St Catherines revisited: the Hotel

In 2018 I wrote a post about the St Catherines ferry which used to cross Loch Fyne from Inveraray to the village of that name on the Cowal shore: only ever a passenger ferry, it closed in 1963. There's a lot more information about the ferry in Walter Weyndling's 1996 book Ferry Tales of Argyll & the Isles which you can read here (free but registration required). 

The point of this post, though, is to talk about the inn at St Catherines which stood at the top of the ferry pier as seen in the 1930s postcard above. I'm fascinated by travel in the Highlands in the 18th and 19th centuries before the era of rail and the motor car and when it was still a pretty arduous business. A central feature of travel in these days was the wayside inn for the reception of weary travellers. One such was the inn at St Catherines, particularly important to the traveller arriving after the last ferry across to Inveraray for the night had left. And in periods of bad weather, the ferry - a sailing vessel at St Catherine's before 1827 - might not run the following day either necessitating an extended stay.

Boating on Loch Fyne in blustery conditions by J M W Turner. This is the west side of the loch a mile or two south of Inveraray so it's not the St Catherines ferry but may give an impression of what it could be like! Picture credit: The Met

Scottish inns didn't have a brilliant reputation 250 years ago, though, and I'm always interested to read descriptions of them. The other day, I came across one of the St Catherines Inn written as long ago as 1773 and it comes out rather well. It was written by an 18 year old girl called Anne MacVicar (better known as 'Mrs Grant of Laggan' because she subsequently married a Mr Grant who was the Minister of the Parish of Laggan). She was travelling with her parents from Glasgow to Fort Augustus where her father was going to take up the post of barrack master. The second day of the journey began at Luss and they stopped at Tarbet or Arrochar (Anne candidly admits she can't remember the name of the place but from context it must be one of those two) for breakfast. There they were joined by a fellow traveller, a rather objectionable student travelling home from college she nicknamed Smelfungus. The following is an extract from the letter Anne wrote to her friend Harriet she was leaving behind in Glasgow:

Why, after tiring you and myself with such a detail [how obnoxious Smelfungus had been at breakfast], should I tell you of the horrors of Glencroe, through which we travelled in a dismal rainy day? In one particular, I dare say, I agreed with the stranger [Smelfungus], for I really thought dinner [i.e. lunch] the most interesting event of this day's journey, not merely as a repast, but the manner of it was so novel. There was a little inn, thatched, and humbler than any of the former; we came very cold to it; we found a well-swept clay floor, and an enlivening blaze of peats and brushwood, two windows looking out upon the lake we were to cross [Loch Fyne], and a primitive old couple, whose fresh complexion made you wonder at their silver hairs. All the apparatus of fishing and hunting were suspended from the roof; I thought myself in Ithaca, though Homer does not speak of peats or trout, and far less of grouse. The people showed an alacrity in welcoming us, and a concern about our being wet and cold, that could not have been assumed. I never took such a sudden liking to people so far out of my own way. I suppose we are charmed with cheerfulness and sensibility in old people, because we do not expect it; and with unservile courtesy in the lower class, for the same reason. "How populous, how vital is the grave!" says your favourite Young; "How populous, how vital are the glens!" I should be tempted to say here: but after the "stupendous solitude," through which we had just passed, the blazing hearth and kindly host had peculiar attractions.

Shall I tell you of our dinner? Never before did I blot paper with such a detail; but it is instructive to know how cheaply we may be pleased. On a clean table of two fir deals we had as clean a cloth; trout new from the lake, eggs fresh as our student's heart could wish; kippered salmon, fine new-made butter and barley-cakes, which we preferred to the loaf we had brought with us. Smelfungus began to mutter about the cookery of our trouts; I pronounced them very well drest, out of pure spite; for by this time I could not endure him, from the pains he took to mortify the good people, and to show us he had been used to lodge and dine better. I feasted, and was quite entranced, thinking how you would enjoy all that I enjoyed. Dear Harriet, how my heart longs for you, when I think how yours is made to share all my wild pleasures!

The boat was crossing with other passengers over the ferry, which is very wide. We were forced to wait its arrival two hours — to me very short ones; one of them I have given to you, for I could never tell you all this when the warm feeling of the minute had worn off. I have kept my promise of being minute, most religiously; there is merit in it. For you I have forsaken Smelfungus, who is yonder walking on the Loch side, in all the surly dignity of displeasure. I am going to tea, and will put him in good humour, with questions about his college. 

What a pleasant teadrinking! The old landlord knew all my father's uncles, and the good woman was so pleased with my interest in her household economy! It produced a venison ham, sacred to favourites, and every other good thing she had; every one was pleased, and Smelfungus himself became, "As mild and patient as the female dove, When first her golden couplets are disclosed." And here I conclude this long letter to begin another at Inverary. Innocent, beloved, and amiable, what more can I wish you, that will not risk a share of your happiness? Adieu, Beloved! A.M.

St Catherines Inn and ferry, 1826

Anne began her next letter to Harriet almost as soon as she’d arrived at Inveraray. She recorded:

Such a day as we had after crossing the ferry! such torrents! Our carriage stood us in good stead, when we left the boat, in which, indeed, we got completely wet. But, alas! for the unsheltered head of Smelfungus, and for the new hat he was so careful of. Wet and weary, late and dreary, we arrived; and yet I was not depressed. 

The MacVicars were travelling by coach which is remarkable by itself. Not so much that they could afford to travel by coach but that there were roads over which one could travel: that was absolutely not to be taken for granted in Argyll in the 1770s. But the military road to Inveraray over the Rest and Be Thankful, built 24 years earlier in 1749, must have been passable by coaches: that was not to be taken for granted either considering the military roads had been designed for marching soldiers rather than middle class families in coaches (many stretches of the military roads were realigned in the first quarter of the 19th century to make them more suitable for wheeled traffic). Anyway, does that last quotation from Anne's letter infer that the coach crossed the ferry from St Catherines to Inveraray with them? We know that wheeled traffic could cross on sail powered ferries as seen in the picture below ...

