Congregational Church, Cornaig

The Congregational Church in the settlement of Cornaig was built in 1856, to replace an earlier thatched-cottage type church building. The church at Cornaig is important to the religious history of Tiree as one of two surviving congregational churches built by The Rev. Archibald Farquharson, one of the most influential figures in the history of the island. The building is small and simple, rectangular in plan, squared rubble (mostly whinstone) with 2 bays to the nave and plain gabled ends. There are large whinstone quoins, and pink Mull granite lintels to the openings (see notes).

Description: Entry into the building is through a raised single doorway to the centre of the S gable, with 3 stone steps to ground level and a timber boarded door. The N gable is largely plain, with evidence of a small window or alcove once sitting to the upper centre of the gablehead (now blocked) and topped by a small stone plinth with a slate cap. Each 2-bay nave has 2 evenly spaced window openings set close to the eaves. Here the large lintels are in stark contrast to the rubble walls, with only a course of rubble separating them from the wallhead, where the slated roof overhangs the wallhead resting directly onto the stone. Some iron fixings still remain attached to the margins of the windows, showing they were once shuttered. Beneath the right window on both nave walls are large, square holes in the stonework, which may have allowed drainage and ventilation beneath the raised, wooden raft-type floor inside.

Interior: currently extremely dilapidated (2005), with some evidence of the original form remaining. The floor was timber boarded, as were the walls up to cill height, terminated by a timber dado. Above this the walls were rendered and whitewashed. The roof was also timber boarded and coombed, with wide timbers running N to S and a single air vent formerly to the centre. The body of the church was filled with fixed wooden pews, the brackets for which can be seen in places on the walls although the majority of the pews themselves have been removed or have rotted away. To the N end of the church is a raised, central pulpit. Its timber boarded front panel is framed to either side by square timber newels topped by ball finials. The front panel is capped by a moulded timber balustrade. Behind the raised platform of the pulpit is the remnant of a 3-peaked timber backboard reredos, the shape of which can be traced in the whitewash behind. The roof timbers (now visible internally) have both a tie beam and a collar beam, the rafters returning directly onto the rubble wallhead of the nave.

Materials: random rubble; roughly coursed with some snecking. Lime mortar, with some evidence of a lime harl sacrificial coating. Whinstone rubble quoins; pink granite lintels; stone skews. Pitched, grey slated roof. Remains of 18-pane timber sash and case windows.