# Castle Tioram

castle in Highland, Scotland, UK

Highland, United Kingdom

Fortification

## Story

• Castle Tioram, also Caisteal Tioram and Dorlin Castle, is a roofless curtain-wall castle on the tidal island Eilean Tioram in Loch Moidart.
• Its beginning is placed in the twelfth century with Somerled, in the thirteenth century, and in the mid-fourteenth century with Áine Nic Ruaidhrí.
• It was a seat of Clann Ruaidhrí and then of the Macdonalds of Clanranald until it was burned in 1715.
• A bronze hanging bowl from a midden by the walls has been dated to the fifth century and also to about the seventh.
• The interior has been closed since a dangerous-buildings order of 1998, after consent for a full restoration was refused.

## Visiting

Visitors are not allowed to enter the interior because of the risk of falling masonry.

## History

Castle Tioram, also Caisteal Tioram and Dorlin Castle, stands on the tidal island Eilean Tioram in Loch Moidart, north of Acharacle. The name means dry castle, from the sandy spit that the tide uncovers. Hidden from the open sea, the walls command the mouth of the River Shiel and the way from the sea into Loch Shiel, Lochaber, and the Great Glen.

Its beginning is not agreed. One account counts it among Somerled’s castles in the twelfth century. Others place the curtain in the thirteenth century or, where the fabric is read against the documents, in the middle of the fourteenth, when tradition holds that Áine Nic Ruaidhrí erected it. She is also said to have extended it, and the island itself is first recorded in a charter of Cairistíona Nic Ruaidhrí.

The enclosure is an irregular pentagon of stone and lime, with a defended landward entrance and a beach for galleys under the north-west wall. Towers and domestic ranges were added between the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries, though the descriptions do not agree which corner holds the principal tower. Ranald, son of Áine Nic Ruaidhrí and John of Islay, is said to have died here in 1386, and later captains of Clanranald lived, repaired, and died here through the seventeenth century.

Government troops held the castle after Killiecrankie in 1689, or seized it around 1692 when Allan, fourteenth of Clanranald, joined the exiled court of James VII and II despite an oath to William III and II and Mary II. In 1715 it was burned, told both as Allan Dearg’s act so that it would not fall to Campbell of Argyll or to Hanoverian troops, and as the work of rebels who had surprised a royal detachment. Allan was mortally wounded at Sheriffmuir on 13 November 1715 and is said to have died the next day at Drummond Castle.

A bronze hanging bowl from a midden by the walls, six and a half inches across and spun from one piece, has been called fifth-century and also late, perhaps seventh-century. Surveys and a proposal for excavation were made around 1998 and 1999, after a nineteenth-century clearance had already emptied the debris inside the court. No other find catalogue from the walls is published among the records gathered for this history.

The ruin was scheduled in 1920 and listed in category A in 1971. The listing was removed in 2019 and the scheduling remained. Anta Estates bought it in 1997 and received planning consent for a clan centre, apartments, and some public access. Scheduled monument consent was refused, and a public inquiry upheld the refusal.

A dangerous-buildings order closed the interior in 1998. A fall of the outer north-west curtain, dated to 1999 and to 2000, was repaired. A survey in September 2014 found no significant further change in the stonework. The interior stays closed because masonry may fall, and the place is not a World Heritage inscription.

## Photographs

- [Tioram Castle, photography from roadside, tide is low, July 2010 — Tommes](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Tommes_Tioram_Castle_2010_IMG_3340.jpg)
- [Casteal Tioram. Shown on the map as Castle Doirlinn — Ian Lavender](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Casteal_Tioram_-_geograph.org.uk_-_6461.jpg)
- [Castell Tioram from the sandspit. Eilan Shona in right background — Martin Southwood](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Castell_Tioram_from_the_sandspit_-_geograph.org.uk_-_96181.jpg)
- [Castell Tioram from the west, Eilan in left background. — Martin Southwood](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Castell_Tioram_from_the_west%2C_Eilan_in_left_background_-_geograph.org.uk_-_96185.jpg)
- [Castle Tioram (2) — Mike Searle](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Castle_Tioram_%282%29_-_geograph.org.uk_-_966405.jpg)
- [Caisteal Tioram near Acharacle. — Glen Wallace from Inverness, Scotland](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Caisteal_Tioram_%287961575700%29.jpg)
- [On days like this you can't help but fall in love with this place: there was not a breath of wind, and completely deserted. Despite being mid-November it was — Tom Parnell from Scottish Borders, Scotland](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Castle_Tioram_%283546366855%29.jpg)
- [On days like this you can't help but fall in love with this place: there was not a breath of wind, and completely deserted. Despite being mid-November it was — Tom Parnell from Scottish Borders, Scotland](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Castle_Tioram_%283546368839%29.jpg)
- [On days like this you can't help but fall in love with this place: there was not a breath of wind, and completely deserted. Despite being mid-November it was — Tom Parnell from Scottish Borders, Scotland](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Castle_Tioram_%283546369407%29.jpg)
- [On days like this you can't help but fall in love with this place: there was not a breath of wind, and completely deserted. Despite being mid-November it was — Tom Parnell from Scottish Borders, Scotland](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Castle_Tioram_%283547175672%29.jpg)

