The Round Church

The Round Church

The Round Church stands in a magnificent location at the head of
the village of Bowmore's Main Street. From
here it dominates the village and offers views down the centre of Main Street
to Loch Indaal and beyond. It has been described as
Islay's best known building, and, give or
take a few distilleries, that is very probably true.

The Round Church is the commonly used name for what is formally know
as Kilarrow Parish Church. It was built between 1767 and 1769 by Daniel
Campbell of Shawfield and Islay, who at the time owned
Islay in its entirety. The following year
work began on a planned village which greatly expanded the existing settlement
of Bowmore. Campbell's development of
Bowmore was not driven solely by altruistic
motives. The new settlement was intended to generate increased rental income,
and to allow the clearance of the area's main
settlement of Kilarrow, near Bridgend.
This in turn was intended to remove development from the area around Campbell's
hereditary home, Islay House, and allow its gardens and grounds to be extended.
A cynic might suggest that the development of the church was intended to help
gain the acceptance of those being moved from Kilarrow to new planned village
at Bowmore.

The identity of the architect used by Campbell is not known for
certain. According to some sources the design is French, and produced by an
architect he met during a grand tour of Europe in the 1750s. A more popular and
more attractive theory is that the design was produced by John Adam, a member
of the famous Adam family of architects. It seems he was commissioned by the
3rd Duke of Argyll to design a church for the new settlement of
Inveraray in 1758. His
circular design was never built in
Inveraray, however, because
it couldn't be divided to allow services in both English and
Gaelic. Daniel Campbell had
links with the Campbells of Inveraray and it seems likely
this gave him access to John Adam's plan which as a result found a home in
Bowmore.

The building of the Round Church was overseen by a contractor from
the mainland, Thomas Spalding. The exterior diameter of the church is 60ft
(just over 18m), and the walls are 2ft 9in thick. At the heart of the
construction is a massive central pillar some 19 inches in diameter, made of
oak. This is supported on a sandstone slab, and in turn it supports eight
radial beams which form the main structure of the roof.

In 1830 a U-shaped gallery was added to help accommodate a rapidly
increasing parish population. The gallery is supported on eight pillars which
are reduced scale copies of the main central pillar. The internal layout of the
ground floor was changed in 1890, at the time an organ was installed.

Visitors to Bowmore today find a
church whose highly unusual circular plan makes it appear much younger than its
(nearly) two and a half centuries. Folklore suggests that the circular design
was intended to ensure that the devil could find no corners in which to hide.
But as even the identity of the architect is uncertain, attempts to identify
the motives behind the design can at best only be speculative.