A Morning in the Abbey
Our last full day on the island. Early morning saw us visit the Abbey and Abbey museum, before any of the boats arrived from the mainland. It was wonderful to have it all to ourselves and be able to savour the special atmosphere that pervades in and around the buildings. Later in the day it would become the tourist honey pot that it is, but for now we were the only people there.
The famous coffin road known as the Street of the Dead runs up to the Abbey. These ‘roads’ were the routes that the deceased were carried to sacred burial grounds, sometimes over many miles and across mountains and the sea. There are many across the highlands of Scotland and here on Iona is one of the most renowned. There are four crosses dedicated to St. Martin, St. Matthew, St. Oran and St.John on Iona. Only one of these still stands in its original position and has stood at the entrance to the Abbey grounds sine 750 AD.
Around the cloisters a series of sandstone sculptures were commissioned by the Iona community and worked on between 1967 and 1997 by Chris Hall. They depict the flowers and birds of Iona along with biblical references.
Iona is also the final resting place of a more recent famous individual. John Smith, the ex Labour leader who died in 1994 and loved Iona, is buried here and his grave resides in the eastern extension of the graveyard. He was perhaps the best Prime Minister we never had. The epitaph reads, ‘An Honest Man’s The Noblest Work of God’ and is from ‘An Essay on Man’ by Alexander Pope
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