## Sources

- [Richard Oram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Oram) — Wikipedia
- [Castle Tioram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Tioram) — Wikipedia
- [Cairistíona Nic Ruaidhrí](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairist%C3%ADona_Nic_Ruaidhr%C3%AD) — Wikipedia
- [Áine Nic Ruaidhrí](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81ine_Nic_Ruaidhr%C3%AD) — Wikipedia
- [Clan Macdonald of Clanranald](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clan_Macdonald_of_Clanranald) — Wikipedia
- [Acharacle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acharacle) — Wikipedia
- [Loch Moidart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loch_Moidart) — Wikipedia
- [Loch Shiel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loch_Shiel) — Wikipedia
- [Moidart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moidart) — Wikipedia
- [Anta Estates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anta_Estates) — Wikipedia
- [Mary II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_II) — Wikipedia
- [Port Mòr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_M%C3%B2r) — Wikipedia
- [Somerled](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerled) — Wikipedia
- [Jacobite rising of 1715](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobite_rising_of_1715) — Wikipedia
- [Rachel Chiesley, Lady Grange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Chiesley,_Lady_Grange) — Wikipedia
- [Caisteal Tioram Trust](https://www.tioram.org/) — Caisteal Tioram Trust
- [Caisteal Tioram](https://www.tioram.org/castle.html) — Caisteal Tioram Trust
- [Castle Tioram: current condition](https://tioram.org/current.html) — Caisteal Tioram Trust
- [Castle Tioram and Eilean Tirim, scheduled monument](https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/apex/f?p=1505:300:::::VIEWTYPE,VIEWREF:designation,SM955) — Historic Environment Scotland
- [Castle Tiorim (Eilean Tiorim), removed listing](https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB305) — Historic Environment Scotland
- [Castle Tioram, Cur Doirlinn, Moidart](https://her.highland.gov.uk/monument/MHG4028) — Highland Historic Environment Record
- [Famous castle goes into its first battle since the Jacobite uprising](https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12243511.famous-castle-goes-into-its-first-battle-since-the-jacobite-uprising/) — The Herald
- [Mingary in Ardnamurchan: a review of who could have built the castle](https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-352-1/dissemination/pdf/vol_144/144_0265_0276.pdf) — Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland
- [A bronze hanging bowl from Castle Tioram](https://www.moidart.org.uk/datasets/tiorambowl.htm) — Moidart Local History Group
- [Eilean Shona](https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/apex/f?p=1505:300:::::VIEWTYPE,VIEWREF:designation,GDL00171) — Historic Environment Scotland
- [Tommes Tioram Castle 2010 IMG 3340.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tommes_Tioram_Castle_2010_IMG_3340.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Casteal Tioram - geograph.org.uk - 6461.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Casteal_Tioram_-_geograph.org.uk_-_6461.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castell Tioram from the sandspit - geograph.org.uk - 96181.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castell_Tioram_from_the_sandspit_-_geograph.org.uk_-_96181.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castell Tioram from the west, Eilan in left background - geograph.org.uk - 96185.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castell_Tioram_from_the_west,_Eilan_in_left_background_-_geograph.org.uk_-_96185.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castle Tioram (2) - geograph.org.uk - 966405.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castle_Tioram_(2)_-_geograph.org.uk_-_966405.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Caisteal Tioram (7961575700).jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caisteal_Tioram_(7961575700).jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castle Tioram (3546366855).jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castle_Tioram_(3546366855).jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castle Tioram (3546368839).jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castle_Tioram_(3546368839).jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castle Tioram (3546369407).jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castle_Tioram_(3546369407).jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Castle Tioram (3547175672).jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Castle_Tioram_(3547175672).jpg) — Wikimedia Commons

## Detailed history

Castle Tioram, in Scottish Gaelic Caisteal Tioram, stands on the tidal island Eilean Tioram in Loch Moidart, in the parish of Arisaig and Moidart. The Gaelic name means dry castle, from the sandy spit that the tide uncovers. It is also known locally as Dorlin Castle. The island lies north of Acharacle and about eighty kilometres west of Fort William. Hidden from the open sea, the walls command the junction of Loch Moidart with the mouth of the River Shiel, and with it the way from the sea into Loch Shiel, Lochaber, and the Great Glen. A beach below the northwest wall let ships come close enough to land people and supplies. The castle is one of the curtain-wall strongholds of the western seaboard, grouped with neighbouring Mingary in Ardnamurchan: stone and lime, a plan that follows the rock, a landward entrance that is tactically defended, and a seagate that is clearer from the water than from the shore.

