# Dunstaffnage Castle

castle in Argyll and Bute, Scotland, UK

Argyll and Bute, United Kingdom

Fortification. 1220 CE

## Story

• A stone castle of enclosure on a rock at the mouth of Loch Etive, built for the MacDougalls in the early or middle thirteenth century and later held by the Crown and the Campbells.
• Round towers, a later gatehouse, and a private chapel of the same century still stand, the chapel about 150 metres from the walls.
• Robert Bruce took it after the Pass of Brander in 1308, and it remained a garrison through the Jacobite risings.
• Flora MacDonald was held here for a few days in 1746 after helping Charles Edward Stuart escape.
• Excavation found an earlier curtain under the north tower and medieval lime kilns outside the walls. A pipe trench in 2021 found no significant archaeology.
• The hereditary captain must still spend three nights a year in the castle.

## Visiting

From 1 April to 30 September the castle is open daily from 9.30am to 4.30pm. From 1 October to 31 March it opens from 10am to 3.30pm on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday, and is closed on Thursday and Friday. Last entry is 30 minutes before closing. The site is closed on 24 December and remains closed through 4 January.
Book in advance for the lower ticket price. An adult ticket is £7.50 online and £8.50 in person, a concession ticket is £6 online and £6.80 in person, and a child ticket for ages 7 to 15 is £3.50 online and £4 in person. Members receive free admission. Visitors with disabilities pay the standard admission, no proof is required, and up to two carers receive free entry with them.
Assistance dogs are allowed to enter roofed areas. Other dogs are allowed to enter the outdoor areas.

## History

Dunstaffnage Castle stands on a conglomerate rock at the mouth of Loch Etive, with the sea on three sides and a sheltered bay to the south-east. It lies near Dunbeg, given as 3 miles north-north-east of Oban and as about 3.5 miles to the north-east. The name joins a Gaelic word for a fort to a Norse word for a headland of staves. A charter of 1572 calls a nearby ridge the old fort, and nothing visible on the castle rock is dated before Somerled’s death in 1164.

The MacDougalls, descended from Somerled through his son Dugald, held Lorn and islands that included Mull. Donnchadh of Argyll, Dugald’s son, is the builder named in his own life, and he also founded Ardchattan around 1230. Other accounts leave the first stonework to Dugald, to Donnchadh, or to his son Ewen, in the early or middle thirteenth century, before 1240, or in the 1220s. Round towers were added later, credited either to Ewen MacDougall or to Alexander MacDougall around 1260 to 1280, on the model of Inverlochy.

Ewen was appointed king of the Isles by Hákon in 1248, or styled himself king, and lost that title within a year. Alexander II died on the campaign against him in 1249, on Kerrera in one account. Ewen recovered his Scottish lands in 1255, refused Hákon in 1263, and resigned Mull.

The Isles passed to Scotland by the Treaty of Perth in 1266. His son Alexander became sheriff in the new western sheriffdom of 1293. In the wars that followed, the family backed England against Robert Bruce. John of Lorne mauled Bruce at Dalrigh in 1306.

In the summer of 1308, or in a range that reaches into 1309, Bruce broke the MacDougalls in the Pass of Brander and, after a brief siege, took this castle. He kept it, appointed a constable, and later based a constabulary here under Arthur Campbell. John Gallda recovered the old MacDougall lands in 1358, and the lordship then passed through heiresses to the Stewarts.

James I is said both to have seized the castle in 1431 because his enemies were inside, and to have used it as a base against the MacDonalds. John Stewart of Lorn was killed, or only wounded, on the way to the chapel in 1463. Colin Campbell, 1st earl of Argyll, received Lorn in 1469 or in April 1470. Hereditary captains, not the earls themselves, kept the castle, with a peacetime garrison set out in a charter of 1502.

A gatehouse of the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, called both three and four storeys, later gained upper floors for the captain. James IV met local chiefs here in 1493, and the castle was a muster point and a place of execution and repair through the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It held out against Montrose in 1644, saw Coll Ciotach hanged in 1647, took a Cromwellian garrison from 1652 to 1660, and was burned in 1685 after the earl of Argyll’s rising. Government troops held it in 1715 and 1745.

Flora MacDonald was detained here for a few days in 1746 on her way to London, after helping Charles Edward Stuart escape to Skye. Her own life has her held in the Tower and released in June 1747, and the crossing is dated both 27 June and the night of 28 to 29 June. An accidental fire in 1810 drove the captains out of the gatehouse.

State care is dated both to an agreement in 1958 and to guardianship in 1962. The captain must still spend three nights a year in the castle. The curtain is about 35 by 30 metres. One account takes the walls up to 18 metres including the rock, and another measures 6.1 to 8.2 metres above the courtyard.

The chapel, about 150 metres away, is a private church of about 1225 to 1250, measured both as 20 by 6 metres and as 22.1 by 8.1 metres. A Campbell burial aisle was added in 1740. Excavation from 1987 to 1994 found an earlier curtain under the north tower, and later work found medieval lime kilns. A watching brief in 2021 on the visitor-centre pipe found no significant archaeology.

Hector Boece’s Evonium, the Stone of Destiny, and a fifteenth- or sixteenth-century chess king have all been attached to the rock. Iona and Dunadd are treated as more likely homes for the stone.

## Photographs

- [Dunstaffnage Castle — Anne Burgess](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Dunstaffnage_Castle.jpg)
- [The gate of Dunstaffnage castle. — Eusebius](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Dunstaffnage_castle_-_gate.JPG)
- [Dunstaffnage Castle. The 13th century stronghold of the MacDougalls. Flora MacDonald was imprisoned here in 1746 — Anne Burgess](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Dunstaffnage_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_14234.jpg)
- [Dunstaffnage Castle — Damon Hall](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/Dunstaffnage_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_395707.jpg)
- [Dunstaffnage Castle Built by the MacDougals to command the Firth of Lorne it lies just a few miles to the north of Oban. — Andrew Wood](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Dunstaffnage_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1037592.jpg)
- [in sepia...Feb 2009 — allen watkin from London, UK](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Dunstaffnage_Castle_%283326193566%29.jpg)
- ["You Have To Have A Ticket Before You Go Up They Steps Sur" — Neil Aitkenhead](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/%22You_Have_To_Have_A_Ticket_Before_You_Go_Up_They_Steps_Sur%22_-_panoramio.jpg)
- [Ordnance Survey Tourist Map of Ben Nevis and Glencoe, Scotland, at a scale of 1:63,360 or one inch to one mile. — The Director General of the Ordnance Survey](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Ben_Nevis_and_Glen_Coe%2C_One-inch_Ordnance_Survey_Tourist_Map%2C_Published_1959.jpg)
- [Access to Dunstaffnage Castle — C Michael Hogan](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Access_to_Dunstaffnage_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1957981.jpg)
- [Dunstaffnage Castle — Karl and Ali](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Dunstaffnage_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2086403.jpg)

