St Ninian's Chapel, Isle of Whithorn

St Ninian's Chapel stands on a windswept hillock by a rocky inlet on the seaward side of the Isle of Whithorn village. A chapel was first built here in the 1100s for local people and for pilgrims bound for St Ninian's shrine at Whithorn, who landed on the shore and gave thanks for a safe crossing; the building that survives was rebuilt about 1300. It is a simple rectangle, nine and a half metres by five, inside the remains of an oval stone-walled enclosure about 30 metres across, perhaps of early Christian origin, which probably held a priest's house and a small burial ground. Its gables were rebuilt in 1898 for the Marquess of Bute. Modern pilgrims add a stone to the Witness Cairn at the field entrance, beside a bench remembering the young fishermen lost when the Solway Harvester sank in 2000. A worn grassy path leads about 100 metres from the harbour car park.