Loch Moidart is a sea loch in the district of Moidart. It runs about eight kilometres eastward from the sea and reaches the ocean by two narrow channels on either side of Eilean Shona, an island nearly split by a narrow isthmus. The River Moidart enters at the head, near Ardmolich. The River Shiel enters at the South Channel. The district name is Old Norse, from a word for mud and a suffix taken from fjord, so that Loch Moidart names the muddy loch twice. Moidart is part of the Rough Bounds, west of Fort William, cut off by Loch Shiel on the east, by Loch Moidart on the south, and by Loch Morar and Loch Ailort on the north. Its townships include Dorlin, Kinlochmoidart, and Glenuig. It forms part of the Morar, Moidart and Ardnamurchan National Scenic Area. Eilean Shona, about six hundred hectares at the mouth of the loch, remained with the Macdonalds of Clanranald until 1811, when Alexander Macdonald of Glenaladale bought it. The later house on that island looks across the South Channel to the ruin. Views of Loch Moidart have been used as a screen image since 2021. The harbour called Port Mòr is not this island. It is the harbour and most populated settlement on Muck, with about fifteen residents, a pier and causeway built in 2005, and the island’s first hotel, built by Ewen MacEwen, whose family has owned Muck for over a hundred years.

Acharacle, in Gaelic Àth Tharracail, Torquil’s ford, is the village at the landward end of the Ardnamurchan peninsula, at the foot of Loch Shiel. The ford in the name crosses the River Shiel. Legend places a battle there between Somerled and a Norwegian warrior named Torquil. The south end of Loch Shiel is also given as the site of a battle in 1140 in which Somerled defeated the Norse and founded the line later called the Lords of the Isles. Loch Shiel itself is a freshwater loch twenty kilometres west of Fort William, twenty-eight kilometres long, the fourth longest in Scotland, and the longest to have kept a natural outflow with no regulation of its level. It is one hundred and twenty metres deep, less than ten metres above the sea, and was a sea loch until glacial deposits closed it at the end of the last ice age. The four-kilometre River Shiel once carried boats. It is no longer navigable, because the depth falls to less than a foot. In the medieval period the loch was the boundary of Moidart to the west, Ardgour to the east, and Sunart to the south. The castle sits where that river meets the tide.

The age of the stone castle is not agreed. One account counts Castle Tioram among Somerled’s castles in the twelfth century. Others place the beginning in the thirteenth century or the fourteenth. A survey of 1889 proposed a thirteenth-century foundation. That date was endorsed in the mid-twentieth century and coloured later descriptions, including a thirteenth-century castle with later work, and a curtain thought to be of the thirteenth century. A reassessment that set the architecture against the documents makes a mid-fourteenth-century beginning highly likely. A reading published in 2026 still groups the castle with other enclosure castles and the traditional thirteenth-century date, and then judges the fabric probably mainly of the fourteenth century. The lower stage of the wall may be thirteenth-century, but both that stage and the old tower at the south-east may belong to the middle of the fourteenth century. The listed description, removed from the list in 2019 but still the architectural summary attached to the old entry, calls the castle thirteenth-century, with a later keep, possibly fourteenth-century, and domestic additions including a high tower of about 1600. Another account calls the earliest building inside the curtain a sixteenth-century keep, with the south range added about 1600. The island, as distinct from the castle, is first recorded in a charter of Cairistíona Nic Ruaidhrí. A separate notice says the castle on Eilean Tioram is first mentioned in a charter of 1372.

Somerled, who died in 1164, was a mid-twelfth-century Norse-Gaelic lord. Little is certain of his birth. He may have been born in the north of Ireland, and his father is named GilleBride. During a period of alliance with David I of Scotland he married Ragnhild, daughter of Óláfr, King of Man and the Isles, in 1140. By then he was already lord of Argyll, Kintyre, and Lorne. In November 1153, after David’s death, he rose with the sons of Máel Coluim mac Alaxandair against the boy king Malcolm IV. On 5 and 6 January 1156 he met Godred off Islay with eighty ships. The kingdom was divided, and two years later Somerled drove Godred from power. He was killed in 1164 at the Battle of Renfrew while invading the mainland. His kingdom broke up, though his sons kept much of the southern Hebrides. In the last year of his life he tried to bring Flaithbertach Ua Brolcháin, abbot of Derry, from Ireland to Iona. Contemporary chronicles are hostile to him. Later clan histories add detail that cannot be checked. Moidart had been part of the Kingdom of the Isles, a Norwegian dependency, and Malcolm III’s agreement with Magnus Barelegs had moved the border to the coast, so that Moidart became Scottish on paper. In the early twelfth century Somerled came into possession of Moidart and the country around it. No reliable record says how. In the 1130s he took the Kingdom of the Isles into his own hands. After his death Norwegian authority was restored in name, but the portion that contained Moidart, called Garmoran, was ruled by the MacRory line among his heirs.

That line is Clann Ruaidhrí, named for Ruaidhrí mac Raghnaill, a principal member of Clann Somhairle in the thirteenth century. The family held power in Kintyre and then a provincial lordship along the north-western coast and into the Hebrides. They opposed Scottish authority while Norwegian hegemony lasted, and after the Treaty of Perth in 1266 they entered the kingdom of Scotland. They were a noted source of gallowglass warriors for Ireland. The last Irish gallowglass captain of the name appears in 1342, and the last great chief was assassinated in 1346. The lordship then passed to the chief of Clann Domhnaill and became part of the Lordship of the Isles. One apparent member still held power in the early fifteenth century.

