Description

Rectangular medieval chapel, measuring 8 by 4.2m within walls 0.85m thick, built of lime-mortared random rubble masonry and standing within a D-shaped burial enclosure, on the W side of the road to Oronsay. The chapel walls still stand over 2m high and contain an aumbry and splayed window on the N, and a lintelled door and remains of another window on the S; there is the base of an altar emplacement against the E wall.

The enclosure is defined by remains of a turf-and-stone dyke (0.5m high and over lm thick) on the E, S and W, and by a natural rock face on the N. The scheduled area includes the area within the boundary dyke up to the bottom of the rock scarp, the dyke itself and a zone extending for 2m outside it, as shown in red on the accompanying plan.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland

Statement of Scheduling

The chapel, which is linked architecturally and traditionally to the earlier phases of Oronsay Priory, is of national importance not only through its association with one of the principal medieval religious houses in the Western Isles and as one of the earliest surviving stone-built ecclesiastical structures on Colonsay, but also on account of its potential, through excavation, to contribute to a fuller understanding of medieval religious and burial practices.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland

Sources

Bibliography
No Bibliography entries for this designation

Source: Historic Environment Scotland