“Step inside and the interior is just as unusual as the outside — a single oak pillar rises from the centre of the floor and holds up the entire roof on its own.”
Kilarrow Parish Church, better known as the Round Church — one of only two circular churches in Scotland, built in 1767 so, legend says, the devil would have no corners to hide in.
- One of only two round churches in Scotland
- Sits at the top of Bowmore's Main Street
- Built in 1767, still an active parish church
Bowmore was built as a planned village from 1768 by Daniel Campbell of Shawfield and Islay, who owned the whole island at the time — and the Round Church, raised the year before in 1767 and opened for worship in 1769, was its centrepiece, with the village's new streets laid out around it.
Who actually designed the circular plan is genuinely uncertain. One theory points to a French influence Campbell picked up on his European travels; a more credible one credits John Adam, of the Adam family of architects, who had drawn up an unbuilt round church for Inveraray a decade earlier, shelved because it couldn't be divided for separate English and Gaelic services. Either way, the building itself was raised by Thomas Spalding, a contractor from Fife, for around £1,000. A U-shaped gallery was added in 1830 as the congregation grew, and the church was reordered again in 1890, when an organ was installed.
Every November it hosts a Remembrance Service, with wreaths laid at the Commonwealth War Graves next door. Inside, it also holds the wartime medals and personal effects of Donald Caskie. Born in Bowmore in 1902, the Church of Scotland minister became known as the 'Tartan Pimpernel' for helping several hundred Allied servicemen escape occupied France during the Second World War, sheltering and smuggling them out through his cover as head of a seamen's mission in Marseille before his own capture and imprisonment.