Ailéan mac Ruaidhrí, a son of Ruaidhrí mac Raghnaill, died at some point before 1296. His brother Dubhghall was king of Argyll and the Isles in the middle of the thirteenth century. In 1259 Ailéan commanded the tocher of one hundred and sixty gallowglass warriors when Dubhghall’s daughter married Aodh, son of the king of Connacht. In September 1263 he was one of the commanders who took forty or sixty ships up Loch Long, crossed into Loch Lomond, and ravaged the Lennox. The saga credits him with several hundred head of cattle and much destruction. After the campaign failed, he and Dubhghall were awarded the island territories of Eóghan, who had refused the Norwegian summons. The Treaty of Perth in July 1266 resigned Norwegian rights in Man and the western islands to Scotland. In 1275 Ailéan helped put down the revolt of Guðrøðr on Man. In 1284 he attended the council at Scone that acknowledged Margaret, the Maid of Norway, as heir of Alexander III. Another account places that parliament in 1285, and says that he added Barra to his lands in 1309, a year that falls after the date by which he had disappeared from record. He is given no title in contemporary sources. In 1285 or 1286 a servant of the Spanish crown accused him of piracy in the Hebrides. His widow Isabella married Ingram de Umfraville before Alexander III’s death. His sons Lachlann and Ruaidhrí were illegitimate. His daughter Cairistíona Nic Ruaidhrí was legitimate, and may have been Isabella’s child.

Cairistíona Nic Ruaidhrí, also called Christina of the Isles, is attested from about 1290 to 1318. In August 1296 she and Lachlann did homage to Edward I after his conquest of Scotland. A fourteenth-century account says she sheltered Robert I along the western seaboard when he was a fugitive in 1306, after the killing of John Comyn and the English defeat of his forces in June. Edward I thought Robert was hidden among the western islands. She may have supplied funds, ships, and men. Her husband Donnchadh belonged to the comital kindred of Mar, close to the Bruces. One reading makes him a younger son of Uilleam, Earl of Mar. Another makes him a son of Domhnall I, Earl of Mar. She is described as a widow on the day a Donnchadh submitted to Edward I. Her mother may have been a sister of Robert’s mother, Marjorie, Countess of Carrick. A poem on the Bruce says that, while Robert was consolidating Carrick, a closely related kinswoman lent him forty men, a number that may match the forty merks of land in Carrick assigned to Ingram and Isabella. In 1328 or 1329 Robert provided forty shillings to someone named Christian of Carrick. Whether that woman is Cairistíona Nic Ruaidhrí is not settled.

She was the canonically legitimate heir, but her brothers appear to have held the territories. By an undated charter, confirmed by Robert, she resigned her rights to Ruaidhrí on condition that if he died without a male heir and her son, also named Ruaidhrí, married one of his daughters, her son would take the inheritance. The lordship then recognised covered Moidart, Arisaig, Morar, and Knoydart, and the islands of Rhum, Eigg, Barra, St Kilda, and Uist, a dominion compared with the great lordships of Annandale and Galloway and with any of the kingdom’s thirteen earldoms. Ruaidhrí, styled in one notice king of the Hebrides, was killed in 1318 on the Bruce campaign in Ireland, when his son Raghnall Mac Ruaidhrí may still have been under age. After that death Cairistíona Nic Ruaidhrí tried to transfer most of the lordship to Artúr Caimbéal, perhaps as a marriage alliance with the Campbells. The charter grants Moidart, Arisaig, Morar, Eigg, Rhum and their small islands, and Eilean Tioram. Artúr and his heirs were to outfit a ship of twenty oars for the king’s common army. Uist is missing from that list. The witnesses were men close to Robert and to the war against Clann Dubhghaill, and the grant may have had royal approval. Despite the contract, Raghnall succeeded as chief. A royal forfeiture of a certain Roderici de Ylay in 1325 may be Raghnall resisting the alienation, or it may answer an expansion into former Clann Dubhghaill lands, or it may name someone else. Two later confirmations, one in 1389 by Gofraidh Mac Domhnaill and one in 1410 by Domhnall, Lord of the Isles, say that she granted Teampull na Trionaid and lands at Carinish and Illeray on Uist to Inchaffray Abbey. Those confirmations may preserve real gifts, or they may have been shaped later to support a claim. James I of Scotland is recorded as executing two chieftains who may have been continuing the feud that followed her Campbell contract.

Raghnall Mac Ruaidhrí, called white in a fifteenth-century manuscript, was an illegitimate son of Ruaidhrí. He first appears on record in 1337, when he helped his third cousin Eóin Mac Domhnaill, Lord of the Isles, seek a papal dispensation to marry Raghnall’s sister Áine Nic Ruaidhrí. At that time both men appear as supporters of Edward Balliol. By June 1343 they were reconciled with David II, who confirmed Raghnall in the lordship. About then William III, Earl of Ross, granted him Kintail, and the king confirmed the grant in July. In October 1346, while Raghnall was obeying the royal muster at Perth for an invasion of England, the earl and his adherents killed him and several followers at Elcho. One account calls the place Elcho Priory. Another calls it Elcho Nunnery. William then deserted the host. David II was captured days later. The killing removed the earl’s rival and left Eóin, the earl’s brother-in-law, as the immediate beneficiary. Áine Nic Ruaidhrí was her brother’s heir.

