Iona Abbey

Something has stood and been used on this shoreline for close to fifteen hundred years — burned, rebuilt, abandoned and restored more than once, and still in use today. Columba’s monks raised the first buildings here in 563; what stands now carries the plan of a church rebuilt on the site of an older church, itself raised on the ruins of a monastery older still. Layer under layer, the ground has rarely gone quiet.

The abbey stands today as a working church and pilgrimage site on the small island of Iona, off the west coast of Mull, cared for by Historic Environment Scotland and used by the ecumenical Iona Community.

What we know

Saint Columba came from Ireland with twelve companions in 563 and founded a monastery here, then part of the Kingdom of Dál Riata. It became one of the oldest Christian centres in Western Europe and a driving force behind the conversion of the Picts and Scots. Its monks kept annals later folded into the Chronicle of Ireland, and the scriptorium is thought to have begun the illuminated Book of Kells before 800.

Viking raiders first struck in 795, with further attacks in 802, 806 and 825. Sixty-eight monks were killed at Martyrs’ Bay in the 806 raid; in 825 Blathmac and the monks who remained were martyred and the abbey burned. Columba’s relics moved to the new abbey of Kells in 878, yet Iona was not deserted — the death here in 980 of Amlaíb Cuarán, a retired King of Dublin, shows the site kept its standing.

In 1203 Ranald, son of Somerled and Lord of the Isles, invited the Benedictine order to refound the monastery on the old Columban ground, alongside an Augustinian nunnery established by his sister Bethóc. The Macdonald Lords of the Isles later made Iona their ecclesiastical capital, expanding the church between 1207 and 1493 and using it as their burial ground and, in effect, their cathedral.

The abbey was dismantled and left roofless after the Scottish Reformation. Restoration began only in 1899, when the Duke of Argyll transferred the ruins to the Iona Cathedral Trust; in 1938 the Reverend George MacLeod founded the Iona Community, which rebuilt the abbey by hand over the following decades. Care passed to Historic Scotland in 2000, and the building reopened in June 2021 after a further £3.75 million renovation — the latest turn in a history of repeated ruin and repair.

What is said

Tradition holds that dozens of early kings are buried in the abbey graveyard — a commonly repeated figure is 48 Scottish kings, alongside rulers of Ireland, Norway and France. Modern scholars are sceptical of the claim; it is thought to have been raised, or invented outright, to boost Iona’s prestige as a royal burial ground. The graveyard is nonetheless believed to hold real medieval dead, among them the Lords of the Isles and their household.

What to see now

St Martin’s Cross, an 8th-century high cross, still stands by the roadside near the abbey. A replica of St John’s Cross stands at the abbey doorway; the restored original is in the Infirmary Museum behind the abbey. St Oran’s Chapel holds the burial place of the Lords of the Isles, marked by their carved grave slabs, and the Augustinian nunnery to the south, rebuilt in the 15th century, still shows the graves of its nuns, including prioress Anna Maclean, who died in 1543. Traces of the earliest monastic ditch and earth bank — part of it possibly older than Columba’s own foundation — remain visible north-west of the current buildings. The cloister capitals, carved over many years by sculptor Christopher Hall with birds and plants native to the island, sit alongside far older stonework; John Smith, the 20th-century Labour Party leader, is buried in the same ground as, by tradition, kings a thousand years his senior.

How to visit

Historic Environment Scotland manages Iona Abbey and Nunnery, with free entry. The island is reached only by passenger ferry — a roughly ten-minute CalMac crossing from Fionnphort on the Isle of Mull, with cars left behind at Fionnphort; the abbey is about 700 metres on foot from the Iona slipway. The address is Isle of Iona, Argyll, PA76 6SQ (National Grid reference NM 286 245; telephone 01681 700 512). Current opening times and any closures are listed on the Historic Environment Scotland website, which should be checked before travelling. Traveline Scotland’s journey planner and the Sustrans cycle-route finder are the public-transport routes Historic Environment Scotland lists for reaching the ferry.