Monument record 1417 - MINGULAY

NL58SE 7 5641 8341

'The chapel', situated 'immediately above the bare ridge' on which lies a shell-midden (NL58SE 5), 'was erected a few years ago on the site of an older building, of which nothing remained but a shapeless heap of stones. When digging the foundations, a small stone bowl was found, and is at present in the chapel. Several boulders were also found with cavities hollowed out of the flat upper surface, These, and two basin stones got at the shell-midden, are preserved in the chapel enclosure.' J Wedderspoon 1912

NL 5641 8341. No trace of the older building was found. The modern chapel is semi-ruinous and disused. No further information was found regarding the stone bowl.
Visited by OS (W D J) 19 May 1965

MY87 (NL56418343) Priest's house and chapel (modern).
Location: Valley floor.
Description: Built in 1898 in the solid modern Hebridean fashion of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with mortared quarried stone masonry cavity walls rising to two storeys, knitted at the corners with large quoin stones. The ground floor comprises the living quarters for visiting priests, while the upper storey, reached by an external staircase on the north gable end, is a long open room that served as the chapel. The front prospect, which faces Mingulay Bay to the east, has three dormer windows to light the chapel, the central dormer gable being adorned with a small stone cross finial. The roof is covered with stone slate most likely brought from the quarries near Oban on the mainland. The building is set within its own drystone-walled square enclosure. This description is how the site appeared when I first observed it in 1991, but sadly this picutre is not true today. Bought privately in 1975, renovation and repair of the house began, but the project was not successful. The house was locked and abandoned, and began to once again deteriorate. The final years of the house were captured on film in a sad sequence that ends in total, irreparable collapse and destruction. Our first sighting in 1991 showed a hole in the rear west roofing slate. Regular storms succeeded in steadily enlarging this wound. In 1993 a ferocious storm removed many roof slates, some of which were found 300 m away. It was clear that a process of major structural damage was under way. The wind appeared to have shifted the roof tie-beam frame forwards, pushing the front facade of the house outwards in a bulge. The pressure on this bulging wall began to show at the edges, with vertical cracks that ran from top to bottom next to the quoin stones. Over the years this crack became more pronounecd and even the quoin stones themselves began to shift.
In 1994 the extent of the damage was assessed. The hole in the roof was considerably larger and the upper front southern quoin stones had fractured. Masonry was also falling from the fornt dormer window surrounds. Internally the front wall outer skin had moved forward by half a metre, while the inner skin had been held back by the upper floor joists, but these had now been pulled out of their sockets and the inner wall skin was moving outwards. In 1996 many of the upper quioins have fallen out completely and in a storm in 1997 the front elevation and the entire roof collapsed. Our last visit in 1998 still found the back wall, the gable ends with chimney stacks and most of its inner timber framing and the upper chapel floor still standing, but now open to the weather.
Brannigan and Foster 2000, 103-104

J Wedderspoon, 1906-12b, Trans Inverness Sci Soc Fld Club, 332 (Bibliographic reference). SWE7658.

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