Skye Museum of Island Life - The museum offers visitors a unique experience and a true insight into island life a 100 years ago. This award winning attraction is a must for all visitors to the beautiful Isle of Skye. Visit
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Skye Museum of Island Life
#2 of the best things to do in Kilmuir on Tripadvisor
History Museums
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8. Skye Museum of Island Life
#8 of the BEST things to do on the Isle of Skye
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The Grave of Flora MacDonald is a 5 minute walk (0.3 miles) from the Skye Museum of Island Life and free to visit.

Flora MacDonald's Grave
#3 of the best things to do in Kilmuir on Tripadvisor
Points of Interest & Landmarks
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There are a lot of free or inexpensive things to do on the Isle of Skye:

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"Near the tip of the Trotternish Peninsula, just a mile and a half south-west of the ruin of Duntulm Castle and a quarter of a mile east of the Skye Museum of Island Life, is one of Scotland's most fascinating - and most beautifully located - graveyards. Kilmuir Graveyard is well visited because of the identity of one person who was laid to rest here. It deserves to be better known for other reasons as well.

One gravestone at Kilmuir literally towers above all the others. This is the tall cross marking the last resting place of Flora MacDonald, the "Preserver of Prince Charles Edward Stuart" complete with an epitaph written by the notable author Samuel Johnson (who, with James Boswell had met Flora in life during their tour of the Highlands). This reads "Her name will be mentioned in history and if courage and fidelity be virtues, mentioned with honour." Seven other members of her family are also buried here.
It is said that Flora's funeral in 1790 was attended by 3,000 mourners, who between them drank 300 gallons of whisky. She was buried in a shroud said to have been made from a bed-sheet in which Bonnie Prince Charlie had slept. The imposing cross that marks her grave today was paid for by public subscription and erected in 1880. We've heard it suggested that this replaced an original mausoleum chipped away over the years by souvenir hunters, but that story has a slight feel of modern myth about it.

Speaking of myths, what we suspect to be another surrounds the magnificent grave marker with a carved effigy of a knight in armour that lies close to the very old chapel/burial enclosure at the far end of the main graveyard. This marks the grave of Angus Martin, or Aonghas na Geoithe ("Angus of the Wind"). Angus is said to have earned his nickname by insisting on going to sea whatever the weather, and he is believed to have married a Danish princess with whom he had seven sons.

So far, so good. Where credibility starts to get strained is the point in the story at which Angus is said to have stolen the grave slab you can see over his grave from the island of Iona, where it had previously been used to mark the grave of one of the Scottish kings buried there.

Setting aside the reaction of his contemporaries if he had actually done that, the main problem with this story lies in the excellent condition of the grave slab, and the style of the effigy carved on it. Comparison with those on view at the Iona Abbey Infirmary Museum shows two things. The first is that any detail on the grave markers of the early Scottish kings on Iona has long since been weathered away to nothing.

The second is that the effigy carved on Angus's grave marker is precisely the sort of thing you would expect to find on the grave of a clan chief from the late medieval period. The problem with myths is that they are too often a distraction: here the story detracts from the fact that this is a superb grave marker, well worth the trip to Kilmuir for its own sake alone.
Also worth the trip on its own would be the fascinating grave marker of Charles MacArthur, the last hereditary piper to the MacDonalds of Duntulm Castle. The inscription reads: "Here lie the remains of Charles MacKarter whose fame as an honest man and remarkable piper will survive this generation for his manners were easy and regular as his music and the melody of his fingers will"

Flora herself, and the seven other members of her family buried near her"

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