![Chapel Finian](/images/attractions/editor3/Chapel-Finian-3695.jpg)
The chapel layout is extremely simple, with a rectangular siungle-cell chamber with a door opening in the south wall. The walls are made of large, roughly-hewn stones cemented with mortar. The longer side walls are supported by buttresses.
When the chapel was investigated in the middle of the 20th century, archaeologists found signs of a stone bench on the eastern side wall. This bench may have been set within a wooden frame, or case.
![The chapel well](/images/attractions/editor3/Chapel-Finian-3683.jpg)
The chapel is entered by a single doorway, which leads to a single cell enclosure. The foundations measure 6.7 x 4.1 metres internally and show signs of external buttressing.
The wall is 0.7 metres wide and up to a meter high in places. The site is enclosed within a drystone wall which may pre-date the chapel, and there is also a well inside the perimeter wall. The well water was traditionally thought to have healing qualities.
The outer wall also enclosed a small priest's house, probably built of timber, and a cemetery.
St Finian's Chapel may date to the 10th or 11th century and may have been built on the site of an earlier chapel.
![The chapel entrance](/images/attractions/editor3/Chapel-Finian-3696.jpg)
Who was St Finian?
As for Finian himself, he was a 6th-century contemporary of St Columba and may have been a native of Galloway. Some historians believe that the name Finian derives from Uinniau, a 6th-century bishop who helped establish Christianity in south-west Scotland. Uinniau has also been identified as St Ninian, whose cult flourished at Whithorn.
Getting There
Chapel Finian stands directly beside the A747 coastal road, about half a mile south of its junction with the B7005. Look for the brown tourist signs. There is parking in a layby on the opposite (northbound) side of the road. As you enter the stone-walled enclosure, look right and you will see the old well, set into the ground at the base of the wall.