## Sources

- [Dunstaffnage Castle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunstaffnage_Castle) — Wikipedia
- [Donnchadh of Argyll](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donnchadh_of_Argyll) — Wikipedia
- [Ewen MacDougall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewen_MacDougall) — Wikipedia
- [Battle of the Pass of Brander](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Pass_of_Brander) — Wikipedia
- [Flora MacDonald](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flora_MacDonald) — Wikipedia
- [Charles Edward Stuart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Edward_Stuart) — Wikipedia
- [Hector Boece](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_Boece) — Wikipedia
- [W. Douglas Simpson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Douglas_Simpson) — Wikipedia
- [Dunstaffnage Castle and Chapel statement of significance](https://www.historicenvironment.scot/publications/all/publication/?publicationId=35ac8b49-3966-4cde-9149-a8b800a5fb2f) — Historic Environment Scotland
- [Plan your visit, Dunstaffnage Castle and Chapel](https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit/all/dunstaffnage-castle-and-chapel/plan-your-visit/) — Historic Environment Scotland
- [Dunstaffnage Castle and Chapel](https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/places/dunstaffnage-castle-and-chapel/) — Historic Environment Scotland
- [Dunstaffnage Castle designation](https://www.trove.scot/designation/SM90120) — Historic Environment Scotland
- [Dunstaffnage Castle Chapel designation](https://www.trove.scot/designation/SM90121) — Historic Environment Scotland
- [Excavations in the north tower and east range, 1987-94](https://journals.socantscot.org/index.php/psas/article/view/9945) — Society of Antiquaries of Scotland
- [Survey and excavation at Dunstaffnage Castle, Argyll](https://journals.socantscot.org/index.php/psas/article/view/9754) — Society of Antiquaries of Scotland
- [Septic tank watching brief, February and May 2021](https://doi.org/10.5284/1133887) — Archaeology Data Service
- [Multi-period activity, the European Marine Science Park, Dunstaffnage](https://doi.org/10.9750/issn.1473-3803.2016.60) — Scottish Archaeological Internet Reports
- [Dunstaffnage Castle.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dunstaffnage_Castle.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Dunstaffnage castle - gate.JPG](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dunstaffnage_castle_-_gate.JPG) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Dunstaffnage Castle - geograph.org.uk - 14234.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dunstaffnage_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_14234.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Dunstaffnage Castle - geograph.org.uk - 395707.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dunstaffnage_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_395707.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Dunstaffnage Castle - geograph.org.uk - 1037592.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dunstaffnage_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1037592.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Dunstaffnage Castle (3326193566).jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dunstaffnage_Castle_(3326193566).jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- ["You Have To Have A Ticket Before You Go Up They Steps Sur" - panoramio.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22You_Have_To_Have_A_Ticket_Before_You_Go_Up_They_Steps_Sur%22_-_panoramio.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Ben Nevis and Glen Coe, One-inch Ordnance Survey Tourist Map, Published 1959.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ben_Nevis_and_Glen_Coe,_One-inch_Ordnance_Survey_Tourist_Map,_Published_1959.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Access to Dunstaffnage Castle - geograph.org.uk - 1957981.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Access_to_Dunstaffnage_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1957981.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Dunstaffnage Castle - geograph.org.uk - 2086403.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dunstaffnage_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2086403.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons

## Detailed history

Dunstaffnage Castle is a partially ruined stone enclosure on a platform of conglomerate at the south-west side of the entrance to Loch Etive, in the parish of Kilmore and Kilbride. The sea surrounds it on three sides, and Dunstaffnage Bay gives a sheltered anchorage to the south-east. One account places it 3 miles, about 5 kilometres, north-north-east of Oban, near Dunbeg. Another places it about 3.5 miles, 5.6 kilometres, north-east of Oban and just north of that village. The Gaelic name is Caisteal Dhùn Stadhainis. The first element means a fort. The rest is explained as Norse stafa nes, a headland of the staves, and also as a staff-headland, compared with the staff-inlet behind the name of Stavanger. The staff may have been a mark for sailors or a sign of lordship. A charter of 1572 names a place here called sen down, read as Sean Dùn, the old fort. That name has been put on Chapel Hill, a rocky ridge about 160 metres south-west of the castle, which may have been an iron-age dun. Nothing now visible on the castle rock can be dated before the death of Somerled in 1164.

Before the stone castle, the headland has been proposed as Dun Monaidh, a stronghold of Dál Riata, as early as the seventh century. The same discussion says there is no firm archaeological evidence for occupation of the castle site in that century. A record made by John Monipennie in 1612 says the Stone of Destiny was kept here after it was brought from Ireland and before it was taken to Scone in 843. Iona and Dunadd are treated as more likely, because of their known links with the kings of Dál Riata and Strathclyde. Hector Boece, the Dundee historian who became the first principal of King’s College in Aberdeen, wrote that the stone was kept at Evonium, also given as Eudonium. Later writers in the sixteenth century identified that place with this castle. Another suggestion puts Evonium at Irvine in Ayrshire. In the origin story that grew up to answer English claims of overlordship, Gaythelos, a son of the king of Athens, married Scota, a daughter of the pharaoh, and the kingdom took her name. Scota, or a descendant, Fergus son of Feradach, was said to have brought the stone and to have been crowned on it after making a kingdom in the west. Boece has the stone stay in Argyll even through a Roman exile of more than forty years, and has Kenneth MacAlpin take it to Scone in the middle of the ninth century. That is a different date from 843. Thomas Pennant, visiting in 1772, was shown a chess king found in a ruined part of the castle and took it for a coronation on the stone. The piece is carved from a sperm-whale tooth, a crowned king on a throne, in the same tradition as the ivory chessmen of about 1300 from Lewis, but this one is of the fifteenth or sixteenth century. Its present whereabouts are unknown. In 1900 the Duke of Argyll wrote to the captain about a supposed old receptacle in the wall for the stone. That may be the aumbry in the vaulted opening under the stair in the east range. The castle is given the role of a major royal centre in this widely believed account of how the Scots arrived. It is not treated as a reliable early history of the rock.

