Lismore residents uncover long-lost 6th-century monastery

About 100 miles northwest of Edinburgh sits Lismore, an island of nine square miles and 190 residents — slightly larger than Key West, Florida. It has no pub or coffee shop, but its historical society and a group of locals, many of them retirees, have spent years raising funds and digging. Their work, reported by Popular Science, has uncovered what they believe is the long-lost monastery of Lios Mòr.

The monastery is thought to have been founded in the sixth century by Saint Mo Luóc, an Irish missionary who converted Picts in northern Scotland to Christianity. Lios Mòr is the island’s ancient Scots Gaelic name, meaning “great site” or “great enclosure,” which may indicate it was an important pre-Christian gathering place. The findings appear in the October 2026 issue of the journal Antiquity.

Written and local histories had long claimed the monastery existed, but archaeological proof was missing. In 2016, the Lismore Historical Society started raising money through local donations, a crowdfunding campaign, and grants. That allowed them to bring Dr. Clare Ellis of Argyll Archaeology to the island to help volunteers excavate the site of a later medieval cathedral.

Once digging began, the team found early medieval crucibles used to cast gold and silver luxury goods, along with early buildings, carved stonework, and a burial ground — all hallmarks of an important early medieval monastery.

Dr. Ellis compares the site to Iona, the famous monastery founded in 563 CE by Saint Columba on the Isle of Iona off western Scotland. By the late seventh century, both Lios Mòr and Iona were part of Dál Riata, a Gaelic-speaking kingdom that included Argyll, most of the Hebrides, and part of County Antrim in Northern Ireland. Dr. Ellis describes Dál Riata as “a spiritual, cultural and sometimes political power-house,” with several influential early Christian establishments.

Robert Hay, a retired plant scientist who has lived on Lismore since 2001 and helped fundraise and coordinate volunteers, called the experience “extraordinary,” he told The Guardian. “The most exciting moment for me was when they were doing the post-excavation analysis and they found that they had been melting gold, copper, silver, and they were making jewellery on our little island in the seventh century.”

• archaeology
• Clare Ellis
• Lismore
• medieval monastery
• Saint Mo Luóc
• Scotland