Castle Stalker

Castle Stalker, in Scottish Gaelic Caisteal an Stalcaire, is a tower house on a tidal islet at the mouth of Loch Laich, an inlet off Loch Linnhe, in Appin in Argyll and Bute. The name Stalker comes from Stalcaire, meaning hunter or falconer. The islet is also called the Cormorant's Rock, Creag an Sgairbh, which is the war cry of Clan Stewart of Appin, and the clan account says the castle sits on that rock. Other recorded names are Island Stalcaire and Elen Stalker Castle.

It stands about one and a half miles, or 2.5 kilometres, north-east of Port Appin, and about 25 miles north of Oban, and it is visible from the A828 road about midway between Oban and Glen Coe. The mountains of Morvern lie in one view, and Lismore lies beyond the Lynn of Lorne. These records do not describe a world-heritage inscription.

Loch Linnhe is the sea loch on whose shore this inlet opens. Its name comes from linne, a pool. Upstream of Corran it is An Linne Dhubh, the black pool, once Loch Abar, and downstream it is An Linne Sheileach, the salty pool. It follows the Great Glen Fault and is the only sea loch along that fault.

It is about 35 kilometres, or 20 miles, long, and it opens onto the Firth of Lorne. The reach above Corran is about 15 kilometres long and about 2 kilometres wide. The branch south-east of Lismore is the Lynn of Lorne. Loch Eil enters at the northern end, Loch Leven enters from the east just below Corran, and Loch Creran enters the Lynn of Lorne.

Fort William stands at the north-east end, at the mouth of the River Lochy. A tradition told by the bard Fr Allan MacDonald places an each-uisge, a water horse, in Loch Linnhe, a creature whose back was said to hold every child who wished to ride and then to drown them. That tale belongs to the loch, not to a find inside the tower. He remembered refusing horses in childhood at Fort William for fear one of them was the water horse.

Glen Coe, Gleann Comhann, is the glacial valley named in the view from the road. It cuts through volcanic rock in the north of Argyll, near the old province of Lochaber, and it is now in the Highland council area. The glen is about 12.5 kilometres, or seven and three quarter miles, long. Its floor is given as less than 700 metres wide and also as less than three eighths of a mile, narrowing at the Pass of Glen Coe.

The River Coe may take its name from a person called Comhan. The river runs west from below Buachaille Etive Beag to Loch Leven, which is a salt arm of Loch Linnhe, and the village of Glencoe stands at the foot of the glen. Ballachulish, about 2 kilometres west, has had slate quarries since 1693. On 13 February 1692, in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1689, government soldiers who were billeted on Clan MacDonald of Glencoe killed thirty-eight men, because the clan had not been prompt in swearing allegiance to William and Mary.

The castle history ties that killing to the same demand for an oath after the rising in which this tower was besieged. Dubh Artach is not this islet. It is a basalt skerry about 18 miles, or 29 kilometres, west of Colonsay and about 15 miles, or 24 kilometres, south-west of the Ross of Mull. A lighthouse there, designed by Thomas Stevenson, was built between 1867 and 1872, with a tower of 145 feet, or 44 metres, and a shore station on Erraid.

Waves of 92 feet, or 28 metres, and more were met by the keepers. The light was automated in 1971. The Gaelic name is read as the black rock, and the skerry was also called St John's Rock before the light. Between 1800 and 1854 thirty ships were wrecked on that reef.

None of that work was done on Loch Laich.

The tower is described as a four-storey tower house or keep, and also as three storeys and a cap-house, and also as a ground floor, two upper floors, and a garret. It is called one of the best preserved medieval tower houses to survive in western Scotland. It was designated Category A on 20 July 1971. The parish is Lismore and Appin.

For the 2011 census the island was classed as inhabited, and it had no usual residents at the count of 2001 or at the count of 2011. It stands in the Lynn of Lorn National Scenic Area.

Clan MacDougall takes its name from Dubgall, or Dougall, son of Somerled. After Somerled's death at the Battle of Renfrew in 1164, Dougall held most of Argyll and the islands of Mull, Lismore, Jura, Tiree, Coll, and others. His name is the Gaelic dubh-gall, dark foreigner. He was styled king of the South Isles and lord of Lorne.

A son, Duncan, and Duncan's son Ewan built Dunstaffnage, Dunollie, and Duntrune on the mainland, and Aros, Cairnburgh, Dunchonnel, and Coeffin on the islands. Dunollie is believed to have been fortified since the sixth century and became the chief's seat. Duncan also built Ardchattan Priory, and the MacDougall chiefs were buried there until 1737. Ewan held his islands from the king of Norway and his mainland from the king of Scotland.