Somerled, a prince of the twelfth century, is the ancestor claimed for the MacDougall owners. Chronicles of about 1260 say that some chiefs of the Isles, unhappy with King Godred around 1155, wanted Somerled’s son Dugald made king in his place. Somerled defeated Godred in a sea battle in 1156, and the two divided the kingdom. Two years later Somerled forced Godred off the Isle of Man and took the kingship of all the Isles for himself, not for Dugald. Somerled was killed in battle near Renfrew in 1164. Godred took the Isles back, and his line ruled there until 1265. Somerled’s lands were divided among his sons. Dugald, usually taken to be the eldest, is given Lorn and island possessions that included Mull. He is the namesake of the MacDougalls. These descendants, called MacSorleys together, owed allegiance both to Norway and to the king of Scots. That double loyalty was a standing cause of war until the Treaty of Perth in 1266, when King Magnus of Norway gave the Isles to Alexander III of Scotland.

Donnchadh of Argyll, Donnchadh mac Dubhghaill, is the man Englished as Duncan, son of Dougall. He was the son of Dubhghall mac Somhairle, so a grandson of Somerled, not a son. One visitor notice calls the builder Earl Somerled’s son and also King of the Isles. His own life and the castle history do not. He was born before 1175, probably in the middle of the twelfth century, at a place that is not recorded. He is the first of the MacDougall lords to use the style de Argadia, of Argyll, and he is treated as the founder of their lordship. His life calls him a prominent builder, notable for Ardchattan Priory and for this castle, and it calls the castle his greatest construction and the main seat of the lords of Argyll. He may also have been responsible for the great hall-house at Aros on Mull. A daughter named Gill or Egidia is alleged, without authority, to have married Brian Ua Néill, king of Tír Eógain.

His life puts him first in the records in 1175, with his father and his brother Amhlaibh, in the Durham Liber Vitae, on a pilgrimage to St Cuthbert. The significance account instead describes that Durham visit as Dugald’s, made with his chaplain, and says Dugald offered two gold rings and a yearly grant of a mark. The two can sit together if the father made the gifts and the sons were named with him. The great feuds on the western seaboard since Somerled were easing. Ruaidhrí mac Raghnaill, king of the Isles and lord of Argyll, was at peace with Ragnall mac Gofraid, king of Man, and was friendly with Ailean mac Lachlainn, lord of Galloway and constable of Scotland. In that setting Alexander II led expeditions into Argyll in 1221 and 1222. Those campaigns led to Donnchadh being recognised, or appointed, to the lordship of Lorne. He stayed a strong supporter of the Scottish crown against Ruaidhrí and against Amhlaibh Dubh, and the expeditions are said to have given him domination of the kindreds of all Argyll in Ruaidhrí’s place. Around 1225 he appears as Donnchadh de Argadia in a charter of Maol Domhnaich, earl of Lennox, who died in 1250, to Paisley Abbey. That is the first attestation of the locative name his descendants used among the higher nobility. The significance account puts his activity a little earlier, about 1224, for a Paisley charter. In 1229 the Manx king Raghnall mac Gofraidh was killed. Fear of Galwegian or Scottish intervention sent the Manx to Norway. The Norwegian expedition, led by Óspakr-Hákon, probably Donnchadh’s brother, ravaged Kintyre and in 1230 attacked Bute, then held by the Stewarts. The expedition failed and Óspakr-Hákon died. Donnchadh remained in possession.

Around 1230, or in 1230 or 1231, he founded a house of Valliscaulian monks at Ardchattan on the shore of Loch Etive. The order was fashionable under Alexander II. Other houses of the same years were Beauly and Pluscarden. The priory would have supplied prayers for the family and their ancestors, and probably a burial place. The castle history says he travelled to Rome in 1237. His own life says he appears in Scottish sources in 1237, and for the last time in 1244, as one of the magnates named on a letter from Alexander II to the pope. It does not itself describe a journey to Rome. His death cannot be fixed. The summary of his life puts it between 1244 and 1248. An Irish record for 1247 says that Mac Somhairle, king of Airer-Gaeidhel, and nobles of the Cenél Conaill were slain at Ballyshannon. McDonald takes that man to be Donnchadh. Seán Duffy takes him to be Domhnall mac Raghnaill, the ancestor of Clan Donald. Alex Woolf and Sellar both think Donnchadh would have been too old to be fighting in Ireland, and both point to Ruaidhrí mac Raghnaill. His son was fully in charge of the lordship by 1249, which is the practical sign that the father was dead.

Either Dugald, or his son Duncan, or his grandson Ewen, might reasonably be considered the builder of the castle and the chapel. Early documents do not locate a centre of lordship for Somerled, and nothing visible here predates 1164, but the senior line may have built on his achievement. Architectural historians generally put the castle in the thirteenth century, more probably the earlier part, about the same time as the chapel. The public visit account says it was built before 1240. The castle history says the seat of Duncan, lord of Lorn, belongs to the second quarter of the thirteenth century, and that the fabric dates from the 1220s, while also saying there was a castle here in the time of Somerled. The first build was a quadrangle of thick high walls, probably with few openings apart from a simple entrance, taking the whole summit of the rock. It is compared with Mingary and Tioram, other early enclosures belonging to descendants of Somerled. The dating of that first phase, here and at those two, is contentious. Simple castles of enclosure were probably built in the west over a long period. If the double-lancet window with dog-tooth ornament in the east curtain is original work, it is compared with the chapel and dated about 1225 to 1250. It would have lit the upper end of a first-floor hall.

The castle was then altered, perhaps while it was still incomplete. Round towers were added at three corners, and embrasures with arrow slits were cut into the curtain. The towers sit awkwardly. They hardly flank the outer walls, and the north and west towers project well into the courtyard. The west tower, and no doubt the others at first, has arrow slits. Six more are counted in the curtains, four in the south-west wall and two in the south-east. Those slits and their embrasures sit above the level where the curtain is drawn in, a scarcement on the inner face, which may mark the moment a new plan was adopted. The castle history thinks it probable that Ewen MacDougall built the three round towers and enlarged the hall inside. Excavation is cited there for the north tower, at least, as an early addition, suited to his higher status. The significance account thinks a crown occupation from 1249 to 1255 is possible, but more likely gives the remodelling to Alexander MacDougall, lord of Argyll, about 1260 to 1280, around the time his father-in-law John Comyn was building Inverlochy, which was very probably the model. The change went beyond defence. It allowed a stone suite around two sides of the courtyard: a first-floor hall, kitchens and private rooms, an idea coming from mainland Scotland. In the Isles, great men long remained content with a free-standing hall and separate buildings, often largely of wood.

