Castle Calvay

It's one of Scotland's less well known castles but next time you sail into Loch Boisdale on South Uist, look out for the island of Calvay off the south shore near the mouth of the loch: it's the island with the little light beacon at its western end.

Image Copyright Colin Wheatley and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

At the west end of the island, you'll see the fragmentary remains of Castle Calvay. I think this is the second biggest medieval castle in the Outer Hebrides after Kisimul Castle on Barra (which obviously stands head and shoulders above the rest of the competition). It's not much of a claim to fame as there's really not much to see of Castle Calvay - just a few low, jagged, broken walls:-

Image Copyright Peter Barr and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Image Copyright Colin Wheatley and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

This is a picture of the castle from the landward side from the RCAHMS website, although it's hard to see it against the background.

You begin to get a slightly better picture from above as seen from Google Earth (By the way, what did armchair explorers do before Google Earth and Geograph had been invented?):-

The only history I can find about Castle Calvay is also on the RCAHMS website as follows:-

Calvay Castle, date uncertain, ruin of an islet fortification at the mouth of Loch Boisdale, from the roughly mortared stones of which it is possible to define an irregular curtain wall and the foundations of a small tower on the south-west corner. Fragments of the buildings that stood against the inner face are just discernible (there was a two-storey hall on the north side), as are gun slits, and the main entrance to the south. The history of this Outer Hebridean castle of enclosure - South Uist's answer to Kisimul - is shadowy. It is possible that it was built either by the MacRuaries of Garmoran or their successors, the MacNeils of Barra, to whom the Earl of Ross granted a charter of the lands of Boisdale in 1427. Bonnie Prince Charlie hid here in June 1746, after his sojourn in Glen Corodale.
From the above info, I attempted a plan of the castle traced from a close zoom-in on Google Earth:-

Next post?

My problem is that I've got more ideas for posts than I have time to post them:-

As you can see from that list, so far I've only managed to do High Bridge and Fort William. So what do you want me to write about? Anything on that list or something else? I don't promise to adhere to any suggestions!

I think I feel Calvay Castle coming on next, though.

High Bridge

This is something I was unaware of until I started googling the fort at Fort William the other day - High Bridge a few miles up the road near Spean Bridge.

Built across the River Spean in 1736 by General Wade as part of his network of military roads through the Highlands, High Bridge is not marked with gothic lettering on any current Ordnance Survey map. That's probably because it collapsed in 1913 long after it had been bypassed by the current bridge at Spean Bridge a mile or so upstream (east). The latter bridge, which carries the A82 Glasgow - Fort William - Inverness road, was built by Thomas Telford around 1813 and widened when the A82 was improved in 1932.

This is how High Bridge looked in the late 19th century as photographed by the antiquarian Erskine Beveridge (picture sourced from RCAHMS):-

And this is how it looks today with only the piers remaining (and considerably more trees in the gorge):-

Image Copyright J M Briscoe and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

In the picture above there seems to be a metal bailey bridge from one bank over two of the piers but not crossing the river - I don't know, I've never been there.

Anyway, the remains of High Bridge seem to me to be a rather neglected landmark which deserve gothic lettering (and blue shading) on the OS map. Perhaps a brown tourist attraction sign on the road as well. The reason is that General Wade built about 250 miles of roads but only two major bridges. One is the very famous bridge over the River Tay at Aberfeldy (below) and the other is High Bridge.

(Above picture Copyright Jo McClure.)

I shall come back in a future posting to more detail on General Wade's military roads but in the meantime leave you with an extract from the 1875 OS one inch map showing the two bridges over the Spean before High Bridge had collapsed. (In between the two, a railway bridge was later built in the early 20th century which is gone now as well - I'll need to find out about that as well.)

Fort William

As you may have gathered from previous posts, I'm curious about places with overtly English names in the Gaelic milieu of the West Highlands of Scotland - what quirk of history gave rise to them?

One such is Fort William and I must confess I was just going to write about who gave his name to the fort which no longer exists at this town in south west Inverness-shire. But when I started researching this post (by which I mean 15 minutes googling) I discovered - news to me - that parts of the fort still exist.

There it is on the latest edition of the OS 1:25,000 map - I've never seen it marked on any previous OS map:-


I also found this picture of the remains of the fort on the Royal Commission for the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland website

It's the roughly oblong green bit between and below the two roundabouts. Next is a photo of the walls of the fort from Geograph:-

Image Copyright Nick R and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

The remains of Fort William are certainly not on the Historic Scotland trail and, as I say, I'd no idea there was anything left of it to see and apologies to anyone who's well aware of its continued existence.

This is the history. You've heard of the English Civil War in the 1640s when Parliament took up arms against King Charles I, right? In England, the gripe was the king's high handed attitude to levying taxes. But there was a also parallel civil war in Scotland in which the king's enemies - called the Covenanters - had a gripe about his religious policies. Long and short is Oliver Cromwell got fed up with all of them, closed down Parliament, executed the king (1649) and invaded and conquered Scotland (1651).

The Highland clans had been particularly active in Scotland on behalf of the king so, in 1654, one of Cromwell's key generals, General Monck, established a fort at the strategic location which is now Fort William but was called Inverlochy at the time. When King Charles II was restored in 1660, the fort at Inverlochy was abandoned but it was rebuilt in 1690 and renamed "Fort William" in honour of King William III (aka "William of Orange"). This was in the context of the overthrow of the Catholic Stuart King James VII & II in 1689 and the beginnings of the Jacobite rebellions which sought the restoration of the Stuart dynasty and in which the Highland clans were once again particularly active.

