The Iona Nunnery

The Isle of Iona in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides is famous for its abbey, founded by St. Columba in 563 AD. The abbey has been carefully restored and preserved, its history lovingly documented and celebrated.

Yet it was not the abbey that captured my imagination most deeply. It was the nearby ruins of the Iona Nunnery.

Unlike the abbey, the nunnery has never been fully restored. As I wandered among the weathered stones and gravemarkers, I found myself thinking less about the monks whose names fill the history books and more about the women whose stories were never fully recorded. Perhaps there are practical reasons why the abbey was restored and the nunnery was not. Yet I could not help but wonder how much of women’s history has simply been allowed to fade away.

Founded around 1200, the nunnery was one of only two Augustinian convents established in medieval Scotland. The women who lived here maintained a largely self-sufficient community, managing land, gardens, livestock, and the daily rhythms of life on this small island. Today, little remains beyond the ruins and a handful of gravestones bearing fragments of forgotten names.

One of the most intriguing discoveries was a Sheela-na-gig carved into the exterior wall of the nunnery. This image of a nude woman is often associated with protection, fertility, and ancient folk traditions. Sheela-na-gigs are frequently found near sacred wells and springs, places where the life-giving waters of the earth emerge.

That connection immediately brought to mind one of Iona’s oldest legends.

Long before Christianity arrived, local folklore tells of a woman who guarded a Well of Eternal Youth on the island. Iona itself was once known as the Fairy Isle, a place where the boundaries between worlds were believed to be thin. Historians may dismiss such stories as folklore, but I found myself wondering if they preserve something deeper—a memory of traditions that existed long before written records.

What struck me most was what grew throughout the grounds of the nunnery. Everywhere I looked, Lady’s Mantle blanketed the earth in vibrant green. Associated with feminine wisdom, fertility, healing, and protection, the herb has been used for centuries to support women through pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum recovery. Standing among the ruins, I could not help but wonder about the women who once lived here and the lives they led. The stones remain silent, but the plants seem eager to remember.

Perhaps that is why the folklore surrounding Iona feels so important. Women left far fewer written records than men. Instead, they left stories, healing traditions, holy wells, plants, fairy tales, midwives’ knowledge, and local legends. The fact that these stories were passed down rather than formally recorded does not make them meaningless.

The abbey preserved the story of the men. The nunnery leaves us asking questions.

As I walked among the ruins, the Sheela-na-gig, the Well of Eternal Youth, the Lady’s Mantle, and the generations of women who lived and died here no longer felt like separate stories. They felt like fragments of a much older tapestry woven through the island itself.

The Lady’s Mantle still grows. The old stories are still told. And the women of Iona, though largely absent from the written record, remain very much present.Read more