St Ola's Church And Burial-Ground, Gunnista is a Grade B listed building in the Shetland Islands local planning authority area, Scotland. First listed on 26 March 1997. Graveyard, burial enclosure, boundary wall.
St Ola's Church And Burial-Ground, Gunnista
- WRENN ID
- gilded-chalk-winter
- Grade
- B
- Local Planning Authority
- Shetland Islands
- Constituency
- Orkney and Shetland MP: Mr Alistair Carmichael (LD)
- Country
- Scotland
- Date first listed
- 26 March 1997
- Type
- Graveyard, burial enclosure, boundary wall
- OS grid reference
- HU 501 436
- Coordinates
- 60.17461, -1.09817
- Source
- Historic Environment Scotland listing
Description
St Ola's Church and Burial-Ground in Gunnista dates from the 18th century and features a rectangular graveyard that slopes to the east. The graveyard contains headstones from the 18th century and includes a single-storey, three-bay mausoleum with near-symmetrical classical detailing.
The burial enclosure has walls made of stugged sandstone ashlar with a moulded base course over rubble. The wallhead slabs are carved to form a lintel cornice at the eaves, with margined corners and chamfered arrises around the windows. A doorway is centrally located on the west elevation, featuring a flat arch with a skull and crossbones carved on the keystone. Inside, there are grave slabs, including one depicting a skull and egg-timer, and ashlar reveals framing the doors and windows. The bays are offset to the right on the north and south elevations, with a single window centered on the east elevation.
The boundary wall is constructed of drystone and partially topped with a semicircular cope. There are square drystone gatepiers on the west side.
Local climate
St Ola's Church And Burial-Ground, Gunnista sits in a wetter-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 1,120 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 88% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 99% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 3 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 98% of listed buildings. Of these, 3 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- No related consent applications matched
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
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