Ewen MacDougall, Eóghan MacDubhghaill, is also called Ewan of Argyll or Ewan of Lorne. He was Donnchadh’s son, and he was styled king of the Isles and lord of Argyll. After the death of Haraldr Óláfsson, king of Man and the Isles, in 1248, Hákon Hákonarson of Norway appointed him king of the Isles. Within a year that title went to his paternal second cousin, Dubhghall mac Ruaidhrí. A year-by-year summary of the same life has him made king of some of the Isles in 1248, and clearly head of his kin by 1247, when he sailed to Bergen to seek kingship from Hákon. The castle history says he inherited in the 1240s and styled himself king of the Isles, though that title belonged to the MacDonalds. Those are three ways of putting the same claim. Alexander II then campaigned against him after he refused to renounce homage to Hákon. The king fell ill and died on the expedition. He is also placed dying of an illness on Kerrera in 1249. Ewen seems to have been temporarily deprived of his Argyll possessions. In 1250 he tried to obtain the Isle of Man and was driven off by the inhabitants. He went to Norway hoping to be recognised as king of the Isles, and failed. By 1255 Henry III of England had secured a deal by which Ewen regained Lorne and came into full Scottish allegiance. Those Scottish lands, lost since 1249, are also placed as recovered in 1255 through that English support.

When Hákon campaigned against the Scots in 1263, Ewen refused him service and remained a Scottish loyalist. He asked Hákon to take back the dominion that had been granted to him, and he resigned his island possessions, including Mull. After Hákon’s defeat at the Battle of Largs he regained formal recognition as ruler of the Isles. His last recorded appearance is in 1268. The significance account puts his death sometime between about 1268 and 1275. His son Alasdair, Alexander, followed him as lord of Argyll. A daughter, Maria, died in 1302. She married four times: first Magnús Óláfsson, king of Man and the Isles, then Maol Íosa II, earl of Strathearn, then Hugh, lord of Abernethy, then Sir William FitzWarin. Alexander of Argyll, who had succeeded about 1268, was one of the commanders sent in 1275 to suppress an uprising in Man led by an illegitimate son of the last king of the Isles. John Comyn was among those leaders. Alexander Stewart of Dundonald, who died in 1282, had commanded the Scottish force that saw off the Norwegian invasion at Largs in 1263, and he is the man credited with the four round towers at Rothesay. The owners of Inverlochy, Dunstaffnage and Rothesay were all at the centre of the effort to end the Norwegian threat and take the Isles. When the castle was remodelled, it may already have been looking out on islands that no longer belonged to Alexander MacDougall.

In 1293, when John Balliol set up three new sheriffdoms in the west, Alexander was made sheriff of one of them, probably including the Mull and Islay groups. The castle history calls him the first sheriff of Argyll in that year. The family had backed the Scottish monarchy after Alexander III pushed back Norse power in Argyll. In the Wars of Scottish Independence, dated in one account from 1296 to 1328, they became leading supporters of England and opponents of Robert Bruce. On 10 September 1296 Edward I commissioned Alexander, earl of Menteith, to deliver to him the castles, islands and lands of Alexander of Argyll and of his eldest son John. Much of Argyll was under Alexander, who was related by marriage to John Comyn, the Red Comyn, killed by Bruce and his adherents at Dumfries in 1306. That killing turned the Comyn network, long in the front of the national struggle, against Bruce. After Bruce’s defeat at Methven, what remained of his army was mauled at the Battle of Dalrigh, also Dail Righ, near Tyndrum, by Alexander’s son John of Lorne, Iain Bacach, the Lame. Bruce narrowly escaped and went into hiding. Edward I died in July 1307, short of the Scottish border, on his way north. Edward II turned to English politics. Bruce, expecting the English back in the summer of 1308, moved quickly. A campaign in Galloway in September 1307 was followed by a march into the Highlands, supported by galleys up Loch Linnhe. John, acting for his elderly father, asked a truce. Bruce then fought the Buchan campaign through the winter, ending at Inverurie in May 1308, and came back to the west.

The Battle of the Pass of Brander was Bruce’s victory over the MacDougalls of Argyll, and Clan Macnaghten is also named on their side. It belongs both to the Wars of Scottish Independence and to the civil war between Bruce and Balliol. The sources do not fix the day. Dates from 1308 to 1309 have been suggested. Late summer 1308 is the most likely, and one history dates it to August 1308. Only Barbour’s poem places the fight. It does not name the pass, but the description fits. Cairns around the Bridge of Awe may support that spot. The eastern end of the pass was dammed in 1959. A book of 1997 argues that the traditional site is wrong and that the fight was farther north, on the shore of Loch Etive, and should be called the Battle of Ben Cruachan. The reply is that Bruce, coming from the east, had to clear the pass first, that a march along Loch Etive in full view of enemy galleys would have been suicidal, and that a galley was still the best escape even on the inland water of Loch Awe. Loch Awe was not a Campbell lake at that moment. The Campbells had been eclipsed by the MacDougalls.

Alexander was too old and sick to fight, and he lay in this castle while his eldest son led the war. In the summer of 1308, possibly late August, John’s men hid on the hillside above the narrow path where the River Awe cuts the south slope of Ben Cruachan. John watched from a galley on Loch Awe. He wrote to Edward that he was recovering from an illness. If his men expected another Dalrigh, they were wrong. A party of archers under James Douglas climbed higher on the mountain and came in behind them, unseen. The MacDougalls were caught between Bruce below and Douglas above. They broke and were chased west across the River Awe back to Dunstaffnage. John escaped down the loch and eventually took refuge in England, as the earl of Buchan did. The lord of Argyll surrendered and did homage, but the next year he joined his son in exile and died in 1310 in the service of Edward II. John had reported that, with no help from the other barons of Argyll, he had only 800 men, 500 of them paid to keep his borders, three castles to guard, and a lake 24 leagues long on which he had properly manned ships. The lake is taken to be Loch Awe rather than Etive. The strength and the losses on the day itself are not recorded.

