Iona's Nunnery Graveyards, Iona, Argyll & Bute, Scotland. - Worldwide Cemeteries on Waymarking.com

To the east of the Augustinian Nunnery buildings there is a row of twelve gravestones, all now so worn that the inscriptions on them are indecipherable. They probably belong to some of the sisters who lived here from its founding, by the same Lord Reginald who founded the island's famous Benedictine Monastery, in about 1200AD.

This well-tended ruin on the edge of the island’s village, Baile Mòr, is one of the best-preserved medieval nunneries in the British Isles.

Lord Reginald, was son of the great Somerled ‘King of the Isles’.

There is another group of nine gravestones to the north of Teampull Rònain, St.Ronan’s Chapel, situated to the north of the Nunnery, and which used to serve as the island's parish church for its medieval inhabitants until the Protestant Reformation of 1560. That there was an earlier chapel here is in no doubt as traces of a possible C8th chapel were found during a 1992 excavation of the site, there was a lay population here at the same time as the monastery of St.Columba. It would be the laity who would have been buried here. The co-ordinates for this graveyard are N 56° 19.889 W 06° 23.635.

There are several gravestones, which are readable, in the Chapel. One says 'Here lie Finnguala and Mariota MacInolly, sometime nuns of Iona’ Another belongs to Prioress Anna MacLean who died in 1543 and can be found in the Abbey Museum.

For more information about the Nunnery visit:- Iona's Nunnery

City, Town, or Parish / State / Country: Not listed Approximate number of graves: Not listed Cemetery Status: Not listed Cemetery Website: Not listed

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