St Ninian talks culminate in pilgrimage to Helmsdale chapel site
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An organised pilgrimage was made on Saturday, September 23, to the site of a chapel near Helmsdale which early Christian missionary St Ninian is thought to have founded in the 5th century.
The pilgrimage was the culmination of a two-part talk on St Ninian by former journalist Audrey Munro at Helmsdale’s Timespan Museum and Arts Centre. Audrey compiled information on the saint from books and articles by his 20th century biographer, Rev Dr Archibald Scott.
Nine people who attended her talks made the journey to Navidale cemetery, just north of Helmsdale, where a roughly oval mounded area, now covered in turf, is though to be the chapel site.
Audrey explained the site was originally a “muinntir”, or religious community, with a church, churchyard and well, all housed within a sanctuary or City of Refuge.
Locals asserted tie right of sanctuary there in 1556 during clan warfare, more than a thousand years after Ninian’s time, placing all their possessions inside the chapel. However, the MacKays of Strathnaver, led by John Mor MacKay, outraged sanctuary and burned the chapel to the ground.
Audrey said: I don’t think any of us realised how large the Navidale Sanctuary was! Fortunately, Dr Scott has given us a very detailed description in his writings, so we should be able to map it out and return some other time to walk round it.
She added: “I was so pleased with the level in interest in the Ninian talks and the articles they were compiled from, with so many people asking for a copy. It’s such a remote period of our history but so important for the development of our community.”
Audrey has been asked to repeat her two 2017 talks on Saint Donnan, which, like the Ninian talks, were compiled from the works of the Dr Scott, the renowned expert on the Celtic Church, who also served as Helmsdale’s minister for more than 50 years.
