Eynhallow Church

Eynhallow’s name comes from the Old Norse Eyin-Helga, meaning ‘Holy Isle’. It may have been a monastery. There are no records referring to medieval monasteries in Orkney, although that doesn't mean that they didn't exist.

Eyin-Helga is mentioned in the Orkneyinga Saga under the year 1155. It tells how Olaf, foster son of the great Kolbein Hruga of Wyre was kidnapped here that year. It's possible that the youth had been sent to Eynhallow to be educated by the monks.

Kolbein Hruga’s fortified home Cubbie Roo’s Castle, as well as the Earl’s Bu and Church, are also mentioned in the Orkneyinga saga.

The religious house had probably stopped functioning by the Protestant Reformation in 1560, and the church was later adapted to form a two-storey home.

At the time of its abandonment, four families lived here. Next to the church, the remains of two other houses also survive.

The existence of the medieval church on Eynhallow came to light by chance in 1851. A disease, possibly typhoid, ravaged the island, and survivors from the the four families who lived there were evicted. When the roofs of their cottages were dismantled to make them uninhabitable, an old church was discovered.

Its structure is hard to determine, as it has been reworked into a residence and never properly studied. It includes a porch at the west end together with a rectangular nave and a square-sided chancel (the area where the choir usually go).

Much of the ruins visible today belong to a house built in the 1500s. Traces of the original Norse kirk are visible in the porch walls, the gables of the nave and the lower section of the inner face of the chancel walls.