St Olaf's Church, Cullivoe, Yell is a Grade C listed building in the Shetland Islands local planning authority area, Scotland. First listed on 18 October 1977. Church.

St Olaf's Church, Cullivoe, Yell

WRENN ID
grim-gable-equinox
Grade
C
Local Planning Authority
Shetland Islands
Constituency
Orkney and Shetland MP: Mr Alistair Carmichael (LD)
Country
Scotland
Date first listed
18 October 1977
Type
Church
OS grid reference
HP 544 021
Coordinates
60.69927, -1.00513
Source
Historic Environment Scotland listing

Also on this page: flood risk · radon risk · weather exposure · detailed attributes ↓

Description

St Olaf's Church in Cullivoe, Yell, was built in 1832 and remodelled in 1886. It is a symmetrical, one by four-bay hall church with a rectangular plan, featuring a single-storey entrance porch and a vestry that project from the east and west gables, respectively. The walls are harled with painted margins and a base course.

The west entrance gable is symmetrical, with an advanced centre bay that includes a projecting single-storey gabled entrance porch. This porch has a vertically-boarded timber door set in a round-arched opening, topped by a blind fanlight. Above this, there is a round-arched recess with a rectangular window. The centre bay breaks the eaves, resembling a tower, and features a crenellated wallhead with a centrally placed crenellated bellcote that houses a bell. The gable is framed by plain buttresses that also break the eaves with crenellated heads.

The south elevation is a symmetrical four-bay design with tall round-arched windows with high sills in the centre bays and rectangular windows in the outer bays. The east gable has a single-storey vestry that projects at ground level, with a two-bay south elevation featuring a window and a vertically-boarded timber door in the left and right bays, respectively. A round-arched window is centred in the principal gable behind.

The north elevation is also symmetrical, with two tall round-arched windows flanking the centre. The principal windows are border-glazed with coloured glass, while there is a modern vestry window. The roof is made of purple-grey slate, with concrete copes on the skews and crenellations, and there is a decorative cast-iron finial on the porch.

Inside, there is a panelled timber gallery at the east end. The church is enclosed by a harl-pointed rubble boundary wall that is canted to the east, featuring a timber gate at the centre flanked by cement-rendered gatepiers, with an additional gate in the west wall.

Local climate

St Olaf's Church, Cullivoe, Yell sits in a wetter-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 1,150 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 89% 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 4 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 97% of listed buildings. Of these, 4 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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