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St Catherines, St Catherine's Chapel And Burial Ground

Burial Ground (Medieval), Chapel (Medieval)

Site Name St Catherines, St Catherine's Chapel And Burial Ground

Classification Burial Ground (Medieval), Chapel (Medieval)

Canmore ID 23606

Site Number NN10NW 3

NGR NN 1215 0739

Datum OSGB36 - NGR

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/23606

Ordnance Survey licence number AC0000807262. All rights reserved.
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Digital Images

Administrative Areas

  • Council Argyll And Bute
  • Parish Strachur
  • Former Region Strathclyde
  • Former District Argyll And Bute
  • Former County Argyll

Archaeology Notes

NN10NW 3 1215 0739

(NN 1216 0738) St Catherine's Chapel (NR)

(Ruins of) Burial Ground (NR) (Site of)

OS 6" map, Argyllshire, 2nd ed., (1900)

St Catherine's Chapel, situated on a grassy platform at the edge of a sheer rocky cliff, is reduced to its foundations, which were cleared of turf many years ago by a former Duke of Argyll. Its total length is 45'8", and the breadth 19', over walls 2'8" thick; there has been a cross-wall 2' thick 22'5" from the outer face of the SW end. It was founded in 1450 by Sir Duncan Campbell of Lochow.

The burial ground, which had no particular boundary, was close by the chapel; human bones were found there "a good number of years" before 1870 by workmen quarrying for stones.

Name Book 1870; M Paterson 1970; Information from RCAHMS Manuscript.

The turf-covered footings of the chapel are as described. There is no trace of a burial ground.

Surveyed at 1:2500.

Visited by OS (DWR), 1 March 1973.

INVENTORY OF GRAVEYARD AND CEMETERY SITES IN SCOTLAND REFERENCE:

Address: St Catherine's Chapel Burial Ground

Postcode: PA25 8BB

Status: No longer extant

Size: N/a

TOIDs:

Number of gravestones: Not known

Earliest gravestone: Not known

Most recent gravestone: Not known

Description: Burial ground associated with a chapel, neither extant

Data Sources: OS MasterMap checked 21 September 2005

Activities

Field Visit (20 September 1942)

This site was included within the RCAHMS Emergency Survey (1942-3), an unpublished rescue project. Site descriptions, organised by county, vary from short notes to lengthy and full descriptions and are available to view online with contemporary sketches and photographs. The original typescripts, manuscripts, notebooks and photographs can also be consulted in the RCAHMS Search Room.

Information from RCAHMS (GFG) 10 December 2014.

Field Visit (May 1988)

The remains of this late medieval chapel are situated at an elevation of about 18m OD on a slight knoll above an old seacliff120m from the SE shore of Loch Fyne, overlooking the former ferry-crossing to Inveraray. The adjacent chlorite-schist quarry (No. 248) extends to within a few metres of the W wall, and human bones were found there 'a good number of years' before 1870 (en.1). No enclosure was identifiable at that date, but an area of level ground extending E from the chapel may have been used as the burial-ground; on the S the ground slopes to the Allt na Criche.

The outline of the walls was excavated for the 9th Duke of Argyll soon after 1900 (en.2), but they are turf-grown and no lime mortar is visible. The chapel measured 12.6m by 4.3m within walls 0.8m thick which survive in places to a height of about 0.5m. The doorway was probably in the W half of the N wall, whose footings are not visible. The building was divided into two almost equal parts by a transverse wall of the same thickness as the side walls; the position of its doorway is not visible but, if centrally placed, it can have been no more than 1m wide. This wall may have divided the chapel proper from an anteroom with a chaplain's dwelling above, or may be the result of post-medieval domestic alterations .

The chapel was founded by Duncan Campbell of Lochawe, Lord Campbell (d.l453), who endowed it to support a chaplain, and a papal petition of 1466 by his younger son, Sir Colin Campbell of Glenorchy, requested that 'the chapel of St Catherine near Loch Fyne', although as yet unconsecrated, should be valid for mass and other services (en.3). This was granted, with the privilege of using a portable altar, and a fragment of such an altar, bearing three of the original five incised foliated crosses, was discovered in the NW part of the chapel about 1900, but does not appear to survive (en.4). The chapel probably remained in existence until the early 17thcentury, but by that period the two merklands of 'Kilkatrine', which probably represented its original endowment, had passed into the possession of a local family, under the superiority of the Earls of Argyll (en.5).

RCAHMS 1992, visited May 1988

Measured Survey (1988)

RCAHMS surveyed the chapel, St Catherines in 1988 at a scale of 1:100. The plan was redrawn in ink and published at a scale of 1:250 (RCAHMS 1992, 199C). The plan was also included in an illustration of comparative plans of medieval churches and chapels published at a scale of 1:250 (RCAHMS 1992, 11K).

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