Township: Kirkapol

Map Reference: Kirkapol 12

Name Type: graveyard

Meaning: The big graveyard; or The graveyard of St Odhran; or Kirkapol graveyard

Other Forms: "About 30 yards on the southeast is another, but seemingly more modern cemetery called Claodh Odhrain." Reeves 1854, 241

Cladh Kirkapoll 'the new graveyard': "The present graveyard for the east end of Tiree situated near the parish school" - OSNB OS1/2/28/130

An Cladh Mòr or Cladh Odhrain - EMcK, DMcI, Angus MacLean, Scarinish, 3/2010

Related Places:

Information:The Gaelic Otherworld, ed Ronald Black, p258-9:
On the farm of Kirkapol in Tiree, where the burying place of the east end of the island is, the figure of a man in a dress not belonging to the island - light throusers and blue jacket with white buttons - was seen about forty years ago [about 1834 - RB] by several people in the evenings going in the direction of the kirkyard. A celebrated seer in the neighbouring village saw it, and said it was not the taish [ghost] of any man or any man's son in Tiree. Some time after, a ship was wrecked in the east end of Tiree and one of the sailors, whose dress when his body was found corresponded to that of the taish, was taken and buried in Kirkapol. After that the apparition was no more seen.
The ONB gives the name Cladh Odhrain to the smaller chapel's graveyard. The other sources disagree - JH.

There are two cemetries in Kirkapol, Cladh Odhrain ('Churchyard of Oran', after Oran of Iona) and the Cladh Beag ('Small Churchyard'). There is no trace of the chapel in Cladh Odhrain, but the walls of the chapel in Cladh Beag are still in a reasonable state of preservation. On a knoll east of the Cladh Beag stands the remains of a more ancient chapel. Bailtean is Ath-Ghairmean, Niall M Brownlie, Argyll Publishing, 1995, p116.

Bodaich Bhalla (Lachainn and Iain mhic Eòghann Ruaidh) extended the larger graveyard at the beginning of the 20th century. Teònaidh Dhòmhnaill mhic Eachainn from Lodge Farm was ploughing close to the graveyard wall but avoided a small area just north of this graveyard where he said there were a few graves from Baluaig. In the old days they did not bury bodies washed up on the shore in the graveyard in case they were not Christians. Not long after that the tractors came to Tiree and this area was ploughed up by a contractor without Teònaidh's knowledge and the graves destroyed - Angus MacLean, Scarinish, 3/2010.

Local Form:

Languages : Gaelic

Informants: OS

Informant 2: Elsie MacKinnon, Kirkapol, 8/1994

Informant 3: Donald MacIntyre, Gott, 12/1995