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Name
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The Keeills
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Description
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Over two hundred tiny chapels once scattered across the Island, roughly one for every treen. Built by the culdees, servants of God, who chose to live among the people and serve the families nearest to them. Typical dimensions: five metres by three, walls of stone described as unnecessarily massive for such small enclosures. One window. One door. Altar against the eastern wall. Almost invariably a spring or stream nearby. One keeill per treen was the general pattern. By the eighteenth century most were ruins, but the memory of holiness clung to them. A windmill built from keeill stones went with tremendous fury and had to be taken down. Wilson knew the curse: may a stone of the church be found in the corner of thy dwelling-house. The 2007 archaeological survey identified 174 sites. They survived because they were beneath notice.
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Date
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c.500-present (ruins)
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Type
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Church Architecture
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Sacred Site
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Source
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Moore, Folk-lore (1891)
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Marstrander
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Kermode
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Cubbon (1952)
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Archaeological survey 2007
