The south wall is 2 feet 11 inches thick, the west 3 feet 6 inches.
The original entrance is on the south, 17 feet from the exterior west angle. ([Fig. 79.]) It is 3 feet 5 inches wide, with a semicircular head and continuous mouldings of a hollow, ornamented with four-leaved flowers and a filleted roll, like many of the mouldings in the cathedral, except as to the flowers. When the street was paved about thirty years ago the ground was raised, the jambs were covered up 9 inches, two stones were inserted just below the impost and the arch raised. What the height of the side walls was is not now evident. They are now about 20 feet above the original floor at the entrance. Probably the ridge was about 24 feet high.
The east end has no trace of an original window, but a modern one has been inserted. In the south wall near the east angle is a modern window, but probably in the place of an original one. The other original windows cannot be traced. Probably there was a step at 10 feet or 11 feet from the east end, and perhaps a screen. A few feet east of the entrance inside was a stoup or piscina (see [Fig. 79.]). In the north wall near the east angle remains an ambry (see [Fig. 79.]) 1 foot 4¾ inches wide, 2 feet 1 inch high, and 1 foot 3½ inches recessed. The head is an ogee arch under a hood moulding, and it is flanked by buttresses with finials. The bottom of this ambry is 5 feet 1 inch above what appears to have been the original level of the floor. The moulding of this resembles that of the entrance, except in having no flowers.
In the east wall near the south angle is a smaller ambry, also ogee headed and less ornate, the bottom of which is 2 feet 6 inches above the floor. The use of the ogee is very rare in Scotland. The only curves of that kind in St. Magnus are in fragments of Bishop Tulloch’s tomb.
South of the chapel in what is now the lane were found, in forming the lane, gravestones and human bones. Close by the chapel was lying, in 1855, a stone, having on it, sculptured in relief, apparently a shield, under a mitre, but too much defaced to be recognised, and below the shield, “Robertvs ...,” and a date or letters illegible. Bishop Robert Reid held the see from 1540 to the Reformation; and as the mouldings (especially the four-leaved flower and the ogee arch) point to the fifteenth century, perhaps the chapel may be a late example of the style, and be assigned to him. His coat of arms is a stag’s head cabossed.
The parish in which the town of Kirkwall is situated is that of St. Ola, and it is certain that in this part of the town was the parish church, dedicated to the great warrior saint of Norway—St. Olaf.
The fact of burials having been made close to this building makes it probable that this was the parish church; not a chapel of ease or of private endowment. Of course, this building was not the first parish church, though it may have occupied the site of the first, and probably did so.
It was probably after the constitution of Kirkwall as a royal burgh, about 1470, that the cathedral became practically the parish church, and St. Ola became merged in Kirkwall. The name Kirkwall (Church-bay), being wholly Norse, is some evidence that the name was caused by a Norse, not a Culdee, church. The situation could hardly fail to induce settlement of the Norsemen there. In the name Egilsey we have inference of a different origin, as will be hereafter mentioned. But supposing that the conjecture as to the name of Kirkwall is correct, it does not prove that there was not a Culdee church there.[124] Planned 1855.