Ross and Cromarty, No.48, p.23.

(2) Beattie 1987, 40-1.

I Fisher 2001, 87.