ARGYLL has many old graveyards which have provided historians and genealogists with interest and information for generations. None more so than Killean, five miles south-west of Duart Castle on the Island of Mull overlooking Loch Spelve. It is a lonely spot, now seldom visited and guarded by thick bracken, many adders, bogs, sheep and wild goats.
In the middle of the burial ground are the remains of the medieval church of the parish of Killean and Torosay. Dedicated to St John, this church was once listed among the revenues of the Abbot of Iona, and first appears in documents in 1393 when a Papal Indulgence was granted to anyone visiting it and making donations.
Killean disappears from the records sometime during the 17th century and is not often heard of again until the summer of 1973 when it was surveyed by field staff of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, who were on Mull gathering information for their magnificent Argyll inventories.