Áine Nic Ruaidhrí, also Amy of Garmoran, Amie MacRuari, and Euphemia, was the sister of Raghnall and the wife of John of Islay. She was a direct descendant of Somerled through Ruaidhri mac Raghnaill. Early modern tradition, preserved in a seventeenth-century history of the MacDonalds of Sleat, says that she erected Castle Tioram. A floruit of 1318 to 1350 is given for her. She is also said to have extended the castle. The marriage was in the 1330s, probably in 1337. From 1336 John styled himself Dominus Insularum, Lord of the Isles. The marriage produced three sons, John, Godfrey, and Ranald. John then allied with Robert the Steward, heir of David II, divorced Áine Nic Ruaidhrí, and married Robert’s daughter Margaret Stewart. A papal dispensation for the divorce is said to have been obtained. The divorce is placed in 1350, four years after she inherited. John received Knapdale and Kintyre as dowry, and the sons of the first marriage were to be passed over in favour of children by Margaret. A late nineteenth-century tradition of the Gàidhealtachd said that she had given no grounds for divorce and lived alone on her estates until her death. The divorce annulled John’s right to her lands, though he obtained a royal charter in which her name does not appear. She is credited with an oratory, Teampull Mhecael, at the south-eastern point of Grimsay, with rebuilding Teampul Chalumchille on Benbecula and the Trinity Church of North Uist, and with the tower of Borve Castle on Benbecula, dated between 1344 and 1363. The year of her death is unknown. Her son Ranald recovered much of the Mac Ruaidhri inheritance, including Garmoran and the North Isles, and was the progenitor of Clan Macdonald of Clanranald and of Clan MacDonell of Glengarry.

The curtain is an irregular pentagon, or a rough five-sided enclosure, fitted to the rocky summit. Seasonal lifts in the masonry show the wall rising in bands, and infilled crenellations show a major later heightening. The single entrance is covered by an overhanging stone bretache. One description puts a segmental-headed entrance to the inner court on the north. The buildings inside were added between the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries. The trust’s architectural account begins with a tower house built into the south-east wall and ends with the decorative turrets of the seaward western tower. The 2026 reading places the old tower at the south-east, allows that the south range may have held the original hall, and sees that range rebuilt in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century as part of a lodging block with a second tower at its west. That quarter was remodelled around 1616 and again in the 1660s, when the prominent stair tower was added to the west tower. The former listed description puts the massive keep at the south-west, rising above the wall-head, with corbelled angle bartizans of about 1600, and fills the south and south-east sides of the court with domestic work of two builds of around 1600, including a tall square projecting gabled tower. All of it is roofless. Deep and narrow crenellation survives. The walls stand nearly to full height, though the wall surfaces have been altered over the past two hundred years. Below the north-west wall is the beach used for landing.

Clanranald, Clann Raghnaill, is the branch of Clan Donald descended from Ranald, or Reginald, son of John of Islay and Áine Nic Ruaidhrí. The chief is styled Captain of Clanranald and, in Gaelic, Mac Mhic Ailein, son of Ailein’s son. Both chief and clan are recognised by the Lord Lyon. In 1371 John confirmed Ranald in most of the old Clann Ruaidhrí lands and granted further mainland lands. Robert II confirmed the charter in 1372. The lands named include Eigg, Rum, Uist, Harris, three pennylands of Sunart and Letterlochette, two pennylands of Ardgour, the pennylands of Hawlaste, and sixty merklands in Lochaber. On John’s death the lordship of the Isles and the chiefship of Clan Donald passed to Donald, son of Margaret, Ranald’s younger half-brother. One account says John died in 1386 at Ardtornish Castle. Ranald is said to have died in 1386 at Castle Tioram and to have been buried at Relig Odhráin on Iona. Another account says he may have died in the same year as his father, and that on his father’s death he was already described as old in the government of the Isles. He had acted as tutor to his half-brother Domhnall. The family historian MacVuirich says that Ranald’s brother Godfrey took Uist and the mainland lands, leaving Ranald’s sons the lands in the isles. From 1372 to 1495 no family charters survive, so the territory cannot be listed with certainty. A charter of James V to John Moidartach in 1531 says that the lands granted had been held by his grandfather Allan, son of Roderick, and by his predecessors: twenty-seven merklands of Moidart, thirty of Arisaig, twenty-one in Eigg, and thirty of Skirhough in South Uist.

Allan, son of Ranald, is said to have fought at Harlaw in 1411. His brother Dugald was slain there. In 1427 James I summoned the highland magnates to Inverness, seized many of them, and executed Alexander MacGorrie, son of Godfrey, after a rapid proceeding. Alexander had been leader of two thousand men and was treated as one of the two most reprehensible. Allan’s name is in the Exchequer Rolls for 1428, the only contemporary record of him. He is said to have died between 1428 and 1430 at Castle Tioram and to have been buried at Relig Odhráin. His son Roderick joined the Earl of Ross against the crown in 1429, when Inverness was pillaged and burned, fought under Donald Balloch at Lochaber in 1431, and in 1455 got most of his men home to Castle Tioram from a failed Macdonald raid on Sutherland. In 1469 John II, Lord of the Isles, granted much of Ranald’s old land to his half-brother Hugh of Sleat, including thirty merklands of Skirbough in South Uist, twelve of Benbecula, and sixty of North Uist, with a further appearance of twenty-four merklands in Arisaig and twenty-one in Eigg in Hugh’s hands. James III had already, in the same year, granted the lairdship of Garmoran and Uist to John. The grant to Hugh was confirmed by the king in a charter of 1493. After Hugh’s death in 1498 his son John resigned the lands to the crown. In 1532 the king granted Moidart to John Moidartach, and the charter also acknowledged John Moidartach’s ownership of the lands of his former uncle Ranald Bane, who had been granted Arisaig some thirty years earlier.