In 1263 Haakon IV of Norway brought a great fleet off Oban. Ewan did not join him, and Haakon left him in peace because of old blood ties. Ewan then fought on the Scottish side at the Battle of Largs and attacked part of the Norse fleet. Haakon died later that year.

The Treaty of Perth, three years later, ceded the Hebrides to Scotland, while Scotland recognised Norwegian sovereignty over Shetland and Orkney.

The first castle on this rock is called a small fort, or fortalice, of Clan MacDougall when they were lords of Lorn. One account dates it around 1320. Another dates it around 1300. The MacDougalls lost the lordship after their defeat by Robert the Bruce at the Brander Pass in 1308.

One account says they regained it for a period after 1328. Another says they regained it under their new chief John Gallda MacDougall after Robert's death in 1329, and lost it a second time when John died without a male heir and his two daughters married relatives of Robert II, Bruce's grandson and the first Stewart king. John Stewart of Innermeath, grandson in the Stewart line from Sir James Stewart of Pierston, or Perston, married Isabel MacDougall, daughter of John Gallda, and became the first Stewart lord of Lorne. The lordship then passed two further generations to Sir John Stewart, the third Stewart lord of Lorne.

A shorter account says the Stewarts took the lordship of Lorn around 1388, lands which included this castle.

Clan Campbell, Na Caimbeulaich, became the other great power in Argyll, with Ben Cruachan inside their lands, and their chief became Earl of Argyll and later Duke of Argyll. Traditional genealogies place them among the Britons of Strathclyde. The earliest Campbell in a written record is Gillespie in 1263, with early grants mostly in east-central Scotland. The Argyll link came when a Campbell married the heiress of the O'Duines and received the lordship of Loch Awe, so the early name was Clan O'Duine, later styled Clann Diarmaid from a claimed tie to Diarmuid the Boar.

The first seat was either Innes Chonnel on Loch Awe or Caisteal na Nigheann Ruaidh on Loch Avich. At first the Campbells were under the MacDougall lords of Lorne. The MacDougalls killed the Campbell chief Cailean Mór, Colin Campbell, at the Battle of Red Ford, dated 1296 in the Campbell account and 1294 in the MacDougall account, where John MacDougall of Argyll led his clan, Sir Colin Campbell was killed, and both sides had heavy losses. All later Campbell chiefs have used MacCailean Mór as their Gaelic patronymic.

Early in the fourteenth century the family of Colin Campbell backed Robert the Bruce. They fought at Bannockburn in 1314. Sir Neil Campbell, Niall mac Caile, who died in 1316, married Bruce's sister Mary and received lands taken from Clan MacDougall and from other enemies of the Bruces in Argyll. Between 1200 and 1500 the Campbells became dominant in Argyll.

The title Lord Campbell was created in 1445 for Sir Duncan Campbell. By the end of the fifteenth century the Lords of the Isles had been broken and the Campbells were the main power in the west, which is given as a cause of the long enmity with Clan Donald. Descendants of Sir Duncan and his wife Lady Marjorie Stewart, daughter of Robert Stewart, Duke of Albany, and born about 1390, descend from Robert the Bruce and from Robert II.

Sir John Stewart, lord of Lorn, is the man credited with the tower much as it stands. One account says the Stewarts built the present castle around the 1440s. The family account says he had an illegitimate son in 1446, and that it is reasonable to suppose he built and occupied the castle about that time. A clan tradition says that in 1445, returning to Dunstaffnage from the cattle tryst at Crieff, he met a daughter of MacLaren of Ardveich at Loch Earn in Balquhidder, and that the affair produced Dugald a year later.

Sir John is said to have been born around 1410, so he was about thirty-five. He is said to have waited five years after his first wife's death before marrying Dugald's mother. Another telling, from 1824, names the mother Maclaurin, a woman above the common rank, and has Dugald and his mother sail from the east with pipes and flags for the wedding. That telling places the murder inside Dunstaffnage, done by MacDougall nephews who wanted to marry the heiresses, and says the daughters escaped by night with the charters and married into the Campbells of Argyll, Glenorchy, and Ottar.

