The ecclesiastical architecture of Scotland from the earliest Christian times to the seventeenth century; vol. 1/3MacGibbon, David
History
The ecclesiastical architecture of Scotland from the earliest Christian times to the seventeenth century; vol. 1/3
MacGibbon, David
Church architecture -- Scotland
“Of this rude and diminutive building [the eastern chamber] not much can
be said. On the outside it is in most part a rounded heap of loose
stones, roofed over with turf. Within you find it a roughly-built cell
(Fig. 37), 9 feet 3 inches in height, and at the floor 11 feet 6 inches
long and 7 feet 6 inches wide. The end walls lean inwardly a little, the
side ones so greatly that when they meet the flat slab-formed roof they
are scarcely 2 feet apart. (Fig. 38.) Beyond the singularity of its
shape, there is
[Illustration: FIG. 37.--Teampull Rona.]
nothing remarkable in the building, its only minute features being a
square doorway in the west end, so low that you have to creep through it
on your elbows and knees; a flat-headed window without splay on either
side, 19 inches long and 8 inches wide, set over the doorway (see Fig.
38); another window of like form and length, but an inch or two wider,
near the east end of the south wall; and the altar stone, 3 feet in
length, lying close to the east end.
“Attached as a nave to the west end of the cell, and externally
co-extensive with it in breadth, are the remains of another chapel,
internally
[Illustration: FIG. 38.--Teampull Rona. Interior West End Elevation.]
14 feet 8 inches in length, and 8 feet 3 inches in width. Except the
north one, which is considerably broken down, all the elevations are
nearly entire, the west one retaining a part of the gable. A rude
flat-headed doorway, 3 feet 5 inches in height and 2 feet 3 inches wide,
in the south wall, and a small window of the same shape eastward of it,
are the only details.
“At what time either of these buildings was put up it is impossible to
say. Both are alike rude in their masonry, and between them there is
scarcely a difference in the character of their few inartistic details;
but be the age of the larger one what it may, the cell, which may be
termed the chancel of the structure at large, is certainly by many
hundred years the older erection, and in all probability the work of the
eighth or ninth century.”[73]
We have here an example of an ancient oratory enlarged by the addition
of a _nave_ into a church with nave and chancel.
TEAMPULL SULA SGEIR.
On a narrow and lofty rock, not more than one-third of a mile in
[Illustration: FIG. 39.--Teampull Sula Sgeir.]
length, situated ten or twelve miles to the south-west of North Rona and
about forty miles from the Butt of Lewis, there exists “a rude chapel,
with a stone roof, called Tigh Beannaichte (blessed house), internally
14 feet in length.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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