Monument record 1403 - ST COLUMBA'S CHAPEL, MINGULAY

NL58SE 2 5649 8328

For (surrounding) Mingulay village, see NL58SE 16.

(NL 5649 8328) St Columba's Chapel (NR) (Site of)
OS 6" map, Inverness-shire, 2nd ed., (1904)

Supposed site of St Columba's Chapel, with graveyard (T S Muir 1885). Muir, about 1885, enquired about the existence of a chapel on Mingulay. The correspondent replied that the burial ground was in a ruinous condition, and the "oldest inhabitant" did not know of one.
Name Book 1878; T S Muir 1885.

No trace of chapel was found. The burial ground, a sandy knoll enclosed by a low wall of boulders, contains a few modern head stones and crosses, and is slowly being covered by drifting sand.
Visited by OS (W D J) 19 May 1965.

What appears to be the remains of the chapel are visible on the summit of the knoll. It consists of the W end of a rectangular building, 3.0m long and up to three courses high. Further details are obscured by blown sand.
Visited by OS (D W R) 30 August 1973.

At the heart of Mingulay village (NL58SE 16) is an oval burial enclosure around a low mound. This is the site of St Columba's chapel. This is certainly of pre-Reformation date but has no secure early history and shows just a few protruding coursed stones to hint at the presence of a small rectangular foundation.
Information from Historic Scotland, scheduling document dated 20 February 1997.

MY88 (NL56528331) Burial ground and chapel.
Location: Valley floor, village environs.
Description: The burial ground was used into modern times, as the recent concrete grave stones indicate, and the last burial there in 1910 of Anna Ruairidh Dhomhnaill, the midwife of Mingulay who had moved to Sandray, is well-documented (Buxton 1995). The burial ground is accepted as the site of a mediaeval chapel dedicated to St Columba, but this was no longer visible except possibly for a few coursed stones that may have been one of the walls. The morphology of the burial ground is similar to other early examples in the islands, with a mounded interior surrounded by a drystone wall.
Brannigan and Foster 2000, 104

T S Muir, 1885, Ecclesiological notes on some of the Islands of Scotland, 54 (Bibliographic reference). SWE5959.

Name Book (County), 1998, Name Books of the Ordnance Survey, Book No. 2, 124 (Unpublished document). SWE4254.

Keith Branigan & Patrick Foster, 2000, From Barra to Berneray: Archaeological Survey and Excavation in the Southern Isles ... (Bibliographic reference). SWE41033.