St Ninian’s Chapel

About St Ninian’s Chapel

Built in the 12th Century, this was sometimes mistaken for St Ninian’s original white church, but we now know that this was most probably a reception chapel, built to receive pilgrims arriving by sea, giving thanks for their safe arrival, and then heading inland to Whithorn across country on the ancient path which ended at King’s Road in Whithorn. The chapel had a nave and a chancel, and was situated within a stone enclosure wall. There may also have been a priest’s house. We know from medieval sources that pilgrims arrived by sea from the Isle of Man, Ireland, Wales and Northern England. Today, you can add your own stone to this ancient record of pilgrimage, placing it on the ‘Witness Cairn’ at the entrance to Chapel field. St Ninian was one of the most revered saints in medieval Scotland, for a time being the favoured saint of the Royal House of Stuart; his name is commemorated in churches, holy wells, altars and chapels throughout medieval Scotland and even in the numbers of people given the first name “Ringan”, by which he was known in the Middle Ages. The chapel was much restored in the late 19th Century by the Marquess of Bute, who was also patron of excavations at Whithorn and of the revival of pilgrimages there.