St Ninian's Church, Skaill

St Ninian's Church in Skaill was built in 1798 and altered by Joseph Mitchell in 1829, with further interior changes made in 1924. It is a rectangular, four-bay gabled hall church featuring a corbelled, pyramidal-roofed birdcage bellecote at the west gablehead. The church has a low, single-bay gabled session house at the west end and a low, single-bay gabled vestry at the east end. The exterior is harled with round-arched windows.

On the north elevation, the bays are arranged in a 1-4-1 pattern, with a tall window in each bay. There is a boarded door, offset to the left, in the recessed session house bay to the right, and a window in the recessed vestry bay to the left. The south elevation features bays arranged as 2-4-1, with tall windows in each bay. There is a boarded door offset to the right with a window to the left in the recessed session house bays, and another boarded door in the recessed vestry bay to the right.

The west elevation has a window offset to the left in the gabled session house bay, with a gablehead stack and a round-arched window below the birdcage gablehead bellecote above. The east elevation shows a blank gabled vestry wall with a gablehead stack and a round-arched window at the crucifix-finialled gablehead.

The church features fixed timber-framed windows and an old Orkney grey slate roof with a red clay ridge, coped skews, cavetto-moulded skewputts, harled, corniced stacks, and cast-iron rainwater goods, some of which have been replaced with uPVC.

Inside, there is a boarded, canted ceiling with a central hexagonal ventilator and a boarded dado. A two-leaf timber-panelled door leads from the session house to the west end through a round-arched recess. The interior includes a World War I commemorative timber communion table with a blind arcade, a carved chair, and a pulpit. There is a round-arched timber-panelled door leading to the vestry at the east end, timber pews, and a timber-panelled door and fireplace in the session house. A hogback tombstone can also be found in the session house.

The churchyard is enclosed by rubble walls to the west of the church, with rubble square-plan piers featuring curved pyramidal caps to the north of the west gable and two sets of harled square-plan piers with curved pyramidal caps along the south wall. The churchyard has timber gates and decorative ironwork railings along the south wall, with predominantly late 18th and 19th century headstones.