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Machrihanish and Southend

St Columba’s Chapel & Keil Cemetery

St Columba's Chapel lies within Keil Cemetery and stands immediately to the east of a rock outcrop and footprints. It’s unlikely that Columba built the chapel. It’s more plausible that the chapel was erected later on a site traditionally associated with stories of Columba.
Tradition says that in 563A.D. St. Columba, a Christian missionary from County Donegal, landed on the Mull of Kintyre with 12 followers and founded his first church on Scottish soil.
The east end of the chapel is thought to have been built at the end of the 1200s and the west end 1400s or 1500s – well after Columba’s time. The Chapel is almost totally engulfed by ivy, but you can entre via a partly buried doorway or window. One inside uou will find some fascinating medieval slabs within the chapel, including two that are believed to have been carved at Saddell Abbey in the 1300s or 1400s.
From the site of the old church dedicated to St. Columba at Keil, you look across a beautiful sandy bay to Dunaverty Rock with its steeply rounded headland where there once stood a fortress.