Holy Island

Holy Island lies in Lamlash Bay off Arran’s east coast, a narrow strip of land about three kilometres long and one wide. Its highest point is Mullach Mòr, a low hill rising above the tree line. The island’s Gaelic name, Eilean MoLaise, recalls the 6th-century monk St Molaise, who once lived in a sea-cave on the southern shore. A holy well nearby was long believed to cure sickness, and fragments of runic writing still mark the cave’s roof. In the 13th century a small monastery stood on the island, later recorded by Dean Monro in 1549. In 1992 the island passed from its private owner to the Samyé Ling Buddhist Community, who established a Centre for World Peace and Health on the northern shore. Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche converted an old farmhouse into a retreat building with solar water heating and a reed-bed sewage system. Tibetan flags and stupas line the path from the ferry jetty to the centre. A community of nuns lives at the southern tip, completing three-year retreats in quiet cottages. The rest of the island is managed as a nature reserve where Eriskay ponies, Saanen goats and Soay sheep graze among replanted native trees. Rare Rock Whitebeam grows here, a key link in the evolution of Arran’s unique whitebeam species. Visitors walk grassy tracks past the ruins of the old monastery and along the rocky shoreline, watching seals in the bay. The ferry from Lamlash takes only a few minutes, and the island’s small permanent population shares the landscape with holidaymakers from Arran.