After a brief siege, Robert Bruce took the castle. The visit account says he captured it in 1308. The castle history puts the battle in August 1308 and the taking of the castle immediately after. The control list runs the MacDougalls to 1309, the crown from 1309 to about 1470, and the Campbells from about 1470. A separate heading dates the siege and capture to 1309. Bruce did not destroy the place, as he did others. He appointed a constable and provisioned it, meaning to use it over the countryside and the seaways. With the lands he gave his friend Angus Og Macdonald, lord of the Isles, including much of the MacDougall territory and nearby Mull, the castle could serve that watch. The campaign of 1307 and 1308 ended the internal threat from the Comyn alliance. The survivors had no Scottish power base and could fight only as volunteers in the English army. A bitterness remained, and it came back to Scotland in 1332 in a different war. Sometime after 1318 Bruce created a sheriffdom of Argyll with its caput at Tarbert and dependent constabularies at Dunoon and at Dunstaffnage. The Dunstaffnage constabulary was granted to Arthur Campbell about 1321 or 1322. The Campbells were key supporters, and Arthur was not the only one of them who gained lands in Argyll. It is not clear what then happened to that constabulary. In 1358 David II granted John Gallda of Lorn all the lands that had belonged to his great-grandfather Alexander of Lorn, probably including this castle. John had served as an English admiral in the second decade of the fourteenth century. When he set about restoring the family in the 1350s, he agreed in 1354 with John MacDonald, lord of the Isles, that he might build eight ships of sixteen or twelve oars. At his death about 1376 or 1377 he left two daughters, and the lordship of Lorn passed through them to a branch of the Stewarts. He also left a son, Allan of Dunollie, who had to accept Stewart overlords but kept considerable lands.

The earliest specific mention of the castle in a reliable historic source is the siege and capture of 1308. Relative to other major Scottish castles it is well documented after that. Much of the material was printed in 1911 for a lawsuit.

James I seized the castle in 1431, after the Battle of Inverlochy, because his enemies were hiding inside. A clan history of the MacKenzies written in the late seventeenth century instead says he used the castle as a base for an expedition against the MacDonalds. In 1455 James Douglas, 9th earl of Douglas, stayed here on his way to treat with John MacDonald, lord of the Isles. That followed James II’s attack on Douglas power and led to the Treaty of Westminster-Ardtornish. The Stewart hold on Lorn was a matter of concern through the late fourteenth century and much of the fifteenth, with the MacDonalds and the Campbells both interested. In 1463, on the Stewart family’s tradition, John Stewart of Lorn was murdered by Allan MacCoule, a MacDougall, on the way from the castle to the chapel. The killer is probably Allan of the wood, grandson of Allan MacDougall of Dunollie. The castle history says John Stewart was a rival of Alan MacDougall and was stabbed by Alan’s supporters on the way to his marriage at the chapel, and that he survived long enough to make his vows. Those are not the same ending. Effigies of John Stewart, lord of Lorn, and of his wife Isobel MacDougall are in Culross Abbey. The castle history says Alan took the castle and was ousted by James III, who granted it to Colin Campbell, 1st earl of Argyll, in 1470. In 1464 parliament proposed that, once the weather allowed, the king should lead an expedition to besiege the castle. The visit account says the castle remained in royal hands until 1469. Deeds of 1469 to 1470 record the lordship passing from Walter Stewart, lord of Lorn, to Colin. In April 1470 Colin secured a grant of Lorn under the Great Seal. He was married to a daughter of John of Lorn. The ultimate winner of the lordship, including the castle, was that earl.

The earls did not make it a usual residence. By 1490 a cadet family of Campbells had been appointed hereditary captains, and one timeline puts that appointment between 1470 and 1490. A charter of 1502, from Archibald, 2nd earl of Argyll, to Alexander Campbell Kere, is the earliest detailed evidence of the arrangement. It sets out the lands that supported the captain and his duties, including a garrison of six armed and armoured men and two others in time of peace. The earls kept a network of strongholds in the same way, among them Innis Chonnell, Carrick, Dunoon and Craignish. Lorn, with other Campbell possessions, was made a lordship and free barony by James V in 1540. The annual render owed to the crown by the lords of Lorn was a red mantle, later translated as a plaid. It is first recorded in 1470 and probably goes back further. Much of the lordship was moorland, fit for sheep, and the mantle is read as a sign of that textile wealth. More important than the hills was the water. The bay was a place to haul up ships, descendants of Viking longships, for the winter. Other MacDougall castles, among them Aros and Duart on Mull, Achanduin on Lismore, Dun Chonnuill in the Garvellachs and Cairnburgh in the Treshnish Isles, were within reach by sea. No single list of those castles holds for every decade. From the late fifteenth century the crown and the earls used this harbour as a base for naval campaigns in the west.

The Campbells were loyal allies of the royal house, and the castle was a base for government expeditions against the MacDonald lords of the Isles, among others, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The castle history says James IV visited twice. The significance timeline specifies a meeting in 1493, immediately after the forfeiture of the lord of the Isles, when he met local lords and chiefs here. In 1531 the castle was to be a muster point for a royal expedition that was cancelled. In 1554 Archibald, earl of Argyll, used it as the base for a government expedition against the MacLeods of Lewis. In 1585 John Cameron of Kinlocheil, a leading figure in the struggles inside Clan Cameron, was taken by the earl of Argyll and executed at the castle. In 1625 Lord Lorn used it as the muster and the base for an expedition against the pirates of Clan Ian, and he ordered the captain to repair it. A further repair order followed in 1636.

The gatehouse belongs to this Campbell period, with dates that do not agree. The castle history says the Campbells rebuilt it in the late fifteenth century, in place of an earlier round tower at the east corner, as a four-storey harled tower house. The entrance passage runs through half of the vaulted basement. The other half is guard rooms, with arrow slits facing the gate. A stone stair replaces an earlier drawbridge. The public account says visitors can step inside a three-storey gatehouse built around 1500. The significance account puts a new entrance in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, replacing the thirteenth-century south tower, with broad arches outside and towards the courtyard and a small guard chamber. It then says that in the later sixteenth century, perhaps because the project had been left unfinished, two upper storeys and a garret were added as a house for the captain and his family. That house is apparently The Tower of an inventory made in 1767. The main rooms upstairs were entered from a stair between the tower and the hall range, so that the top landing turned right into the tower or left into the hall. A door at the north end of the hall, since blocked, led to the north tower, and there may have been a way through to the kitchen in the north-west range. A mural stair in the north tower went up at least to a second floor. Probably in the same late sixteenth century, earlier arrow slits and windows were altered into gun loops. The tower was remodelled again in the eighteenth century for reception rooms and a private suite. The dormer windows at the top are capped by pediments from the house of 1725. They bear the date, the Campbell arms, and the initials AEC and DLC, for Aeneas Campbell, the 11th captain, and his wife Dame Lilias. Those pediments were moved during the restoration of 1903.