... but that was just to cross the half mile between Kyle of Lochalsh and Kyleakin. I sort of 'hae ma doots' that carrying a coach a mile and a half across Loch Fyne would be feasible. What I think was more likely was that the coach was sent round to Inveraray by road to await the MacVicars when they got off the ferry. Although as going round the head of the loch is only an extra 6 miles compared with the two hours they had to wait for the ferry, and then - what? - 30 minutes minimum? - to cross the loch in a sailing vessel, I'm not sure why they didn't go with the coach. The ferry really catered for travellers arriving at St Catherines from the south rather than the east.

The head of Loch Fyne in 1820 as seen in Lumsden’s Steamboat Companion

On the map above, the military road from the Rest and be Thankful the MacVicars travelled along in 1773 is the one pointing to the right edge of the map. There was a road branching off it along the south side of Loch Fyne to St. Catherines and Strachur but for some reason it’s not marked. The two roads pointing to the bottom edge of the map, to Ardentinny and Lochgoilhead, hadn’t been built in 1773 but once they had, in 1809-10, the quickest and most comfortable route from Glasgow to Inveraray (and from there to Oban and points north) became by steamboat to Lochgoilhead and coach to St. Catherines. In these days, the longer the part of your journey you could accomplish by steamboat along the sheltered waters of a firth or sea loch and the shorter by road, the better - especially when the road involved “the horrors of Glencroe”, as Anne MacVicar put it (Glen Croe is the approach to the Rest from the east. I've included a map marked with all the various locations at the end of this post).

Advert in the Glasgow Herald, 1866. John Campbell was the tenant of the St Catherines Inn

If I’m not making a very good job so far of this post being about the inn rather than the ferry, it could be justified as emphasis that the inn was as significant a stop on the journey to Oban by steamer, coach and ferry in the 18th and 19th centuries as the Green Welly Stop at Tyndrum is on the journey today by car! Anyway, to the inn, but first we need to introduce the estate it formed part of. 

As well as the inn, St Catherines Estate included the ferry rights across to Inveraray; a farm of about 600 acres with stocking for 400 sheep and 4 milk cows; and two houses (one for the tenant of the shooting rights). And I’m sorry but we haven’t escaped the ferry yet! What I meant there by the estate including the ferry rights was that the right to operate a ferry at a convenient crossing point was a proprietary right. Usually it belonged to the owner of the land on one side but sometimes it belonged jointly to the owners on either side. Whoever the owner was, he usually let them to someone who actually operated the boats and collected (and kept) the fares paid by the passengers. But whatever the arrangements, the significance of ferry rights at a particular crossing being proprietary was that nobody else except the proprietor (or his tenant) could set up a rival service at the same crossing: that would be a trespass against which the proprietor (or tenant) could obtain an interdict (Scottish word for injunction: see this post for an instance of exactly that happening). Now, in my previous post about St Catherine’s, I said that the ferry rights there belonged to Inveraray town council but I’ve since discovered that’s not quite right. In fact, they belonged jointly to Inveraray and St Catherine’s Estate but under a strange arrangement whereby Inveraray only had the right to carry passengers east across the loch but not the other way and St Catherine’s Estate vice versa. This appears in the news cuttings below:-

Report of a meeting of Inveraray Town Council in 1881. Note in the third and fourth last lines that what was let by public roup (auction), for the princely sum of £30 (about £3,000 today), was the "(Inveraray side)" of the ferry.

Advert by St Catherines Estate for the let of the inn and ferry rights making it clear only east to west traffic is included. I don’t know what they meant by a ‘chartered ferry’ - it’s not a term of art of Scots Law

A dafter way of arranging a ferry it’s hard to imagine but reading between the lines of the various accounts I think that what happened in practice was this: Inveraray pro-actively sought out tenants to operate the ferry as a public service while St Catherine’s reactively permitted the Inveraray tenant to pick up return passengers at their side in exchange for a toll of so much per passenger. (Walter Weyndling’s book I linked to above, refers to 6d, 5d and 3d per passenger at different times.) So when St Catherine’s Estate were advertising for a tenant of their east to west ferry rights in the advert above, I don’t believe they were actually looking for somebody with a boat. Rather, they were farming their right to the tolls from Inveraray's tenant operator: “What fixed amount per year will you offer us to receive the variable amount of tolls received in the year?” That was common practice with any variable income stream in these days.

Approximate boundaries of St Catherine's Estate

Anyway, back to St Catherines Estate, ‘the two merkland of Kilcatrine’ was held as a feu (perpetual lease) from the Earls (later Dukes) of Argyll: part of the feuduty (ground rent) was to ferry the Earls and their retinue across the loch to Inveraray free of charge. A ‘merkland’ was a piece of land anciently valued at a merk (two thirds of a pound Scots) for rental and taxation purposes and it was called Kilcatrine - Gaelic for ‘church of St. Catherine’ - after a chapel of that name there built by Sir Duncan Campbell of Lochawe, 1st Lord Campbell and ancestor of the Earls and Dukes of Argyll, in the middle of the 15th century: its ruin is still just visible in the trees behind the houses to the south of the inn (see here).