Allan, fourth of Clanranald, supported Angus Óg at the Battle of Bloody Bay, between Ardnamurchan and Tobermory, where Angus defeated his father John. He later supported Alexander of Lochalsh, including at Blar na Pairce in about 1488 against the Mackenzies, and in the rising of 1491 that took Inverness. A story preserved by Henry Whyte says that this Allan confined the chiefs of Macleod, Mackintosh, and Mackay of Strathnaver in Castle Tioram, and that he once escaped Hector Odhar Maclean by being carried as if he were a corpse bound for Iona, then landed on Mull and set houses on fire while Maclean was lifting cattle in Moidart. He is said to have died in 1505 at Blair Atholl. His son Ranald Bane was executed at Perth in 1509. Dougall, who followed, was assassinated by his own clansmen in 1520, and his sons were excluded. John Moidartach, eighth of Clanranald, held Moidart, Arisaig, and Castle Tioram. James V imprisoned him in 1540 and the charters were given to Ranald Gallda. After John’s release the clan, with Keppoch and the Camerons, raided Fraser and Grant lands and took Castle Urquhart. John died in 1584 and was buried at Howmore in South Uist.

His son Allan, ninth, killed a brother of Alexander Macdonald of Keppoch in 1588, was never pardoned, and never received a crown charter, yet held the lands for the rest of his life. Feuds with the Macleods followed his treatment of a daughter of Alasdair Crotach. He died in 1593 and was buried at Islandfinnan. Donald, eleventh, returned to Castle Tioram with galleys full of spoil after campaigning with Angus Macdonald of Dunyvaig against Lachlan Mor Maclean, who had earlier ravaged Rum and Eigg with his own clan and one hundred mercenaries hired from a ship of the Spanish Armada. In 1595 Donald was captured when Lachlan Mor surprised a Macdonald fleet in the Sound of Mull and killed three hundred and fifty men. Donald was knighted at Holyrood by James VI in 1617 and died at Castle Tioram in 1618. John, twelfth, fought with Montrose and Alasdair MacColla at Inverlochy in 1645, then defeated an attack on the garrison of Mingary by the Earl of Argyll and wasted Sunart and Ardnamurchan. He died on Eriskay in 1670 and was buried at Howmore. Donald, thirteenth, lived for the most part at Castle Tioram, made extensive repairs, died at Canna in 1686, and was buried at Howmore.

What the castle was for changed with the century, but the use was lordship: a residence, a place to keep prisoners, a landing for galleys, and the mainland seat of a kindred whose other houses included Borve on Benbecula and, later, Ormaclett in South Uist. The ruined chapel on Eilean Fhianain in Loch Shiel, dedicated to St Finan, is thought to have been built by Alan MacRuaridh, a chief of Clan Ranald, perhaps on a seventh-century cell. The clan used that island as a burial place until the end of the sixteenth century, and burials still take place there.

The garrisoning and the burning are told in more than one way. Allan, fourteenth of Clanranald, was educated at Inverness and by university tutors at home. One account says his principal residence was garrisoned by William of Orange after the Battle of Killiecrankie in 1689, and that the garrison was removed in 1698. Another says the castle was seized by government forces in around 1692, when Allan joined the exiled court of James VII and II in France despite having sworn allegiance to William III and II and Mary II, and that a small garrison remained until 1715. Mary II was born on 30 April 1662 at St James’s Palace, daughter of James, Duke of York, and Anne Hyde, and niece of Charles II. She married her cousin William of Orange on 4 November 1677. William was born at The Hague on 4 November 1650, after his father’s death, and was stadtholder of the Dutch provinces from 1672. In June 1688 the birth of James Francis Edward Stuart, and the acquittal of the seven bishops, turned opposition to James into a revolution. William landed at Brixham on 5 November 1688. James left for France on 23 December. In February 1689 a Convention treated the English throne as vacated and installed William and Mary as joint monarchs. Mary died of smallpox on 28 December 1694, aged thirty-two. William ruled alone until his death on 8 March 1702. A seizure in 1692 would have fallen in her lifetime. A garrison removed only in 1698 would have outlasted her. In the same year as the supposed seizure, thirty-eight unarmed MacDonalds of Glencoe were killed when an attempt to suppress Jacobitism became entangled with an older feud, MacIain of Glencoe having been late in signing the oath to William. James himself died on 16 September 1701 at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. His son’s attempt to recover the thrones in 1715 was raised by the Earl of Mar at Braemar on 27 August, with the standard of James the Eighth and Third displayed on 6 September.