The walls are of coursed rubble with sandstone dressings. One description, taken into a short account of 1911 prepared under Hugh Chisholm, calls the castle an irregular quadrangle of great strength, about 35 by 30 metres, or 115 by 98 feet, with a circumference of about 120 metres, or 390 feet. The walls stand up to 18 metres, 60 feet, including the conglomerate platform, and they are up to 3 metres, 10 feet, thick. Hugh Chisholm, born in London on 22 February 1866 and dead on 29 September 1924, was the editor under whom the eleventh edition of that reference work was completed in 1910 and published in 29 volumes in 1911. Another measurement says the curtain still stands to parapet height along most of its length, some 6.1 to 8.2 metres above the courtyard, with towers at the west, north and south-east angles. The parapet walk once ran the whole circuit and has been partly restored with new stone flags. The original parapet is gone. Arrow slits, later made into gun loops, are described as the only openings. Brass cannon recovered from wrecked ships of the Spanish Armada were once said to be mounted on the walls. A large cast bronze gun with a bore of 3.75 inches, 95 millimetres, is inscribed as the work of Assuerus Koster of Amsterdam. It would have been called a culverin bastard in Scotland. It is said to be one of the guns from the Armada wreck in Tobermory Bay, raised for the 9th earl of Argyll in 1666. Other guns by the same founder carry dates from 1624 to 1643, so the piece may instead belong to the garrison of the middle or later seventeenth century. The two accounts of the artillery should both be kept.

The north tower, or donjon, is the largest. It is said to have had three or four storeys and to have housed the lord’s private rooms. Each tower was probably once finished with a conical roof. The west tower is almost internal, barely projecting beyond the rounded corner, and it could be entered only from the parapet walk. Its basement is a pit prison, reached from above. The east range, between the north and east towers, survives as foundations. It was the principal range, a large hall over vaulted cellars. The hall had double-lancet windows with carved patterns, later blocked, and their outlines remain in the east curtain. A second range stood along the north-west wall and was linked to the hall by the donjon. Its ground floor housed a kitchen. In 1725 that range was rebuilt as a two-storey house, reached by a stone stair, and given the dormers that now sit on the gatehouse. The well in front of it is original. The large stone surround is of the nineteenth century. The 1725 building is the New House of the 1767 inventory. By then the east wing, with its first-floor hall, was still in use, but the north tower may have been given up. A fireplace in the north gable of the east wing blocked the old doorway into the tower’s ground floor.

The chapel stands about 150 metres from the castle, to the south-west in one account and west-south-west in another. Duncan, or Donnchadh, is said to have built it as a private chapel. Experts put it in the second quarter of the thirteenth century, and one measurement of the ornament dates it about 1225 to 1250, which is not treated as controversial. There is no sign that it is anything but a new foundation of that century. A suggestion that it was dedicated to St Moluag is not firmly based, and it would not in any case prove a Christian presence in that saint’s time. It never served as a parish church. The parish was Kilbride, whose church lay about 5 kilometres south of Oban. There is no evidence of burials at the chapel before the seventeenth century. Its job was family worship within easy reach of the castle, and it may also have served a lordship that needed clerks and a place where business could be done under religious sanction. It is a single build, with a rich scheme for a minor church of Argyll: roll mouldings on the external angles, a principal doorway of three orders, and dog-tooth on the lancets. The chancel had three double-lancet openings. Comparisons of size and decoration are made with the parish churches at Killean in Kintyre and at Inchcailleach on Loch Lomond, and of ornament with Iona Nunnery and the south transept at Ardchattan. Irish churches have also been proposed as an influence. One plan gives 20 by 6 metres, 66 by 20 feet, with a timber roof, wide-splayed inner arches, and the chapel already ruinous in 1740. A measured plan of the scheduled chapel has it 22.1 metres east to west by 8.1 metres north to south, walls 0.9 metres thick, no structural division between nave and chancel, a wooden roof, two doorways in the south wall and one in the north, three windows in each of the north and south walls, and originally two windows in the east wall. Most of it stands near wall-head, with gaps in the north and east walls. The significance account says about 8 by 22 metres overall, a nave and chancel once separated by a wooden screen. A burial aisle was added to the east end in 1740 for the Campbells of Dunstaffnage. It measures a further 5.4 metres. The earliest monument in it dates to the 1680s. The interior of the aisle was later used for burials, and the only grave slabs now remaining are those in that aisle. West Highland medieval grave sculpture, common in the region, is not represented here.

The office of hereditary captain still exists. To keep the title, now a sinecure with no military duty and no other privilege, the holder must spend three nights a year in the castle. The captains no longer live here. The sixteenth-century gatehouse is described as retained for the captain, and the transfer into state care came with restrictions on access to it. The present visit account invites people to step inside that gatehouse. A ghost called the Ell-maid of Dunstaffnage, a kind of gruagach, is said to haunt the place, and her appearances are tied in the story to events in the lives of the hereditary keepers.

The castle saw action in the civil wars. It held out against the army of Montrose in 1644. From 1644 to 1647 it was the main arsenal and supply base for operations and for other garrisons in Argyll. A wreck identified as the Swan, lost off Duart in 1653, may have been the barge or galley kept here, from which Argyll watched the defeat of his forces by Montrose at Inverlochy, dated in that account to 1644. In 1647 Coll Ciotach, father of Alasdair MacColla, was taken prisoner at the siege of Dunyvaig on Islay when he tried to speak directly to his friend, the captain of this castle. He was ordered to be hanged here. He asked to be buried here so that he might in time share snuff in the grave with the captain. He is said to lie under the second step at the door of the burying place. A Cromwellian garrison held the castle from 1652 to 1660. Highlanders besieged it in 1652. Thirty-one pieces of clay tobacco pipe, mostly from clearance, include pipes made in Chester that may belong to those troops. In 1667 the earl of Argyll and the captain agreed a programme of building and repair. The work was still unfinished in 1681.

In 1685 the 9th earl launched his rising against James VII and II, the Catholic king, and disembarked his forces from the Continent at this castle. The rising failed. The castle was taken and burnt by the Marquis of Atholl. The castle history says it was burned by royalist troops after the failure of that rising. Government troops occupied it in the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745. It is described as a key garrison until after Culloden in 1746, longer than most castles kept a military role. Design changes are said to reflect that long use.