In the 17th century, the feu of Kilcatrine was held by a family called MacKerras (Gaelic for Fergusson) until 1695 when they sold it to James Campbell, baillie (Scottish word for magistrate) and later provost (ditto for mayor) of Inveraray. He passed it to his brother Patrick and it remained with his descendants for another three generations. It would have been these Campbells, I think, who anglicised the name of the estate to St Catherines: it appears as such in the Land Tax Roll of 1751. One of them, I can't tell which exactly but described as "weak and fickle" by the Duke of Argyll's factor (steward) made himself obnoxious to the duke, his feudal superior, the following year (1752) by refusing to surrender his feu or even agree terms for access to the quarry on the estate for stone to build Inveraray Castle. A deal was eventually done, though, and much of the distinctive greenish grey stone the castle is built of was quarried at St Catherines.

Inveraray Castle. Phot credit: dan

The last Campbell laird of St Catherines, the 5th, was Captain Patrick Campbell. In 1849, he commissioned a 'feuing plan' from cartographer Thomas Carfrae to develop the lower parts of the estate along the seaside as a housing estate. Although this plan is referred to at Historic Environment Scotland's Trove.scot website (here), it's not available to view online, sadly, so here's a link to another feuing plan, at Toward, to give you the picture. Feus (plots) would have been sold (strictly speaking let on perpetual ground lease but often at a peppercorn feuduty (groundrent)) to rich middle class Glaswegians to build elegant Victorian villas as their weekend residences on: think of the outskirts of towns like Dunoon and Rothesay and around the Holy Loch etc. Nothing ever came of the feuing of St Catherine's, though, and I strongly suspect the reason was distance from Glasgow: the key to a successful feuing plan was rapid access to the city by steamship and upper Loch Fyne is just a bit too far. 

Captain Campbell sold the estate to Patrick Forbes, an Edinburgh lawyer, about the middle of the 19th century and when he (Forbes) died in 1875, it was sold to the 8th Duke of Argyll (1847-1900). On the death of the 9th Duke in 1914, St Catherines passed to his widow, Princess Louise, the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria, for her life: when she died in 1939, the estate passed back to the 10th Duke (1914-49, nephew of the 9th Duke). 

Princess Louise, Dowager Duchess of Argyll in 1915

Of course, His Grace and Her Royal Highness didn’t cook breakfast and make beds at their inn at St. Catherines themselves. They let that privilege to tenants. We've already met John Campbell who was the tenant of the inn in the 1860s and drove the coach to Lochgoilhead to catch the steamer to Glasgow. James MacDonald was the tenant in 1875 and he was succeeded by Donald Sutherland in 1879. He was also the tenant of the farm. It was common for inns to have farms attached to them in the 19th and early 20th centuries to provide food for the table and fodder for the guests' horses and, in fact, all the tenants of the St Catherines Inn were also the tenants of the farm until the Second World War. In 1898 John MacIntyre became tenant. 

The fortunes of the inn had declined somewhat since the opening of the railway to Dalmally (for Inveraray) in 1877 and then Oban in 1880 which had taken much of the traffic from the steamer and coach route via Lochgoilhead and St Catherines but the next tenant, Allan MacDonald, a butcher from Lochgoilhead who took over in 1909, turned things around by taking advantage of the emerging transport technology of the 20th century: the motor car. In 1931, the Oban Times noted that Allan had made St Catherine’s “one of the best patronised hotels on the Glasgow to Dunoon road”. No car ferry to Dunoon in these days and note how it’s now being referred to as a hotel rather than an inn. The valuation roll records a petrol pump at the i… sorry, hotel in 1935 and you can see it if you look closely at the postcard at the top of this post (click to enlarge). Previously, in 1925, the MacDonalds had expanded their empire when Allan’s son Peter took the tenancy of the Creggans Inn four miles down the road at Strachur and henceforth the two establishments were run in conjunction with each other. Nor was it the case that the MacDonalds were hoteliers first and farmers second: their names regularly appeared in the reports of sales at local livestock markets and it’s significant in this regard that, when Peter MacDonald gave up the Creggans in 1931, it was take a tenancy, not of another hotel, but of a farm.

The St Catherine’s Hotel was gutted by fire in April 1934 and it’s a testament to Allan MacDonald’s drive that he had it immediately rebuilt in time for that year’s season. Looking at the postcard above, I’m going to guess that glass verandah along the front was part of the 1934 rebuild. It looks very similar to the one along the front of the Creggans (see here) which is probably not a coincidence. 

Allan MacDonald died the following year (1935) and was succeeded by his son James. He transferred the tenancy of the hotel to his brother in law, Duncan Munro, in 1946. In 1951, he (Duncan) bought the whole of the St Catherine’s Estate from the 11th Duke of Argyll (1949-73: he of the scandalous 1960s divorce case). It’s emblematic of the continuity of the history of the place and also of the conservatism of Scottish conveyancing lawyers that, in the deed of conveyance by the Duke to Duncan Munro, the property was still described as “the two merkland of Kilcatrine commonly called Saint Katherines” (with a K). Argyll had advertised the estate at offers over £12,000 (about £330,000 in today’s prices) but I don’t know what Duncan Munro paid for it. 

Advert in the Oban Times, September 1951: British Newspaper Archive

In 1968, now in partnership with his sons Duncan, Junior and Allan, Duncan Munro sold the hotel to a William and Sheila Somerville from Lower Kilmardinny Farm in Bearsden. Now, without access to a full Registers of Scotland ‘search sheet’ (which is quite expensive), I can’t give chapter and verse on the ownership thereafter. Changes of ownership of things like hotels and farms were no longer being reported quite as religiously by the Oban Times as they had been in previous decades but a Lewis Laurie was recorded as living at St Catherines Hotel in 1970 and his name appeared as the contact in an advert advertising the hotel for sale in 1989. He skipped the hotel’s team in a curling competition amongst local licensed traders in 1991 (won by the Cairndow Inn) but whether Mr Laurie was the owner or manager on behalf of the Somervilles or subsequent owners (or both of these things at different times), I don’t know. 

