There is no aisle in Orkney or Shetland.
There are no plinths or basements to any of these churches.
The doors are chiefly in the west ends. Both square and round heads occur. Several have no rebates. (See Birsay.) St. Ola, Deerness, and perhaps Uya have no chancels, but all the rest have decided chancels. There is no instance of a chancel door. Orphir, Egilsey, The Ness, Culbinsbrough, Norwick, Kirkaby, and Colvidale have or had chancel arches equal in width to the chancels. In England this fashion rarely occurs; where it does it is late. It is constructively weak.
Enhallow has a chancel arch with projecting jambs of about the English proportion.
Birsay, Wyre, Linton, perhaps Uya, and probably Noss have or had very narrow chancel arches.
In our early churches the chancels were small in comparison with the naves, and in cathedrals the ritual choir was under the cross or west of it.
They elongated the choirs in the thirteenth century, and soon placed the ritual choir east of the cross.
Orphir and Egilsey had windows with circular heads. Birsay, Wyre, Enhallow, and Culbinsbrough had at least some windows with flat heads. The Ness has all flat. No instance remains of a double light, or of a transom, or of a triangular head, which is not unfrequent in Ireland.
At Egilsey, Enhallow, and the Ness are no grooves for glass or rebates, or external chamfers. At Orphir and Birsay are grooves and chamfers. (See account of Egilsey.) Of the six churches which retain the east ends—St. Ola, Orphir, Deerness, Wyre, Egilsey, and the Ness—four have no east window, except that in the latter there is a small opening high up in the east gable. In the early Irish churches it is very unusual not to have an east window. Probably no apse was without an east window.
As far as can be made out at present, there was no step to the chancel and no platform for the altar, except the inserted step and altar at Birsay. In some the chancel windows are singularly low, as at Wyre and Egilsey. No piscina remains, and only one sedile, but several ambries.