Our Lady of the Isles

The statue is situated on the western slopes of Ruabhal, a hill near the northern end of South Uist.

The statue was commissioned following proposals from the Ministry of Defence for a large missile testing range.

Resistance to the proposals was led by Canon John Morrison, the local parish priest, whose opposition to the range earned him the nickname "Father Rocket".

[1] Canon Morrison both commissioned and raised funds for the construction of the statue, which was designed by Hew Lorimer, and sculpted from granite.

After visiting South Uist during the research for his 2004 book The Last of the Celts, Marcus Tanner described the statue as one of the only visible proofs that visitors driving across South Uist, where most of the population defied the Penal Laws at great personal cost and remained members of the strictly illegal Catholic Church in Scotland, have left the Scottish Presbyterianism of John Knox behind.