A Sheena Dowse was reported being the owner in 1994. A John Roger applied for the licence in 1998 and that’s the last reference to the St Catherines Hotel trading as such I could find. I think it shut some time in the early 2000s - it was unoccupied in 2003 - and was bought by local property developer Archie McArthur about the same time. In 2004, he lodged a planning application to redevelop the building but before we look at that, a quick look at the rest of the estate: it’s mostly been sold off - the largest part, the hill ground of the farm was sold for forestry, don’t know when exactly, but it belongs today to Gresham House Forestry Fund (see here (paid subscription required) and here) - although Duncan Munro, Junior’s son, another Duncan, still owns a house (Alt na Craig) and the freehold of the static caravan park which is operated by the same company as operates the parks at Drimsynie and Loch Eck etc. In many ways, the caravan park is a sort of 20th century reimagining of the feuing plan, now made possible by faster connection to Glasgow by motor car.

St Catherine's caravan park looking south west over Loch Fyne. The pier from which the ferry used to run to Inveraray can be seen. Photo credit: Google Maps

Archie McArthur’s 2004 planning application for the hotel was for development of a “tourist complex comprising conversion and alterations to former inn to provide 10 holiday units, licensed bar/restaurant (public house licence) and shop, erection of detached dwellinghouse for key worker [i.e. manager], storage building, 24 parking spaces and biological treatment plant.”  Unfortunately, this didn’t find favour with the planning department. Some of the correspondence (but not the plans, unfortunately) is preserved here and this meeting gives a flavour of the issues: apart from being ‘over developed’ (planning speak for trying to cram too much into too small a site), the main problem seems to have been the health and safety implications of parking and access off the busy A815 road in a 60mph zone. It seems that no compromise could be found, the planning application was withdrawn in 2005 and there matters were left for the best part of the next 20 years with the hotel empty, boarded up and decaying away. Mr McArthur put it on the market in 2021-22 at £225,000 but there were no takers.

St Catherine's Hotel in 2022: Google Streetview

Turning to the building itself, it’s a Category C listed building. Its citation as such (here) says it was built in 1756. In the 1920s, workmen repairing the hotel unearthed a stone bearing the date 1745. It bears a strong resemblance to the nearby Cairndow Inn which is probably not coincidental. Until it stopped trading around 2000, there was a sign over the door of the St Catherine's Hotel (picture of that here) claiming it had been granted a charter as a wayfarer’s tavern in 1460. I suspect that’s a conflation of the foundation of the chapel in the 1460s with a gloss in a 1925 article in the Oban Times (here: paid subscription required) speculating that the founder, Lord Campbell, would have kept a house and stable at St Catherine’s for his use while en route to Kilmun (on the Holy Loch) where he’d also founded a church. There’s nothing at all improbable in there having been an inn at St Catherine’s prior to the mid 18th century but I’m sceptical of anything very formal as early as the 15th century. The point here is, though, that the building that stands today is the one Anne MacVicar and her parents dined in in 1773 - you have to picture it with a thatched roof, though.

I said “the building that stands today” - but not for much longer. Absent the prospect of a ‘tourist complex’, in 2024 Archie McArthur obtained a budget for the best that could be done with the former St Catherine’s Hotel: a four bedroom house in the main block and two three bed houses in the single storey wing to the south (right in the photos). That produced a net loss of £600,000 to the developer so he applied for permission to demolish it and this was granted. The demolition hadn’t happened as at June 2025 and I don’t know whether it’s happened yet as I write this in January 2026.

It’s ironic that the thing that saved the St Catherine’s Inn in the first quarter of the 20th century - motor traffic - was responsible for its demise in the first quarter of the 21st. I wonder what future revolution in travel will bring about the demise of the Green Welly Stop 100 years from now?

As usual, if anyone can correct me on the ownership or other aspects of the history or can update on the demolition, do leave a comment.

  

Redcastle: the genealogy of a Highland Estate - #4

At the end of Part 3, we’d reached the point where MacKenzie of Redcastle’s creditors had forced the sale of the estate at a public roup (auction) to be held in Edinburgh on 25 June 1790.

Above is an extract from the advert in the Caledonian Mercury (full thing here - may require paid subscription). The estate could be bid for as a whole or in three lots: Easter Kessock with the ferry and salmon fishings; the main part of the estate (which was separated from Easter Kessock by Wester Kessock (now called Bellfield) which belonged to Kilcoy Estate) as far west as (and including) Coulmore; and the rest, including the castle. The upset price (reserve) for the whole was £22,402: 4s: 4 1/12d. That curiously ‘un-round’ figure down twelfths of a penny had been fixed by the Court of Session arithmetically by applying a multiple to the ‘free rent’ of the estate, namely, the gross annual rent paid by the estate’s tenants less the teinds (Scottish word for tithes), feuduty to the Crown and ‘public burdens’ (local taxes assessed on land rents). The respective figures were (rounded to the nearest £):

Gross rent:                           £1,200

Teinds:                                  (£198)

Feuduty & public burdens:       (£60)

Free rent:                               £942

A net income of £942 in 1790 is about £125,000 today so that’s the sort of money lairds like Captain Kenneth MacKenzie (see Part 3) were burning their way through every year. In fairness, though, the actual amount available to them would have been reduced by annuities to dowagers (sometimes as high as a third of the rent) and younger siblings etc. plus, of course, interest payments on debt incurred by previous generations who’d lived beyond their means. Anyway, the multiple applied to the free rent to arrive at the upset price was 25 in respect of so much of it as came from the farms on the estate (£713) and 20 in respect of the other assets such as the fishings and ferry of Kessock, mills, houses and crofts (£229).

