Alternative Names Keil, Cill Choluimchille, Cross; Lochaline, Kiel Church
Site type CROSS
Canmore ID 22433
Site Number NM64NE 4
NGR NM 6709 4512
Council HIGHLAND
Parish MORVERN
Former Region HIGHLAND
Former District LOCHABER
Former County ARGYLL

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Keil Church, Peter MacGregor Chalmers, 1898 Simple white-harled kirk with red sandstone frogging and some decent turn-of-thecentury stained glass (memorial window by Stephen Adam, 1899). It was built on the site of the former parish church of 1799, which in turn replaced the pre-Reformation Cill Choluimchille, of 13 th century origin. Session House, 1774, formerly a school (until 1833 ); restored as a museum, 1997. From the large surrounding graveyard comes a highly important collection of medieval gravestones (now on display in the Session House). These are mostly tapered slabs, probably of the 14 th/15th century Iona School, carved with figures, animals, galleys, swords, and floriated and scrolled ornamentation. South of the church, a tapering, disc-headed medieval cross of greenish schist marks the boundary of the religious sanctuary, its intact shaft ornamented with intertwined plantscrolls, a pair of dragons¿ heads at its base. Among various good 18th-century headstones and table tombs, significant remnants of the medieval church stand in the kirkyard. Two ruinous Maclean burial aisles occupy the probable site of its transepts. One incorporates into its thick walls moulded and carved fragments of late medieval masonry of Iona school, notably an archway (which probably opened from the main body of the church) and part of a traceried window.



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

Archaeological Notes

NM64NE 4 6709 4512

For present (NM 6709 4519) and old (NM 6704 4512) churches, see NM64NE 1 and NM64NE 2 respectively.

(NM 6709 4512) Cross (NR)
OS 1:10,000 map, (1975)

This free-standing disc-headed cross now stands 50m S of Keil Church (NM64NE 1). It measures 2.45m high, 0.28m wide by 0.14m thick at the base of the shaft, and 0.22m wide by 0.11m thick at the neck. It is not in its original position, and may originally have stood in the adjacent churchyard. Unusually, the arms splay outwards in profile and their ends are keeled. On the S face a small boss in the centre of the disc is surrounded by plaitwork with linking leaf-sprays in the arms, while the shaft is ornamented with two intertwined plant-scrolls which terminate at the base in a pair of opposed dragons' heads. The decoration on the N face is similar except that two types of plant-scroll are employed and there is only one dragon's head. The style of sculpture is of the Iona school, dateable to the 14th-15th century.
Surveyed at 1:2500.
K A Steer and J W M Bannerman 1977; RCAHMS 1980.
Visited by OS (NKB) 11 June 1970.

The monument consists of a free-standing late-medieval disc-headed cross, set into a socket stone, standing 50m S of the 19th-century Keil Church. The cross stands approximately 50m due E of the remains of the medieval church, and approximately 20m E of the present boundary wall of the burial ground. The cross appears to be of the Iona school, and can be dated to the 14th-15th centuries.
It has been suggested that the burial ground may originally have extended as far as the site of the cross, but there are no visible traces of this.
Information from Historic Scotland, scheduling document dated February 1996.

Notes and Activities

Miers, M (2008) The Western Seaboard: an illustrated architectural guide, Edinburgh

RCAHMS (1980a) The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. Argyll: an inventory of the monuments volume 3: Mull, Tiree, Coll and Northern Argyll (excluding the early medieval and later monuments of Iona), Edinburgh
Page(s): 130, No. 267(1) illust Held at RCAHMS A.1.1.INV/21

Steer and Bannerman, K A and J W M (1977) Late medieval monumental sculpture in the West Highlands, Edinburgh
Page(s): pl. 14C Held at RCAHMS A.1.6.STE

Stuart, J (1867) Sculptured Stones of Scotland v2,, vol.2 Edinburgh
Page(s): 28 pl 89 Held at RCAHMS D.4.L