Flora MacDonald was held here in 1746. She was born in 1722 at Milton on South Uist, the third and last child of Ranald MacDonald, who died in 1723, and his second wife Marion. Her father was tacksman of Milton and Balivanich. She came from the Protestant minority of South Uist. Her mother married again in 1728, to Hugh MacDonald, tacksman of Armadale on Skye, and Flora was brought up by her father’s cousin, Sir Alexander MacDonald of Sleat. She later said she helped Charles Edward Stuart out of sympathy for his situation, not from support for the Jacobite cause. Charles Edward Stuart, Charles Edward Louis John Sylvester Maria Casimir Stuart, was born on 31 December 1720 at the Palazzo Muti in Rome and died on 30 January 1788. He was the elder son of James Francis Edward Stuart and the grandson of James VII and II. Jacobites called him Charles III. He is also the Young Pretender, the Young Chevalier and Bonnie Prince Charlie. He led the rising of 1745. His forces won at Prestonpans in September 1745 and at Falkirk Muir in January 1746, and he was defeated at Culloden in April 1746. Flora was visiting Benbecula when he and a few aides took refuge there after that battle. A companion, Félix O’Neill, a distant relative, asked for her help. Benbecula was held by a government company commanded by her stepfather. Passes were issued for her and a party of eight, with Charles disguised as an Irish maid named Betty Burke. Her own life says they landed on 27 June near Monkstadt, by Uig. The castle account says they escaped by boat from Benbecula to Skye on the night of 28 to 29 June. The next day he was taken from Portree to Raasay, and she stayed on Skye. She was arrested. Her life says she was held in the Tower of London, then allowed to live outside it under a king’s messenger after Lady Margaret interceded with Duncan Forbes, and released under the general amnesty of June 1747. The castle account says she was detained here for a few days on the way to London, called in the papers a very pretty young rebel, sent on for questioning, and not charged. The public visit account says she was held here in 1746 and then sent to the Tower of London. She was not the only person who helped him, and she rarely spoke of it later. Aristocratic sympathisers collected more than 1,500 pounds for her, one of them Frederick, prince of Wales. She married Allan MacDonald on 6 November 1750. They emigrated to North Carolina in 1774, lost their estate in the American war because they took the British side, and returned. She died on 5 March 1790 at Kingsburgh on Skye, aged 68, and was buried at Kilmuir. Her husband died in September 1792.

W. Douglas Simpson, the Aberdeen historian of castles born on 2 August 1896 and dead on 9 October 1968, wrote a book in 1958 on this castle and the Stone of Destiny. He was librarian of the University of Aberdeen from 1926 for forty years, and he directed digs at Kildrummy, Coull, Kindrochit, the Doune of Invernochty, Esslemont, Dundarg and Finavon. That list does not include this rock. He pointed to Tobias Smollett’s novel The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, also spelled Humphrey, published in 1771, the year Smollett died. The castle is not named. Simpson called the Campbell household in the book a fair picture of life here in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, and he identified the castle where Jeremiah Melford is a guest with this one. Caution is advised about how close the fiction sits to the building. Tobias Smollett was baptised on 19 March 1721 at Dalquhurn and died on 17 September 1771. An inventory of household furniture was drawn up in 1767 on the death of Neill Campbell, the captain, for his widow. It has few room names, but the order of the list may still be readable against the excavated rooms. An engraving of the castle in 1836 is by William Miller after J. M. W. Turner. Joseph Mallord William Turner, known in his lifetime as William Turner, was born on 23 April 1775 and died on 19 December 1851. The print is after his design. It is not a record that he stood on this rock.

The Campbells kept adding to the castle, but the rest of it was already decaying when the new house went up over the west range in 1725. In 1810 an accidental fire gutted the gatehouse, the captain’s principal residence. The captains ceased to live here and moved to Dunstaffnage House, some 2 kilometres to the south-east. Tenants lived in the 1725 house until 1888. Another account says the other courtyard buildings remained in use until the end of the nineteenth century, and that the new house was latterly a tea house for visitors before it fell to ruin. As early as 1835 plans were drawn for repair and partial restoration. The restoration was shelved, but repairs seem to have been made to the walls. The 9th duke restored the gatehouse in 1903 to 1904. The captain repaired it in 1912. In 1910 the duke took Angus John Campbell of Dunstaffnage to court over ownership. The captain’s ancestors had held the castle since the fifteenth century. The duke said they were only performing a service and that the ownership was his. Judgment first went to the captain, with the note that there was then no castle in any proper sense, only a considerable extent of ruined masonry. That judgment was overturned on appeal in 1912. The castle history instead says the Court of Session in 1912 ruled that Angus Campbell, the 20th hereditary captain, had a right of residence notwithstanding the duke’s ownership. Works were delayed by the war of 1914 to 1918, and the planned total restoration was never completed. In 1958 the 21st captain and the duke agreed to hand the castle into state care. The guardianship record dates the taking into state care to 1962, with restrictions on the gatehouse. It is open to the public. The visit account calls the curtain one of the oldest standing castle remains in Scotland. About 19,500 people came in 2016. Separate figures are not kept for the chapel, though many of those visitors are assumed to have seen both. Pipistrelle bats roost in the castle roof space and use the broadleaved woodland. They are called a rare species in the west of Scotland. The grassland east of the castle is unimproved neutral grassland, uncommon in Scotland. The rest of the grass is species-poor. A housing estate, a marine laboratory and university buildings now interrupt the landward approach, and trees hide some of the views to sea. The hills down to Loch Etive are still the backdrop.

