St Adamnan's Church is situated in an isolated position, surrounded by open farmland on the eastern coast of the island, between Groudle Glen and Baldrine. The eastern (and oldest) part of the church has been restored, but it is otherwise in a ruinous, though well-tended, condition. St Adamnan was the Abbot of Iona between 679 and 704.
The site on which the church stands is of ancient religious significance. The church yard contains Celtic crosses, the oldest of which dates backs to the 5th century AD - evidence of an early keeill. In about 1190, King Reginald of the Isle of Man gave a grant of the land of Escadala, in the Isle of Man to St Bees Priory, in Cumbria. It is likely that the site of the church was included in the grant, to which fact its subsequent reconstruction and selection as the parish church (despite its remoteness) are attributable.
On 25 June 1733, an Act of Tynwald was passed for the building of a new parish church at Boilley Veen, in a more convenient part of the parish, but the new church was not in fact completed.
References:Saint-Georges de Boscherville Abbey is a former Benedictine abbey. It was founded in about 1113 by Guillaume de Tancarville on the site of an earlier establishment of secular canons and settled by monks from the Abbey of Saint-Evroul. The abbey church made of Caumont stone was erected from 1113 to 1140. The Norman builders aimed to have very well-lit naves and they did this by means of tall, large windows, initially made possible by a wooden ceiling, which prevented uplift, although this was replaced by a Gothic vault in the 13th century. The chapter room was built after the abbey church and dates from the last quarter of the 12th century.
The arrival of the Maurist monks in 1659, after the disasters of the Wars of Religion, helped to get the abbey back on a firmer spiritual, architectural and economic footing. They erected a large monastic building one wing of which fitted tightly around the chapter house (which was otherwise left as it was).