Fig. 1308.—Priory Church of St. Clement.
Figure, &c., in West Elevation.
to be a lion, in the third a galley, and in the fourth a castle. A tree, like a laurel, springs from the base and stretches to the top, with a bird on the highest branch.
The external appearance of St. Clement’s is shown by Fig. [1299] and by the elevations (Figs. [1306] and [1307]). The latter also show the tower and the peculiar carved heads and other figures, above alluded to, as probable insertions from an older structure. Fig. [1308] shows the small figure of a saint, inserted over the cabled string course on the west side of the tower, and the narrow cusped window above it. The north elevation (see Fig. [1307]) and the sections (see Figs. [1300] and [1301])) explain the mode in which the tower is built upon a higher level than the church.
ORONSAY PRIORY,[142] Argyllshire.
Notwithstanding the very numerous small churches and chapels found in the Western Isles,[143] there are comparatively few remains of monasteries. The original Celtic religious establishments were, doubtless, monastic in their form and structure, but of convents in the later sense, corresponding with those so common on the mainland, few traces are now to be seen. Next to the great Abbey of the Isles at Iona and the nunnery on the same island, the largest monastic establishment in the Western Isles of which the structures survive is the Priory of Oronsay.
This island lies about ten miles west from Jura, and can be most conveniently reached from Portaskaig, in Islay. The isle is about two and three-quarter miles broad from east to west by about two miles from north to south. It stands at the south end of the larger island of Colonsay, from which it is separated by a narrow channel, dry at low tide.
It is traditionally narrated that St. Columba and his companion, St. Oran, landed on Oronsay after leaving Ireland; but finding that the latter country could still be seen from the highest point of the island, they forsook it and sailed to Iona. St. Oran, however, gave his name to the island, and, together with Colonsay, it seems, from the numerous remains of churches which once existed on these islands, to have been a sacred locality, the remains of nine old churches and the sites of three more—ten in Colonsay and two in Oronsay—being still traceable. The most important appears to have been the Monastery of Kiloran, in Colonsay, of which no remains now exist. Next to it was the Priory of Oronsay. This priory of Canons Regular of St. Augustine appears to have been founded in the fourteenth century by the Lord of the Isles as a cell of the Abbey of Holyrood at Edinburgh.
The priory is situated at the extreme west end of the island, on the lowermost slope of the Beinn Oronsay, just short of the point where its rugged cliffs front the Atlantic.