Priest Island

Priest Island (Scottish Gaelic: Eilean a' Chlèirich) is a small, uninhabited island in the Summer Isles off the west coast of Scotland.

History

According to the Gazetteer for Scotland the island was an "early Christian retreat" and that it has several stone circles. Haswell-Smith refers to "three prehistoric stone circles" and a "prehistoric stone circle ... beside the burn" that had been dug up and placed there by the naturalist John Harvie Brown.

Harvie Brown visited the island on July 4, 1884 and "saw the remains of old crofts, and a curious and perfect circle of stones, lying flat on their sides with the smaller ends towards a common centre, and sunk flush with the surface of the short green sward". Harvie Brown noted the "highly polished surface of these nine stones when I first saw them in situ .... as if done by human hands (or feet)". On his second visit he found the stones gone, and on his fourth visit, in 1903, he searched for the stones in the surrounding area, collected nine he was fairly sure were the originals, and placed them in a new location but in the original plan. His drawing of the time shows a feature of circa 4 m in diameter. He also noted that there were "at least two, if not more, similar stone circles ... which were not far removed in distance from this principal circle, but these were of smaller dimensions and not formed with so perfectly flat stones".