It’s noteworthy that the rent (and feuduty) are now expressed wholly in money terms rather than the money plus quantities of grain and other commodities as in previous centuries. What in fact was happening, though, was that the tenants were paying cash in lieu of the grain etc. elements of their rents and the advert says that the rates of conversion into money had historically been “very moderate” implying that there was scope for a purchaser to take amore businesslike line in future: squeeze more cash out of the tenantry, in other words.

Photo credit: Wendy Harrison

The advert also mentions that “the mansion house” - i.e. the castle - “could be repaired at a small expense in such a manner as to accommodate a large family” and also that Redcastle Estate is a barony. That was an estate the owner of which had certain additional privileges over other owners, most notably the right to hold a court (‘baron court’) in which to prosecute and settle disputes amongst his tenants. Baron courts also functioned as sorts of mini parliaments for estates, making local bye-laws for maintaining good neighbourhood amongst the tenants etc. Barony status was typically conferred on an estate in a Charter of Novodamus (see Part 3 for what that was) and in Redcastle’s case that must have been some time in the second half of the 17th century (possibly 1680: see below) when the public records are not available online as I mentioned Part 3. A baron in this sense - the owner of a barony - was not a peer entitled to sit in the House of Lords but he did have certain additional heraldic privileges over lesser mortals and these still exist today when all other privileges of barony have gone. In recent years, it’s become possible - bizarrely, you may think - to detach the barony title with its residual privileges from the land it related to and sell it separately from the land. Such 'naked barony titles' can command five or even six figure sums from people who imagine they’re in some way thereby buying their way into the British aristocracy. And, as this entry in the Forum for the Scottish Baronage suggests, this appears to be what’s happened in the case of the barony of Redcastle with the Baillie family trustees who own the estate today having sold the barony title in 2016 to an Australian lady. (The page linked to there suggests Redcastle was created - or, in the jargon ‘erected as’ - a barony in 1680 which would have been in the time of Colin, 4th MacKenzie of Redcastle.)

Anyway, back in 1790 at the judicial sale of Redcastle, after brisk bidding the estate sold as a whole for £25,000 (about £3.3 million today) to James Grant, Younger (heir to the estate) of Shewglie, in Glen Urquhart. The Grants of Shewglie were a cadet branch of the Grants of Corrimony (at the head of Glen Urquhart) who were themselves cadets of the Grant chiefly line, the Grants of Freuchie (in Strathspey and now called Grantown-on-Spey). The second of the family acquired Shewglie from Freuchie in 1628 and his descendants were incorrigible Jacobites: James, the 3rd laird, fought at the Battle of Killiecrankie (1689) while his son Alexander, the 4th, was out in both the 1715 and 1745 Rebellions. He fought at the Battle of Culloden alongside his son James, later the 5th laird. Both were taken prisoner but while the former died in custody in London, the latter was eventually tried but acquitted of treason. Returning home, he found Shewglie House had nevertheless been burnt by the army but he built a new house in 1762 which still stands today (pictures here). The 5th laird of Shewglie’s son stayed out of political trouble and instead went to India where he rose in the service of the East India Company to become their resident (ambassador) at Hyderabad. In 1790, he returned to Scotland and spent the fortune he’d amassed on Redcastle and the following year succeeded his father as laird of Shewglie as well: he was described by a German academic in 1799 as “a middle-aged person, stiff and ungraceful in his carriage as most Scotsmen are; but he is a genuine man of business, and an excellent landlord.” 

Grant connections (click for a clearer view)

Grant died in 1808 and, having no children, was succeeded as owner of Redcastle (and, I assume, Shewglie as well) by his first cousin, Lt. Col. Alexander Grant, also of the East India Company. He, in turn, was succeeded by his eldest son, Peter (also called Patrick), in 1816. In September that year, he was visited at Redcastle by a distant cousin, another descendant of the Shewglie family, Charles Grant, who, after time in India, had risen after his return to Britain in 1790 to become the chairman of the East India Company and MP for Inverness. Charles wrote to his wife from Redcastle:

The place is much improved, but I fear must be given up for a time. Peter, the eldest son, is much more of a man and of a Christian than I had reckoned on, but he is inexperienced and sanguine.

Peter (Patrick) married Charles’ daughter in 1819. The latter’s biographer noted (here): 

unhappily for him [Peter (Patrick) Grant of Redcastle], he succeeded to the [Redcastle] estate after it had fallen into a very encumbered condition. The endeavour to retrieve this state of affairs occasioned [Charles] Grant a good deal of labour and trouble. He received great assistance from his two elder sons; but it does not appear that he was successful in his efforts even to the time of his death [in 1823]. In fact, much of the correspondence of these last years was occupied with this subject, and one of his last letters was about it.

Peter (Patrick’s) financial difficulties came to a head within weeks of his father in law’s death in October 1823 when he granted a Trust Deed for his Creditors. That was when a person attempted to stave off the stigma of formal bankruptcy by conveying all his property to a trustee for the purpose of selling it and distributing the proceeds amongst his creditors. In April 1824, Grant’s trustee, Edinburgh accountant Claud Russell, placed an advert in the Inverness Courier inviting the creditors to meet him in Bennet’s Hotel in Inverness to hear his proposals for paying their debts and meantime to forbear from foreclosing on the estate. 

The grave of Col. Alexander Grant and his son Patrick (Peter) Grant of Redcastle in the Shewglie family burial ground at Drumnadrochit before its restoration in 2021. Photo credit: Inverness Courier 

There was a big hint about what Patrick Grant's trustee for his creditors, Claud Russell, was proposing in another advert in the same edition of the Courier. This was one intimating that, not the whole of Redcastle but three lots of it - Easter Kessock, the Ferry, and Garguston and Spittal Farms - would be sold by public roup (auction) at Gibson’s Sale Room at 71 Princes Street in Edinburgh on 3rd August 1824. This advert mentioned that a “freehold qualification” would be included with Easter Kessock. That’s a parliamentary vote: before the Reform Act 1832, the right to vote in Scotland depended, not just upon owning land over a certain value but holding it feudally directly from the Crown and according to ancient valuations struck centuries ago (“40 shilling lands of Old Extent”) often bearing little relationship to the situation in the 19th century. To put that another way, you could own a huge amount of land but you didn’t get to vote if it didn’t happen to be a 40/- land OE held directly of the Crown. Easter Kessock - a very small property - happened to be both so its owner would get to vote. 

