St Blane's Monastery

St Blane’s Church has its roots in a monastery founded on this site in the 6th century. The monastery itself was the home of St Blane – ‘fair Blaan of Ceen Garad (Kingarth)’ and lies about 2 miles from modern Kingarth in a beautifully peaceful rocky hollow with views towards Arran. The monastery was possibly the forerunner to the better-known monastery of St Columba on Iona.

An enclosure wall surrounds the monastic site, inside of which stands a 12th century chapel with a romanesque chancel arch. St Blane’s was the parish church of Kingarth for many centuries.

The structures on this site belong to two eras: that early Christian monastery, abandoned during Viking raids around AD 790, and a later parish church, built in the 1100s and in use until the Protestant Reformation of 1560.