A further note looks for the Maclaurin mother not at distant Ardveich but among the kindred of a vicar Laurence near Ardchattan, or at an Ardveich on the Airds peninsula a few miles north of Dunstaffnage, shown on a map of 1645. A manuscript of 1634, copied in 1756, calls Sir John the Lipper Lord and Dugald his eldest son, with younger brothers unnamed, which has been read as a hint that Dugald was legitimate already. The same clan narrative warns that the long wedding story is tradition. It says the primary notes are an obituary and acts of parliament, and that those notes do not themselves tell the love story.

The death is dated in more than one way. The family account says that in 1463 Sir John was marrying Dugald's mother, a MacLaren, at Dunstaffnage when Alan MacCoul, a renegade MacDougall, murdered him outside the church, and that he lived long enough to finish the marriage and legitimise Dugald, who became the first chief of Appin. The clan tradition says the lightly armed wedding party was attacked about 180 yards from the castle walls on the way to a small chapel, that MacCoul's force was beaten but the lord was mortally wounded, that the marriage and the last rites happened in the chapel, and that MacCoul then occupied empty Dunstaffnage. Some in that tradition think Colin Campbell, Lord Argyll, Sir John's son-in-law, was in the plot, together with the Lord of the Isles, who was in a power struggle with the king.

Alan MacCoul is called the illegitimate grandson of an earlier MacDougall chief. The dean of Lismore's chronicle records the death of John Stewart, lord of Lorne, on 2 December 1463 at Dunstaffnage. An act dated 1460 already recommends that the king besiege Dunstaffnage to punish Alan MacCoul for slaying John, the king's cousin. An act of 1464 again orders the king to go in person, when the season allows, to punish Alan and to besiege Dunstaffnage, and charges the Earl of Ross not to reset him.

From those acts the killing and the seizure of the castle are also placed somewhere between 1460 and 1464.

A deed of 1451 shows Sir John granting John MacDougall of Dunollie, described as his nephew, a large block of merk lands in Lorn, the office of bailie, and the guardianship of his heirs, a young son Dugald and other sons whose names are not given. Charters of James II in 1452 grant the lordship of Lorn and the baronies of Innermeath and Redcastle to John and the heirs male of his body, then to his brothers Walter, Alan, David, and Robert, and to further male kinsmen, and they still do not name Dugald as heir. Dugald later married Isabella MacDougall, daughter of that tutor and his first cousin. After the murder, Dugald and the MacLarens besieged Dunstaffnage without success.

He lost the title lord of Lorn through his uncle Walter Stewart and the lord of Argyll, and he kept Appin and Lismore. Colin Campbell raised MacFarlanes to help MacCoul. The two sides met at the battle called Leac a dotha, or Leachada, and both left the field with heavy losses. Dugald then fortified what the clan account calls the hunting lodge of Castle Stalker.

In 1468 Colin Campbell and Walter Stewart, the latter now recognised as lord of Lorn but with no authority in Lorn, sent a raid to break Appin. The family account calls this the Battle of Stalc, opposite the castle. One version says the Stewarts and the MacLarens defeated the MacDougalls, and that Dugald himself killed Alan MacCoul. Another says they defeated an army of Campbells, MacDougalls, and Macfarlanes.

The clan account says Dugald nearly destroyed the military strength of the MacFarlanes, a loss they did not recover, and that he killed Alan MacCoul there. A memorial stone in the churchyard at Portnacroish marks the site. James III formally granted Appin and the surrounding land to Dugald on 14 April 1470.

In 1497, or in 1497 or 1498, Dugald was killed on a raid against MacDonald of Keppoch, a reprisal for cattle reiving, undertaken with the MacLarens. The clan account calls the fight the Battle of Black Mount. His son Duncan succeeded. The only charter notice of Dugald by that name is after his death: on 14 January 1500 James IV granted Duncan, son and heir of the deceased Dougal Stewart of Appin, a life-rent of lands including Duror, Ardsheal, and other farms.

Duncan had been born in 1473, the same year as his cousin the future James IV. The family account says the boys were educated together at court in Edinburgh. James IV, who succeeded in 1488, made frequent hunting journeys in the west and stayed often at Castle Stalker, using it as a base for hunting and hawking. The family account says improvements then included the top floor and the roof, and that the coat of arms over the front door is the royal arms of that time.

An earlier wording of the same family history called the top floor a possible addition and the arms a possible royal coat. James IV also made Duncan his kinsman in office, King's Chamberlain of the Isles, and gave him large grants of land. A separate short account says the Stewarts' relative James VI of Scotland visited the castle. Those are two different kings.

