Eileach an Naoimh

The monastery on Eileach an Naoimh was probably founded in about 542 by St Brendan of Clontarf, also known as Brendan the Navigator.

The original monastery was probably abandoned in the AD 800s due to Viking raids along the west coast, leaving the island uninhabited.

But the island remained a place of pilgrimage and burial after its abandonment. It was still owned by the Augustinian priors of Oronsay until the Protestant Reformation in 1560.

The island was inhabited again in the 1600s by tenants of the Duke of Argyll. Documentary evidence notes that farming took place on the island through to the 1800s, though people do not seem to have lived there in the 1700s and 1800s.

Monastic life on Eileach an Naoimh would have been similar to that on Iona in the AD 500s, with a cluster of communal buildings enclosed by a ditch or stockade, with an adjoining burial ground.

The double beehive cell, standing at more than 3m tall, is the most visually striking remnant of the early monastery. It’s laid out in a figure-of-eight plan and built of local sandstone split into thin slabs. It was probably used to shelter anchorites – people who had withdrawn from the world to live in isolation.

The grave enclosure is traditionally associated with Eithne, mother of St Columba  Some believe she was buried here.

Other remains on the island include a curious underground cell, a small chapel and, from the later agriculturla period, a kiln and a barn.