In that rising Allan recaptured Castle Tioram and burned it, in one account to keep it out of Hanoverian hands. The former listed entry says it was burned by Allan Dearg of Clanranald in 1715 rather than let it fall into the hands of Campbell of Argyll. A news report of the later inquiry gives the local tradition that he left secret instructions to set the castle on fire, partly so that government troops could not reoccupy it and partly from a foreboding that he would not return. An engineer’s report dated at Edinburgh on 3 October 1748 tells a different sequence. A detachment of the king’s troops was sent to the castle, was surprised and made prisoner by the rebels, and the rebels burned the castle. The same report says that if repaired the place might hold a party of fifty men, and that the repairs would cost at least eight hundred, the currency mark being unclear in the surviving copy, because the walls were quite insufficient from the burning and the weather. Allan was mortally wounded at the Battle of Sheriffmuir on 13 November 1715. One account says he was killed there. Another says he died the next day at Drummond Castle and was buried at Innerpeffray, the burial place of the Perth family. Clan Donald men of Keppoch and of Clanranald fought at Sheriffmuir, and the result of the battle was indecisive. James Francis Edward landed at Peterhead on 22 December 1715 and left from Montrose on 5 February 1716.

The castle has been unoccupied since the burning, with some accounts of partial use afterward. Those accounts include storage of firearms from the ship called De Tuillay in the rising of 1745, the vessel the narrative of that rising calls Du Teillay, and a mention in the account of the kidnapping of Rachel Chiesley, Lady Grange. Her own life, as it is now told, does not name this castle among the places of her captivity. She was baptised on 4 February 1679, married James Erskine, Lord Grange, perhaps in 1707, and was kidnapped in 1732 after she produced letters she said proved his plotting against the Hanoverian government. She was held on the Monach Isles, on Skye, and on St Kilda, and later possibly at Assynt, Harris, and Uist, before Waternish on Skye, where one account says she died on 12 May 1745 and was buried at Trumpan. Another account puts her death at Idrigill in June 1749. Du Teillay was a sixteen-gun privateer. With the elderly warship Elizabeth it left for the Outer Hebrides in July 1745 carrying Charles Edward Stuart and weapons. HMS Lion forced Elizabeth back. Du Teillay landed Charles at Eriskay. He was then rowed the length of Loch Shiel to raise his standard at Glenfinnan. The castle page’s mention of firearms from that ship is an account of partial habitation, not a statement that the lost cargo of Elizabeth was brought here.

Ranald, fifteenth, never married, died at Faubourg Saint-Germain in 1725, and was buried in Paris. A report by General Wade in 1724 estimated the Macdonels of Moidart at eight hundred men. Donald, sixteenth, died in 1730 and was buried at Cladh Mhuire, Nunton. Ranald, seventeenth, was born in 1692, refused to aid Charles Edward Stuart, and did not stop his eldest son from doing so. He died at Nunton in 1766. That son, Ranald, eighteenth, was educated in France, knew Charles, and with Macdonald of Kinlochmoidart and Macdonald of Glenaladale was among the first to join in 1745. He raised two hundred and fifty clansmen and, after Glenfinnan, led five hundred men to Dundee, arriving on 8 September, and proclaimed James Francis Edward Stuart king. The clan was at Prestonpans and Falkirk. At Culloden in April 1746 the Clanranald regiment was two hundred men, on the Jacobite left rather than the right the Macdonalds preferred. Legend says the Macdonald regiments refused to charge because of that slight. The regiment was disbanded at Fort Augustus two days after the defeat. Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, the poet and Gaelic tutor of Charles, was a company commander, and he was born and raised in this country. Ranald died at Nunton in 1776. John Moidartach, nineteenth, died in Edinburgh in 1794 and was buried at Holyrood.

Plans in the eighteenth century to turn the ruin into a government fort were not carried out. Worked stone, including lintels and fire surrounds, was robbed during a long neglect. Early conservation in the nineteenth century cleared the debris inside the walls and, with it, the archaeological material that debris held. Ranald George, twentieth, born in 1788, sold almost all the traditional lands between 1813 and 1838, for a total of over two hundred and thirteen thousand two hundred and eleven pounds. At the end he held only the ruins of Castle Tioram. He died in London in 1873 and was buried at Brompton Cemetery. The direct line of chiefs ended in 1944 with the death of Angus Roderick, twenty-third. The chiefship passed to the Macdonalds of Boisdale. Ranald Alexander Macdonald was recognised by the Lord Lyon in 1956 as twenty-fourth chief and captain. A review was still noted in 2013 after a claim that an older line had not died out. On the estates, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries brought clearance and religious pressure. In 1769 the chief tried to force the tenants of South Uist into Presbyterianism. In 1772 more than two hundred Roman Catholics, mainly from South Uist, Barra, Eigg, and mainland western Inverness-shire, emigrated to Prince Edward Island. In 1790 and 1791 about nine hundred people from South Uist, Barra, Moidart, and Morar followed. In 1842 the women of Loch Shiel are said to have driven off an eviction party with shearing hooks and aprons full of stones. A road into Moidart was approved in 1963 and built in 1966. Mains electricity reached residents in 1988.