James VI of Scotland, also James VI and I, was born on 19 June 1566 at Edinburgh Castle, son of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. He became king of Scotland on 24 July 1567, when he was thirteen months old, after his mother was forced to abdicate, and he was crowned on 29 July 1567 at Stirling. He became king of England and Ireland on 24 March 1603 and died on 27 March 1625. After 1603 he returned to Scotland only once, in 1617.

Nothing in his own life places a documented stay on this rock, so the visit remains the statement in the short castle history, beside the family statement that the hunting king was James IV.

Duncan was murdered by the MacLeans at Duart Castle in 1512. His younger brother Alan became the third chief. In 1513 the Stewarts of Appin supported James IV at the Battle of Flodden. The chief and his five sons were all there, and all of them survived a defeat in which the king was killed.

In 1520 Alexander Stewart, the youngest son of Alan, and in another wording Sir Alexander Stewart of Invernahyle, was fishing off the small island next to Castle Stalker when Campbells surprised and murdered him. Tradition says the nurse of his baby son Donald hid the child in the castle, and that when the Campbells left she found him alive and took refuge in Morvern, also written Morven. Donald became known as Donald of the Hammers, Donald nan Ord, because he could swing a blacksmith's hammer in each hand. In 1544 he raised the Stewarts of Appin, went to Dunstaffnage, and killed nine Campbells in revenge for his father.

He led the Stewarts at the Battle of Pinkie on 10 September 1547. He lived through the reigns of James V and Mary, Queen of Scots, and he lived to see James VI of Scotland become king of England in 1603. He died in 1607 and was buried on Lismore, where his henchman, a Carmichael, was buried as well. The major branches of Appin, Strathgarry, Achnacone, Fasnacloich, and Invernahyle, are traced to the sons of Alan, the third chief.

Ardsheal was given to John, first of Ardsheal, by his father John Stewart, fifth of Appin.

The loss of the castle to the Campbells is told in conflicting years and with conflicting numbers for the chief. A short account says a drunken bet around 1620 passed the castle to Clan Campbell. The family account says that around 1620 the castle passed to the Campbells of Airds by a drunken wager of the fifth Stewart chief, Duncan, in exchange for an eight-oared wherry, and that Duncan was afterwards nicknamed Bothaire, the weak-minded, and forbidden to lead the clan in battle. A designation statement says the tower was the principal stronghold of the Stewarts of Appin until 1611, and that it was bartered in 1614 by Duncan Stewart, seventh of Appin, to a Campbell whose further name is left blank in that statement.

The clan account names John Stewart as fifth of Appin and does not tell the wager. The building itself is dated about 1540 in the measured survey, and the designation calls it sixteenth century, which sits later than the 1440s and the 1446 dating of the family tradition. The survey associates the finished tower with the Stewarts and the Campbells together.

In 1644 the Stewarts of Appin, led by Duncan's son Duncan Mor, fought on the royalist side under the Marquess of Montrose for Charles I in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The clan account names their battles as Inverlochy in 1645, Auldearn, and Kilsyth, and calls the cause a losing one in the family telling. By 1660 the monarchy was restored under Charles II. The Campbells had fought for the parliamentarian side and were out of favour.

Archibald Campbell of Argyll was arrested for treason and executed by the Maiden, described as a Scottish guillotine. The Stewarts took legal action and, after some resistance, regained the castle around 1662.

By 1689 James VII of Scotland and II of England, called the last Stewart king, had been deposed in favour of William of Orange and Mary. The family account says this was the first Jacobite rising, and that the Stewarts of Appin took part. The castle, held by Charles Stewart of Ardsheal, also spelled Arsheal, was besieged for several months by government forces led by the Campbells, until Ardsheal was granted an honourable surrender in 1690. An earlier wording says the Stewarts under Ardsheal regained the castle in 1689 when they came out for James VII, that after the defeat at Dunkeld the castle was forfeited again to the Campbells, and that the Stewarts then refused to hand it over, so the siege followed until the surrender in 1690.

The Highland clans were then forced to swear allegiance to William and Mary, and the family account says that demand resulted in the massacre of the MacDonalds of Glencoe in 1692. Whether Appin men fought at Killiecrankie is disputed in the clan record. One historian wrote that they were full of zeal but arrived too late, and that a large body joined two days after the battle. Witnesses examined before parliament said a young man called Stewart of Appin joined Dundee between Lochaber and Badenoch with one hundred and thirty men, and another witness said he joined in Lochaber with a company who had colours.

