DATES.
As to the dates of these buildings we have but little to guide us. Only fragments of the buildings are left, and those of the plainest description.
Scotch architecture has some mystifying peculiarities. Dates have been suggested from architectural and historical evidence for Orphir, Birsay, and Egilsey. Orphir, 1090-1160; Birsay, 1100; Egilsey, 1000. Wyre has been assigned to the twelfth or thirteenth, the Ness to the fourteenth, and St. Ola to the sixteenth century.
It may be fairly observed that there must have been churches erected in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Where are the remains of them? Possibly some of the ruins described are of those centuries.
It does not appear impossible that from evidence yet to be collected, a nearer approximation to the dates of these buildings may be got.
As a supplement to the foregoing drawings and descriptions of the ruined churches of Orkney and Shetland by Sir Henry Dryden, we add an account, also kindly supplied by Sir Henry, of the chapel at Lybster, in Caithness, which has a strong affinity to the churches of the Orkneys, and drawings and description of the chapel on the island of Inch Kenneth, lying on the south-west of Mull.