Excavation has been piecemeal, and the gaps are stated plainly. In 1970 a trial trench in the gatehouse guard chamber found what appeared to be the outer scarcement of a continuation of the east curtain. From 1987 to 1994 John Lewis dug in the north tower and the east range. The report is cited as 1996 and the journal issue is dated 30 November 1997. He found four main periods. The first is early Bronze Age, on a sherd of pottery. The second is the first enclosure, perhaps early in the thirteenth century, with the curtain running around the north angle of the rock before any tower. The third is the main build, including the north tower and the east range, probably the middle to later thirteenth century. At ground level the tower had two window embrasures and a doorway into the east range. At some stage the tower was demolished down to the first floor or lower, and the ground floor was packed with rubble and midden. It was rebuilt, but the ground floor stayed filled and out of use. He was unsure whether the east range was of the same date as the first north tower or as the rebuild. The fourth period is a remodelling of the east range in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, when a fireplace was inserted in the old doorway and the north tower was abandoned and partly filled with debris, much of it of the nineteenth century. The east range was occupied at least until the late eighteenth century. An interim account of the east range describes a trench about 8 metres east to west by 7 metres north to south, a thin turf over 0.30 to 1.3 metres of rubble, slates, brick, mortar and dark soil with butchered bone, pottery and glass. Many of the objects were given nineteenth-century dates and were thought to come from the demolition of the north-west range. An early wall of rubble faced with split schist boulders, found under the tower and in the north-east of the range, was read as a temporary defence during construction, demolished and replaced by the standing east curtain, probably still in the thirteenth century. The hall range was about 12 by 6 metres. Its west wall survived as foundations 1.30 metres wide that died out on bedrock about 4 metres from the north tower, where the rock was worn for about 1.20 metres, suggesting a basement door. A later clay-bonded partition and a clay floor were found in the north chamber. Removal of about 2 metres of recent debris and a similar depth of medieval rubble and midden exposed the tower’s base. Three blocked openings in the inner face were a window on the north, a possible door into a passage in the thickness of the east curtain, and a south doorway into the east range, later choked and then closed by the fireplace.

In 1991 a lead seal matrix was found on the shore beside the castle, cut with a West Highland galley, probably the seal of a leading MacSorley, of the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Seven copper-alloy mounts with enamel, including the arms of the Randolph earls of Moray, came from the north tower. They are probably Scottish work of the early fourteenth century, made for Thomas Randolph, 1st earl of Moray, and they may be horse harness or the decoration of his armour. Their presence may relate to the capture by Robert I. A fourteenth-century ring brooch from the same tower, and another from the 2008 dig, match a Highland dress ornament, perhaps mostly worn by women. A broken octagonal stone font, probably local work of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, also belongs with the castle. The Brooch of Lorn, a silver reliquary brooch set with a crystal and pearls, is kept at Dunollie, not here. It is said to have been ripped from Bruce by a MacDougall in the fighting of 1306. The object itself is West Highland work of the fifteenth century and may have been a badge of office. In 1999 two trenches in the gatehouse cellar, dug before the floor was lowered for visitors, found building debris and material of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In 2004 a watching brief on a new soakaway for a septic tank, 32 metres south of the visitor centre, found levelling that included ashlar blocks apparently taken from the castle walls.

A survey and excavation published as the 2010 volume, and dated as a journal issue on 30 November 2011, identified features of the initial thirteenth-century construction and of later refurbishment, including work of the early fourteenth century. Two lime kilns, probably medieval, lay outside the walls. In the eighteenth century the ground immediately round the castle was landscaped as part of an improvement. A broad shallow ditch around the castle was tied to the thirteenth-century building work. In February and May 2021 a watching brief on three test pits, dug to find the pipe between the visitor centre and the septic tank to the south-east, found only that pipe, 0.15 metres in diameter, in the topsoil, at a maximum depth of 0.85 metres. No archaeologically significant deposit or feature was hit. The stated gaps remain. Chapel Hill has not been dug for the old fort of 1572. Mortar samples have not been dated to fix the chapel and the medieval phases. The medieval entrance is not understood. The usual view, an entrance beside a south tower on the site of the gatehouse, is hard to fit to the space and to the alignments of the south-west and south-east curtains. An entrance through the south tower has been proposed and is hard to parallel, and it does not sit easily with the 1970 trench. The present approach, supposed to be late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, must once have been more direct if horses or carts were to enter. A ramp and a large timber bridge, of the kind reconstructed at Dirleton, is one suggestion. Geophysics and further digging are what the account asks for. The archives of the dukes at Inveraray have not been thoroughly searched in recent times.

On the ground prepared for a marine science park at Dunbeg, west of the laboratory and not on the castle rock, an evaluation in March 2010 and an excavation in May 2010 found a long sequence. One pit gave a date of 1091 to 911 BC, with a few pits of fire-cracked pebbles, less than the Bronze Age settlement known in the field to the south. An east-west line of pits at the north end belongs to the late Iron Age, mostly the first or second century AD, and includes a crouched burial of a newborn dated from 96 BC to 70 AD. The row is read as funerary pyres on the edge of wet ground. To the south, a farmstead of the late seventh to the late ninth century had granaries, a grain-drying kiln, basket boilers, cobble hearths, storage pits, a timber building and fence lines. Oats dominated one kiln fill, which would usually suggest a medieval or later date, but the sample fell between 671 and 869, an early occurrence. The farmstead looks short-lived and perhaps seasonal. Stone tools, rotary querns and animal bone of a permanent settlement are largely absent. The place-name implies a dun, and none was found. About 3.5 kilometres south, Dunollie is the probable royal fort named in the annals in 686, 698, 701, 714 and 734, destroyed in 701 and rebuilt in 714. The Dunbeg farm may have been a seasonal holding under that fort. Attacks on Iona are recorded in 795, 802, 806 and 825. There is no sign that the farm was deliberately burned. A fragment of copper-alloy Viking ring-money was reported from a metal detector in one corner of the ground. The published account of the science-park dig describes the same sequence in broader terms: fire pits used for several generations in the late Iron Age, then a shift onto drier ground for the farmstead, with one pit holding ten metal objects from tools or a dismantled structure.

The castle was scheduled on 27 April 1920 and the scheduling was amended on 23 November 1999. The chapel was scheduled on 20 October 1994. The castle record calls it a well-preserved thirteenth-century castle, an outpost of royal authority in Argyll whether held by the crown or by the earls, with continuous and varied use until the start of the nineteenth century, and with archaeology that can still add to that long history. The scheduled area of the castle is defined by the stone boundary wall on the east, a line 20 metres out from the north-west wall, and a line 50 metres out from the south-west wall, about 140 metres each way. The chapel’s scheduled area takes in the chapel and the aisle, excluding the ground inside the aisle walls, and 10 metres out from the walls. Neither monument is described as a world-heritage inscription of its own. The main focus of the living MacDougall family is now at Dunollie, where a trust keeps that castle and a collection that includes the Brooch of Lorn. The present chief named in the significance account is Madam Morag MacDougall, the 31st chief. Clan gatherings bring MacDougalls back, including a large society in North America. This castle is part of that family story, and it is also the Campbell garrison and the royal constabulary that replaced them.

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