The Italian Chapel – Painted Walls and Lunch by the Barrier
A few hours.
The route
The Italian Chapel is two wartime Nissen huts that Italian prisoners of war turned into a little church of painted brick, saints and angels on the island of Lamb Holm.
It stands at the south end of the first of the Churchill Barriers, and lunch is at a café just across the causeway, looking out over the water to the chapel's island. It's a good outing for a grey day.
Before you go
Book accommodation nearby
If you are staying over: here are ours nearest where the day starts and ends.
The nearest of ours is House of the Northern Gate, 25 miles away. Sleeps 18.
The day
Lamb Holm
A little chapel by the first of the Churchill Barriers: half an hour or so inside, then lunch with a view back over the water.
About two hours
Italian Chapel
An attraction
The chapel stands on Lamb Holm, at the south end of the first Churchill Barrier on the A961, with parking by its door. In the Second World War, Italian prisoners held in Camp 60 here to build the barriers were given two Nissen huts for a chapel. The artist Domenico Chiocchetti painted the inside to look like brick and carved stone, and based the Madonna and Child above the altar on a prayer card his mother gave him when he left home. Entry is £4, and free for children of 12 and under. From November to March it opens every day from 10am to 1pm, and in April and October from 10am to 4pm. Custodians look after it, and a small booklet telling its story costs £1. There are no toilets at the chapel.
3 min by car
Barrier View Café
Lunch
Lunch is 3 minutes' drive back over the barrier at the Barrier View Café, in the Commodore at Holm, which looks across the water to Lamb Holm and the causeway. Everything is made on site: soup of the day, toasties, paninis, baked potatoes and filled rolls, with a children's menu and a counter of home baking. It opens Tuesday to Saturday from 10am and Sunday from 11am, with the kitchen's last orders at 3pm, and it's shut on Mondays. On a Monday, or if it's full, Lucano on Victoria Street in Kirkwall serves lunch every day.
If it rains
The chapel and the café are both indoors; only the few steps from the car are out in the weather.
Worth a detour
- Glimps Holm and the Reginald
Carry on south from the chapel over the second barrier and across Glimps Holm to the large lay-by on the left just before the third barrier. A short flight of steps leads down to a long sandy beach, and in the water in front lies the rusting wreck of the blockship Reginald, sunk to close the channel before the barrier was built. Turn back the way you came for lunch. It adds about 5 minutes' driving.
Where to stay
Photograph by Andy Gutsell via Google