Before 1928, remains of a bronze hanging bowl were recovered from a kitchen midden at the castle. The bowl is six and a half inches in diameter and was spun from a single piece of bronze. It was first published as fifth-century. A later judgment places hanging bowls of this kind between the fifth and the eighth centuries and calls this one late, perhaps seventh-century. A separate account calls it the rim of a bowl, probably seventh-century, found in a midden in the 1920s. It is in the West Highland Museum at Fort William. A visit on 3 June 1970 found no firmer find-spot than a cleft in the rock about eight metres north-west of the gable, which has almost certainly been used as a midden. No other excavated assemblage from the walls is published in the records read here. Glasgow University’s archaeology unit produced, around 1998 and 1999, a study of the documents, a topographical and archaeological survey of the island, an underwater survey, a building analysis, a report on the archaeological resource, a geophysical survey, and research proposals for excavation. An underwater investigation of the loch and its relation to the island is dated 1999. The historic-environment event dated 20 May 2002 lists environmental sampling, excavation, geophysical survey, and trial trenching, and the text filed with it is the 1999 research proposal. Those papers do not include a catalogue of finds.

The castle and the island were scheduled in 1920, the date of addition given as 28 April and also as 27 April, and the schedule was amended in 1969, the date given as 29 October and also as 28 October. The designation is a secular castle. It was listed in category A on 5 October 1971. That listing was removed on 12 December 2019 under a dual-designation review, on the ground that national importance would continue to be recognised by the scheduling. The owner Wiseman Macdonald, also written Madconald, of Los Angeles, had the ruins put into repair by the ministry then responsible for ancient monuments. The ministry’s own conservation is placed in the 1920s and the 1950s. The royal commission that recorded ancient monuments, since absorbed into the national heritage body, holds a large archive of research, drawings, and photographs lodged by later owners. The place is not described in these records as a World Heritage inscription.

In the summer of 1997 the ruin was offered for sale at one hundred thousand pounds by that absentee owner. A community bid was being prepared. Anta Estates, led by Lex Brown of Maybole in Ayrshire, bought the castle. The price is given as three hundred thousand pounds, and also as a reported one hundred thousand. Lex Brown, born in Maybole, was a decorated pilot of helicopters in the Royal Air Force, was brought up in Egypt and Ghana, farmed on Loch Lomondside, and made a fortune in air cargo and oil exploration. He died on 11 February 2022, aged seventy-six, and left a wife and two daughters. The Caisteal Tioram Trust, a charity for conservation and community interests, was formed in 1997 when the castle was put up for sale. It did not succeed in buying it. The trust says that until the sale the castle was freely open to thousands of visitors each year.

The new owners’ proposals, announced in 1997, received planning consent from Highland Council. They included a clan centre and museum, domestic apartments, and some public access. Scheduled monument consent was refused. A letter of May 1999 said that any cultural benefit was outweighed by the damage to the historic fabric and to the cultural significance of the castle, that the reconstructed building would not reflect any known historic form, and that the scheme mixed conjecture, elements with no physical or documentary evidence, and elements that set the evidence aside. Highland Council’s consent was given on conditions of increased public access, a local liaison group, and a binding arrangement for the funding. A public local inquiry was held at Acharacle in 2001. Another account places the inquiry in 2002. An appeal to the Scottish Government is placed in 2006. The refusal was upheld. The owner continued to seek a reroofing and a private dwelling. Discussions were renewed after a change of personnel, and were still described as early.

Highland Council issued a dangerous-buildings order in 1998 and closed the castle to the public. The main structure was called inherently strong, and a report concluded that without major consolidation the risk of further collapse in five to ten years was significant. A fall of several square metres of the outer layer of the north-west curtain is dated to 2000 and was repaired by the owners. The trust’s architectural note dates a stonefall from that curtain to 1999. A news report of the inquiry period describes a gap of ten feet by ten feet, repairs costing sixty thousand pounds, and materials flown in by helicopter. A condition report in September 2014 found no significant change in the stonework since the repair. The trust’s reading of that survey goes further: where photographs could be compared, no structural stone had moved since 1997, and the same was true of photographs going back to 1926. The courtyard had a heavy growth of brambles and nettles, and some walls carried ivy and tree seedlings. A further survey in 2016, concerned with neglect, recorded fences and notices put up by the owner around 1998 to 2000. They stood on iron drums filled with concrete so that the ground would not be disturbed. The trust judged that those fences had served no purpose for at least a decade and that the decaying drums were sinking into the soil and compromising the archaeology. Richard Oram, professor of medieval and environmental history at the University of Stirling since September 2002, president of the Scottish Castles Association from June 2014, and a trustee of National Museums Scotland from October 2023, set out the architectural reading summarised above in May 2026 and noted that the interior was inaccessible, his own courtyard photographs dating from 1984.

The castle can be reached on foot across the tidal causeway. There is no access to the interior because of the risk of falling masonry. It is one of seventeen tidal islands that can be walked to from the Scottish mainland. It appears in the opening aerial montage of the fourth-season episode Homeland of the television series Highlander. That season was first broadcast from 25 September 1995 to 26 May 1996. The walls remain a roofless shell, privately owned, closed inside, and still the traditional seat in memory of the captains of Clanranald.

Canonical page: https://getsitesee.com/places/castle-tioram