A helmet said to have been worn by Robert Stewart of Appin at Killiecrankie was later with Dugald Stuart of Lochcarron.

Appin sent men to the rising of 1715. A report by General Wade in 1724 estimated the clan at 400 men. Dugald Stewart, ninth chief, was created Lord Appin in the Jacobite peerage on 6 June 1743. In 1745 the family account calls the rising the third Jacobite rising, while one clan passage calls the landing of 1745 the start of the second rising, even though the same clan history has already recorded men sent in 1715.

Charles Edward Stuart landed on Eriskay on 23 July 1745 with the small band called the Seven Men of Moidart. Castle Stalker was held by the Campbells with a garrison of about fifty-nine government troops. The Stewarts of Appin were behind the prince and raised a regiment of 300. The castle was too strong for them, and their two-pound cannonballs merely bounced off the walls.

Ships called often with men and supplies, sailing between Inverary in the south and Fort William in the north, and the tower was a link on that route. At Culloden on 16 April 1746 the Appin regiment suffered 92 killed and 65 wounded out of a fighting force of about 300. They broke into Barrell's and Munro's regiments and still lost the day. After Culloden the castle was used as a local centre where clansmen had to surrender their arms.

Six prisoners are recorded in the Prisoners' Hole for about a fortnight before they were taken to Edinburgh for trial.

Charles Stewart of Ardsheal, who led the regiment, hid in a cave above Ardsheal House at Kentallen Bay on Loch Linnhe, afterwards called Ardsheal's Cave. His lands were later forfeited. He escaped to the Continent and his family joined him. The cave sits behind a waterfall, is about 15 to 20 feet deep, and can be stood in until it lowers to two or three feet at the back.

His wife brought food and was held with their newborn son when soldiers cordoned the house. She said she had not seen him since he left with the army. One account says searchers twice passed within yards of the mouth. His son Duncan later had the lands restored, and the Ardsheal line succeeded to the chiefship when the Appin family ended.

In 1752 Colin Roy Campbell of Glenure, called the Red Fox, the government factor on the forfeited Stewart lands, was shot in the back while riding the shore of Loch Leven at Ballachulish. Alan Breck Stewart escaped. James Stewart of the Glens, a cadet and half-brother of the chief, was tried by a Campbell jury at Inveraray, with MacCailean Mór presiding, and was hanged at Cnap a' Chaolais. The clan account says the consensus was that he had not ordered the shot, and that the chief's family still holds a name for the shooter which does not match the public theories.

That killing was in Appin, not inside this tower. The current chief is named as Andrew Francis Stewart of Lorn, Appin and Ardsheal, seventeenth of Appin and twelfth of Ardsheal, descended from Charles Stewart, seventh of Ardsheal, who became chief when Dugald Stewart, tenth chief, died without sons in 1769. The clan motto is given as Quihidder Wil Ȝie, glossed as whither will ye. The plant badge is the oak, the animal a unicorn, and the pipe tune the white banner of the Stewarts.

Allies are named as Clan MacLaren, Clan Cameron, and Clan MacDonald of Glencoe. Rivals are named as Clan MacGregor, Clan Campbell, Clan Drummond, and Clan MacDonald of Keppoch. The castle is given as both the seat and the historic seat, while the present owners of the building are a different Stewart family.

The last Campbell was born in the castle in 1775. Campbells lived there until about 1800. One account says they then built a new house on the mainland at Airds, which still exists. Another says they moved entirely to the house at Airds, and that the house had been built in 1738.

The castle was kept as a storehouse. It is said to have become roofless shortly before 1831, and also about 1840, when it lost its roof and was abandoned. The family account adds that by about 1840 the roof and half the staircase had gone, perhaps as building material for the Airds estate, or perhaps to avoid a roof tax. In 1852 the bankrupt Sir John Campbell sold the Airds estate, including Ilanstalker and the fortalice on it, to Robert Macfie, a businessman who sailed into Airds bay.

Macfie became a Liberal member of parliament in 1868. The repurchase is dated 1908, when Charles Stewart of Achara, also written Acharra, bought the castle and did basic preservation, and also 1909, when he bought it from William Macfie, Robert's son, to bring it back into Stewart hands. It was used as a family memorial, with plaques for members of the family. In 1947 his successor Duncan Stewart, governor of Sarawak, was assassinated, and the castle passed to his widow Patricia.

Another wording says he was murdered by a Dyak and that the castle devolved on his widow, without giving her name.