There was no vote with the ferry but the purchaser would get the inns on either side and the rent of £400 (about £38,000 today!) a year paid by the ferryman. The advert waxed lyrical about how Garguston and Spittal Farms would form a “beautiful separate estate” but despite all these attractions, the three lots didn’t sell in 1824. Another roup at Gibson’s Sale Rooms was therefore advertised for 8th March 1825, this time for the whole estate.

It was in connection with this sale that the beautiful plan of Redcastle Estate (except Easter Kessock) I linked to at the beginning of the first article in this series was drawn. Here's the link again and I’ve screenshotted the plan below but it’s worth following the link to zoom in on it for a detailed view. You can see faintly at the bottom left corner the docquet signed and dated 8th March 1825 by Claud Russell as Patrick Grant’s trustee for his creditors to the effect that this was the property you were bidding on. (Presumably there was another plan of Easter Kessock.)

Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The plan also has a nice vignette of the castle:

Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

This time, the estate sold. The purchaser was Sir William Fettes Bt., a rich Edinburgh tea merchant who was Lord Provost of the city 1804-06 but is more famous as founder of Fettes College there. The price he paid for Redcastle was £135,000. That's £11 million in today's prices and, taking account of the intervening inflation, an astonishing 236% real terms increase in price since the estate was last sold 35 years earlier, to James Grant of Shewglie in 1790.

 

Sir William Fettes, Bt. Picture credit Wikipedia

Fettes died in 1836 having been predeceased by his only son so Redcastle was sold again in 1838. The price achieved this time was £120,000 (so clearly Fettes had purchased at the top of the market!) and the purchaser was Hugh Baillie.

The Baillies had owned parts of the castle lands of Inverness since the 15th century, holding them as feudal vassals of the Earl of Huntly wearing his hat as hereditary sheriff of that town and constable of its castle. In the mid-17th century, the family split into two branches: of Dunain about 3 miles southwest of Inverness, the senior branch (read about them here), and of neighbouring Dochfour, the junior branch (see here). Hugh Baillie, the purchaser of Redcastle in 1838, was a younger son of Evan, the 5th of Dochfour but it would be wrong to think of these people as just minor Inverness-shire lairds. As a younger son of the 4th laird, Evan had not expected to inherit Dochfour and, after a brief military career in the West Indies, he acquired sugar plantations there before settling in Bristol where he formed the sugar trading firm E Baillie, Sons & Co with his three sons, Peter, Hugh (purchaser of Redcastle) and James. All four became spectacularly rich in the process. Evan's obituary in the Inverness Courier in 1835 called him one of the richest commoners in Britain but it was, of course, a fortune built on the backs of African slaves: when slavery was abolished in the 1834, the Baillies owned 3,100 slaves and they received £110,000 compensation for them (about £12 million today). Leaving his sons in Bristol adding to their fortunes as partners of the Bristol Old Bank, Evan retired to Dochfour (which he'd inherited from his older childless brother in 1799) around 1815 and in 1818 bought Tarradale, the estate which marches with Redcastle on the west (and anciently part of the Earldom of Ross: nice plan of it in 1788 here). He passed it on to his second son, Hugh, so Redcastle as the neighbouring estate to the east was a natural purchase for him.

In 1839, Hugh Baillie commissioned the architect William Burn (whose most famous works are probably St John's Church at the west end of Princes Street in Edinburgh (1818) and Inverness Castle (1836)) to remodel Redcastle. On this website, if you scroll down you can see an early sketch proposal by Burn but nothing quite so grand (or ugly!) as this was ultimately carried out and the main change was the addition of an unremarkable block to the north west elevation of the castle which you can see in the photo below (the lower, two storey part to the right of the spire):

Redcastle from the north in 1967, about 15-20 years after it was abandoned. Photo courtesy of Historic Environment Scotland

The castle's citation as a listed building (here) suggests that the 1840s Burn alterations also included the three storey block in the re-entrant angle between the main stair tower and the south wing - the bit I've outlined in red on the photo below ...

Photo credit: Arjayempee

... and also the loggia which ran along the front of the castle (gone now). But I wonder if that's correct because I think you can see both of these in the drawing of the castle on the 1825 plan (above). The red outlined block is clearly later than the 17th century stair tower to its right but I think it was added earlier than the 1840s. MacGibbon & Ross remark (here) that this block is "a more modern addition" to the 17th century (and earlier) core of the castle and I think it's significant they include it in their plan (below) which consciously omits the 1840s Burn additions.

The block outlined red on the photo above which I think is earlier than the 1840s Burn additions is marked X

Something else probably done to the castle during Hugh Baillie's ownership was the addition of dormer heads (pediments above the dormer windows) re-used from an old 17th century building in Inverness called Castle Tolmie (though it wasn't a castle as such) which was demolished in 1849 to make way for a new bridge across the River Ness to replace one washed away by a flood that year (the bridge between Bridge Street and Young Street which was itself replaced by the present bridge in the 1960s). There's a picture of one of these dormer heads (no longer in position) below and more here. Generally, I like to think Hugh had the taste to restrain William Burn from going full Victorian pseudo-gothic and keep a lot of native vernacular in the look of Redcastle.

