Saint Donnan was an Irish Pict who came to Scotland to join the mission at Candida Casa, the Mother Church of the Pictish missionaries at Whithorn on the Solway Firth. He set out from there with 52 disciples c. 580 A.D. and travelled north, founding missions in the vicinity of the churches Saint Ninian had established in the early years of the previous century. His mission in Kildonan was also a base from which he sent his missionaries to found churches all over the north of Scotland, from Caithness to Inverness-shire and even across the Moray Firth to Banff-shire.

It is not known how many years the Saint remained in Kildonan; however his name was so closely associated with the area, that one of the ancient records mistakenly located his martyrdom there, and his name lives on in numerous local names – the whole strath is usually known as Kildonan, rather than Strath Ullidh.

Saint Donnan was driven from Kildonan by the early Viking invaders a year or two before his death. When he left, he recalled his missionaries, and they all travelled to Wester Ross and the Inner Hebrides, founding more churches there, before settling on Eigg, where they were martyred by brigands on Easter Day, 617 A.D. His mission had lasted 38 years and he became known as Saint Donnan the Great, an indication of his importance in the early Church. 

The church at Kildonan continued down the centuries and remained the parish church until after the Clearances. The present building dates from the 19th century and is built on the site of Saint Donnan’s cell, so today’s visitors  look out on the same fields, the same hills and the same river that Saint Donnan contemplated fourteen hundred years ago.

Information from ‘The Pictish Nation its People and its Church’ and ‘Saint Donnan the Great and His Muinntir’ by Rev. Dr. Archibald Black Scott.