In 1965 Lieutenant Colonel D. R. Stewart Allward, a veteran of the 51st Highland Division, agreed terms to buy the castle and spent about ten years rebuilding it with his wife, his family, and friends, without contractors in the ordinary sense. The measured account, written while that work was still described as in progress, and a visit on 2 December 1971, treat the reconstruction as unfinished.

The family account says the tower was made fully habitable. He died suddenly while walking on 5 February 1991. His wife Marion died on 7 July 2005. Their children are Sine, Ross, Alasdair, and Morag, and the family note counts six grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

The Stewart Allward family are the present owners. The clan chief named above is not described as the person who lives here.

The measured plan is an oblong tower, 14.8 metres from north-east to south-west and 11.8 metres across, over walls 2.7 metres thick. The ground-floor entrance is near the centre of the south-east wall, with provision for two doors. The inner door was probably an iron yett, barred by a drawbar, and machicolation at parapet level covers the entrance. The ground floor is three cellars and a pit prison, all barrel-vaulted.

A turnpike in the north corner rises the full height and is the only stair to the upper floors. The designation instead puts the turnpike in the north-west corner, calls the first storey barrel-vaulted, and says a corbel course once carried floors of the third storey and the cap-house which were then gone. It also says half of the second storey kept the remains of an ornamental fireplace. The principal entrance is in the north-east wall at first-floor level.

It was probably first reached by a timber stair and gang-planks, then by a drawbridge, and then by a stone forestair. The designation calls that forestair modern and says an armorial panel stands over the entrance at second-storey level. Another account says the forestair was begun in the late seventeenth century or the early eighteenth, and was finished in repairs of 1909, and that it leads to the lower hall. The first and second floors are each a single large apartment in the measured account, with an enclosed parapet walk around the garret.

The designation adds random rubble, corbie-steps, a flush parapet, and loop-holes. A photograph of 1967 shows a gunloop on the cap-house. That is a view of standing masonry, not a list of objects from a dig.

A barmkin enclosed the tower except on the north-west. Little of it remains. A postern beside the west corner can still be traced. About 3 metres of footings survive immediately south-west of the doorway, and scant remains show at the north corner.

The wall is deduced at about 1.5 metres thick and 3.9 metres high. A rock-cut pool just below the postern is described as the only water supply. The usual approach is from the east across about 100 metres of water. There is no sign of a causeway, and the survey concludes that access was always by small boat.

A stair, roughly built, once climbed from the landing to the barmkin, and traces of it remain. A separate account says the islet can be reached with difficulty from the shore at low tide. The present tour crosses about 200 metres. A Board of Ordnance report on the state of the castle survives among manuscripts, but its wording is not given in the inventory note.

No excavation report read for this place sets out a list of finds from the walls or the islet. The work on record is the measured description, the designation, the 1967 view of the gunloop, and the reconstruction that began in 1965.

The castle has been used as a filming place. In Monty Python and the Holy Grail it appears as The Castle Aaaaarrrrrrggghhh. A news account of 2023 says the film was made in 1975, that this tower was used for the final scene, that most of the other castle scenes were filmed at Doune Castle, and that John Cleese, as a French guard, taunts King Arthur from the battlements. It was also used for Highlander: Endgame, and for Sense8 as the estate of the Old Man of Hoy.

It was used for the episode Loch Henry in the series Black Mirror. Loch Henry is fiction. It is the second episode of the sixth series, written by Charlie Brooker, directed by Sam Miller, and first shown on 15 June 2023. That episode was the first of the series set in Scotland, and eighteen Scottish locations were used.

The series itself is an anthology created by Brooker. Castle Stalker is also the inspiration for Castle Keep in the children's book The Boggart. The Wayback Machine, a digital archive of the web opened to public use on 25 October 2001, is not a building on this islet. It is named here only because the title belongs among the pages read with the castle, and it has nothing to do with the masonry.

The castle remains a private house. Tours for 2026 have finished and the castle is closed for the winter. The next dates are due in February 2027. There are at most two tours a day, for at most six people, by prior booking, with a boat crossing and a guided tour by one of the Stewart Allward family.

A visit may take up to two hours. Tickets for 2027 are £30 for adults and £20 for children under 16. Wheelchairs and coach parties are not accommodated. A visitor must be able to get in and out of a boat and to manage the steps.

The crossing is about 200 metres in a small open boat from a rocky and slippery shore. Clothing for wet weather is recommended, Wellington boots or the like are advised, lifejackets are provided, and a tour may be cancelled in rough weather or because of the tide.