 

(C) Crown copyright HES

Turning from the architecture of the castle to the agriculture on its estate, the period very roughly 1760-1840 - spanning the end of the MacKenzie ownership of Redcastle through the Grants and Fettes to the early Baillie ownership - was the era of agricultural improvement. The hand maiden of the Industrial Revolution, this was the time when farming was transformed from being primarily subsistence (the majority of the population being farmers growing their own food) to primarily commercial (growing crops to sell into the market to feed the growing percentage of the population who couldn't grow their own because they lived in cities and worked in factories). Amongst the changes in farming practice during improvement were a move from farms being held by multiple tenants to being held by single tenants on longer leases; a move from land being cultivated in irregular clusters of rigs (strips) to the more regularly shaped enclosed fields we're familiar with today; and improved crop rotations, fertilisation and machinery. In 1796, the Minister of the Parish of Killearnan, in which Redcastle was one of the only two estates (the other being Kilcoy), lamented in the Statistical Account that agricultural improvement was "backward in the extreme". That's consistent with the advert for the estate when the MacKenzies were forced to sell it in 1790 which said that it was "still in [its] natural [i.e. unimproved] state". 

But almost 30 years later, the 1825 map evidences considerable change. It showed that nearly half the estate was under plantations of trees (something for which the Minister congratulated the then new owner in 1796, James Grant of Shewglie). Of the rest, the agricultural land, about a third was under six large (by the standards of the time if not now), improved single tenant farms averaging 100 acres. Another third was under 18 small single tenant farms averaging 25 acres while the remaining third was divided almost evenly between around 65 single tenant crofts averaging 4 acres and 6 farms still in multiple tenancy averaging about 50 acres. 

It's also noteworthy from the 1825 plan that some of the farm names that appeared in the earliest 15th century charters and rentals are still there (e.g. Garguston, Lettoch), some have disappeared (Hilton) and some new names have emerged (Parkton, Torgormack). Some of the older names have been divided and Coulmore is an interesting example of this: the extract from the plan below, onto which I've added the boundaries of Coulmore in red, shows that Easter Coulmore (116 acres) is still an old style multiple tenant farm. The jumble of houses circled yellow is a dead giveaway of this and, in the list of tenants, its tenant is given simply as "sundries". Note that it doesn't appear to have been divided into fields. Contrast with Wester Coulmore (96 acres) which is obviously an improved single tenant farm (tenant: Donald McLean). Note also some of the crofts ranging from 1.5 to 8 acres along the top:-

Coulmore Farm in 1825    

So I think agricultural improvement was still unfinished business on Redcastle Estate in 1825. The next time we get to see any detail of the holdings on the estate is the Valuation Roll of 1855 when the era of agricultural improvement is generally regarded as complete. (I can't link to this VR directly but go here, select 1855, select Ross & Cromarty under 'County/City' and Killearnan under 'Parish' and type 'Estate of Redcastle' in the 'Place' box.) Now, without paying to see the actual scans of the VRs with the rateable values, this is much less finely grained than looking at a plan like the 1825 one: you can't see the respective sizes of the various holdings and can only distinguish between farms on the one hand and crofts on the other. Nevertheless, the takeaway from the 1855 VR, I think, was that there didn't appear to be any multiple tenant farms left and there were only about 45 crofts now compared with about 65 in 1825. No doubt some crofts had been absorbed into the larger farms as they fell vacant but there doesn't seem to have been any wholesale clearance of crofts on Redcastle in the mid-19th century as was happening on the west coast at that time. There are still many crofts left on the Black Isle today and one or two on Redcastle Estate.

 

Hugh Baillie who purchased Redcastle in 1838 from A History of Banking in Bristol from 1750 to 1899

During his lifetime, but in which year exactly I don't know, Hugh Baillie passed Redcastle and Tarradale to his younger brother and fellow Bristol banking partner, James (picture of him here). The latter had previously bought a huge acreage in the Highlands including Glenshiel Estate in Wester Ross and when he died childless in 1863, Redcastle and Tarradale went to his nephew, Hugh's son, Henry, while Glenshiel and the rest went to his cousin, Evan II Baillie, 6th of Dochfour (1798-1883: grandson of the Evan previously mentioned and who also, incidentally, acquired Dunain in 1872 following the death childless in 1869 of the 14th and last laird of the senior Baillie line). 

Baillie family tree (click for a clearer view)

When Henry Baillie died in 1885 with his son having predeceased him, Redcastle and Tarradale passed to his cousin twice removed, Colonel James E B Baillie, 7th of Dochfour (1859-1931). In 1899, he (James) sold Garguston Farm to its tenant Robert Trotter (a Robert Trotter is identified as tenant of Garguston on the 1825 plan so a lot of continuity there); Fettes & Blairdhu Farms to a Mr MacDonald (500 acres: they were bought back into the estate from his son in 1937); Coulmore and Lettoch Farms to their tenant Alexander MacQueen (this sale also included some neighbouring crofts and totalled 700 acres); and finally Easter Kessock with the ferry and salmon fishery. It was reported at the time that Colonel Baillie was contemplating selling all the rest of Redcastle in lots but that didn’t come to pass. 

The sale of Easter Kessock caused Col. Baillie some bother. The purchaser, Mr - afterwards Sir - Donald MacDonald was, as well as being a magistrate and later Provost of Inverness, a ship owner. He'd bought Easter Kessock - which appears to have included Craigton to the east - with a view to improving the ferry and then developing the village as a commuter suburb of Inverness. But there was a problem with the tenants of the estate: MacDonald had understood them to be ordinary agricultural tenants (meaning they could be removed relatively easily to make way for his redevelopment) but it turned out they were actually crofters (meaning they couldn't). In 1907, he sued for a refund of £2,500 (£260,000 in today's money) from the £19,000 (£2.1 million today) he'd paid for the estate. Colonel Baillie admitted liability but disputed the sum claimed as extravagant: the Court of Session agreed and awarded MacDonald just £700 (£70,000 today).

