The adjacent island of Talla is almost entirely covered with the ruins of the castle of the Earls of Menteith,[45] which seems to date mostly from the seventeenth century, and in the construction of which the materials of the suppressed priory, lying so conveniently at hand, were no doubt largely employed. The Earl must also have found the gardens on the island of the abbey convenient, and appropriated them as a pleasure ground. [Illustration: FIG. 533.--Inchmahome Priory. Plan.] [Illustration: FIG. 534.--Inchmahome Priory. View from South-East.] The instrument authorising the establishment of the priory of Inchmahome still exists. It is given in the name of the Pope by the Bishops of Glasgow and Dunkeld in the year 1238, and authorises a monastery to be built for the religious men already settled in the island. The priory was founded and endowed by Walter Comyn, fourth Earl of Menteith, for monks of the Augustinian order. From the style of its architecture the church evidently belongs to the middle of the thirteenth century. Its details, such as the lofty lancet windows, the nave piers and arches, the western doorway, &c., bear a striking resemblance, on a small scale, to those of the neighbouring cathedral of Dunblane. [Illustration: FIG. 535.--Inchmahome Priory. Sedilia.] The Plan (Fig. 533) shows a choir 66 feet long by 23 feet 8 inches wide internally, without aisles, and with plain lancet windows, without tracery (Fig. 534), those of the east end forming five lights (now built up). The mullions are preserved, but the arched heads are gone. There is a good sedilia (Fig. 535) and two ambries in the south wall, and on the north side of the choir are the ruins of what seems to have been a sacristy built as a north aisle, with only a door from the church, in the fashion of the north aisle of Dunblane. From the base mouldings being carried round this aisle, it is evidently an original part of the design, and the corbels for the wall plate show that it had a lean-to roof like an ordinary aisle. [Illustration: FIG. 536.--Inchmahome Priory. North-West Angle of Nave.]