 

Looking west at North (Easter) Kessock. Note the steam ferry at the pier in the background.

But as annoying as the Easter Kessock settlement was, it was a drop in the bucket compared with the financial blow Col. Baillie had suffered two years earlier at the hands of his factor (Scottish word for land agent or steward who collects a landowner's rents), Donald Grant, solicitor in Grantown on Spey. When Grant died in October 1905, it emerged he'd been embezzling his clients' money and Baillie lost over £40,000 - an astonishing £4.2 million in today's money. (I assume Baillie didn't draw all the rents Grant collected on his behalf and instead left a credit balance to build up with him: treating him like a bank, in other words. Grant had also been the agent for the Royal Bank of Scotland in Grantown. Other clients lost another £40,000. What he did with all the money he embezzled is nowhere revealed.)

Just as well for Colonel Baillie that he was married to the heiress to half the Bass brewing fortune, the Hon. Nellie Bass. Upon the death of her father, Michael Bass, Lord Burton, in 1909, she as his only child became Baroness Burton in her own right. Reporting on that event, the London Daily Chronicle noted that she:- 

 

will, of course succeed to a large fortune; and she and Mr Baillie will in future be much more prominent in society. They have of late years lived very quietly at Dochfour House, Inverness-shire, or at Redcastle, their place in Ross-shire. Mr Baillie suffered heavy financial losses two or three years ago, in consequence of which he had to let Redcastle with its shootings. 

 

I'm not convinced it's true that Col. Baillie had to let Redcastle in direct consequence of his losses at the hands of Donald Grant. It seems to have been his practice to let Redcastle for the 'Scottish Season' (late summer, early autumn around the 'Glorious 12th' of August etc.) before and after the Grant affair (1905) and his wife coming into her fortune (1909). Often it was Dochfour which was let and the Baillies decamped to Redcastle and the practice of letting one of their houses for the season seems to have continued almost right up to WW2: it was at Redcastle that the Baillies entertained the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII and Duke of Windsor) in August 1923. There are a couple of references in the newspapers of the time to Redcastle having been their principal residence but how true that is, I can't tell. In Part 1 of this series, I described the castle as having been Lady Burton's home in the 1930s - perhaps it would have been more accurate to call it one of her homes.

 

Dochfour. Photo credit: Steven Severinghaus

As this is the story of Redcastle rather than the Baillies, I mustn't wander too far off topic but I couldn't resist this snippet in the Buchan Observer and East Aberdeenshire Advertiser in 1913:

Lady Burton and Mr Baillie, who usually let for the Highland Season their principal place, Dochfour, on Loch Ness, are themselves occupying it this year instead of Redcastle, Ross-shire, which has a tenant - Mr J. F. Robinson. Dochfour ... is only a part of Mr Baillie's domains which extend to about 90,000 acres. It is also not the most profitable portion, this being his Strathspey property, on which at Aviemore, Lady Burton runs a big hotel, built according to her own plans and tastes. To the alliance of Baillie and Bass the immense estates of the Laird of Dochfour owe a great deal (for they were heavily encumbered) and will owe much more.   

 

The hotel in question was the Aviemore Station Hotel, built in 1900 and which stood on the site where the awful 1960s Strathspey Hotel stands today until it was burnt down in 1950. Now one has to take these gossip column type pieces with a grain of salt (for example the Baillie property in Strathspey was Kingussie, not Aviemore) but they did have an involvement in the Aviemore Station Hotel. How deep it was financially, I don't know, but Col. Baillie was chairman of the hotel company and Lady Burton and her son the Hon. Evan became directors after his death which hints at a fairly substantial shareholding to be represented by a seat on the board. I don't know whether they were still involved when the hotel burnt down or whether Lady Burton had designed it as the article claims, although if she did, she had very good taste. Note the similarity of these dormerheads to the ones at Redcastle - coincidence?

Aviemore Station Hotel. 

As I mentioned in Part I, Lady Burton enjoyed the liferent (Scottish legal term for lifetime rent free use) of the Baillie estates following the death of her husband in 1931. She married a Major Melles the following year and lived until 1962 when she died aged 88. She was described in 1902 as having "unconventional manners". That was an allusion to the snobbery around those like the Basses whose money came from trade but about which Lady Burton made no bones at all: it was reported that she once scandalised the Marquis of Tullibardine at a ball by replying to his question that, no, she'd not heard of his ancestors who'd fought at the Battles of Culloden and Malplaquet (1709) because her ancestors had been bottle washers. Good for her.

Redcastle Mains steading, probably built during the Grant ownership (1790-1825). Photo credit: Bob Bain

Lady Burton had been predeceased by her eldest son, Brigadier the Hon. Evan Baillie who was killed during WW2, so was succeeded in her title and the Baillie estates by her grandson, Brig. Evan's son, Michael. He was the Lord Burton who was well known in Inverness-shire landowning circles (and beyond) who died in 2013 (his obit). His younger son, the Hon. Alex, now owns Dochfour Estate while Redcastle (including Tarradale) and Glen Shiel belong to a Baillie family trust called the Burton Property Trust. Which members of the family are the beneficiaries of that trust is not in the public domain and I don't know but I'm pleased to see that, having come in for some criticism of their stewardship of Redcastle (the castle, not the estate - see here for example), the trustees have in the last couple of years cleared the vegetation out of it and tidied up its surroundings. Compare the two photos below:-

2021 - Photo credit: Nick Sidle

 

2024 - Photo credit: Alan Simpson

 It’s still hard to believe somebody lived there less than 90 years ago, though!