Fort William was besieged during the rebellions of 1715 and 1745 and reconstructed after the latter. However, part of the north rampart was destroyed in a flood in the late 18th century and, as peace had returned to Highlands by then, it was not repaired and abandoned as a military garrison. The picture below shows the fort around the 1880s by when it was in private ownership:-

And this is how the Ordnance Survey 25 inch scale map shows the fort in 1871:-

The end of the line for the fort came in the 1890s when it was bought by the West Highland Railway and mostly demolished to accommodate a goods yard in connection with the new railway into Fort William. Needless to say that goods yard is now occupied by a Tesco.

This last picture is also from the RCAHMS website. I'm not sure of the date but it looks early 19th century before the railway (or Tesco) and shows the fort to the left with the small village which grew up around it originally called Maryburgh in honour of Queen Mary, joint monarch with the eponymous King William.

The modern Gaelic name for Fort William - An Gearasdan - is simply a direct translation into Gaelic of "garrison".

Shiants again

A quick post to draw attention to some stunning aerial photos of the Shiants posted on the Flickr photostream of Chris Murray - Chris used to work on the Stornoway coastguard helicopter and took his camera to work with him.

This is a taster showing Eilean Mhuire in the foreground with Eilean Taighe (left) and Garbh Eilean (right) behind.

You can see the rest of Chris's excellent pictures here.

Barnhill

Image Copyright Andrew Curtis and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Pictured above, Barnhill is a farmhouse at the north east end of the island of Jura. It’s main claim to fame is that it is where George Orwell (1903-50) wrote the iconic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (which gave the English language such concepts as “Big Brother”, “Room 101” and “Doublespeak”) between 1947 and 1948. The connection was that Orwell was a journalist on the Observer whose editor at the time, David Astor, had a family estate on Jura (although Barnhill is on the neighbouring estate of Ardlussa).

Barnhill is incredibly remote, being five miles from the nearest tarmacked road and twenty miles from the nearest village (Craighouse). Only accessible by 4WD, It still belongs to the Fletcher family who owned it when Orwell stayed and can be rented for holidays (sleeps seven) at £550/week (price includes coal, gas and generator fuel, there being no mains electricity). See the Jura website for details.

The incongruously English name “Barnhill” in such a quintessentially Gaelic setting, incidentally, is simply a direct translation of the feature marked on the map, Cnoc an t-Sabhail (pronounced “Crochcan Towel”) which is Gaelic for “Barn Hill”. The village in the Eastern Highlands, Tomintoul, is also Gaelic for “Barn Hill”, being a corruption of Tom an t-Sabhail. So is Cairn Toul the mountain in the Cairgorms which is a corruption of Carn an t-Sabhail. You know how the Inuit (Eskimo) language has 200 words for snow? Well Gaelic has – er – quite a lot for hill, mountain etc., Cnoc, Tom and Carn being just three of them. (Beinn – as in Nevis – is another.)

Image Copyright Alan Gerrard and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Dunvegan Castle

In contrast to Eilean Donan and Duart Castles, Dunvegan Castle on the Isle of Skye looks like a fake but actually it's not.


Picture Copyright Gernot Keller. and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons License

There's just no getting away from the fact that the seat of the Clan MacLeod has to be one of the ugliest buildings in Scotland:-


But what we're looking at are skin deep Victorian additions to an extremely old building which is, in fact, the oldest continuously inhabited castle in Scotland dating as it does back to the 13th century. Below is a plan of the castle in the 1949 Official Guide by W. Douglas Simpson showing its various phases of development from medieval stronghold (black) to Victorian mock-gothic stately home (red and yellow).


Here's an artist's impression from the guide book showing Dunvegan in its original 13th century incarnation as a simple enclosure comprising a curtain wall entered from the seaward (west) side by a sea gate and containing unpretentious thatched domestic buildings within.


The picture below is the earliest known contemporary picture of the castle. It was drawn by the antiquarian (and acquaintance of Robert Burns), Captain Francis Grose in 1790. Viewed from the landward (east) side this time, the buildings within the curtain wall are more substantial but still show little sign of "gentrification". The tower on the right appears derelict but there is an unpretentious landward entrance which by now has probably superseded the seagate:-


The next picture is by the artist William Daniell in 1819. By now, Dunvegan is well into its transformation from castle to stately home with the major change being the addition of the turretted landward entrance porch and bridge. The main tower (right) seems to be back in use with an ogee roof on its northern extension. Note also that the chimney in the middle of the east front which is also conspicuous in the Grose drawing:-


I've always felt that, if the castle had been left looking like that, it would have been a most pleasing mix of old and new architectural styles. But unfortunately it was ruined in the 1840s by raising the central part of the east range (behind and to the left of the turretted entrance porch), doing away with the pitched roof (and the ogee roof) and adding the preposterous fake pepperpot turrets everywhere.

Not only did these alterations ruin the castle aesthetically, they also ruined the then chief of the Macleods financially. Hit by the double whammy of that and the potato famine (meaning his tenants couldn't afford to pay their rents), he was forced to take a job as a clerk in a London office in order to survive!

Dunvegan Castle may be an acquired taste architecturally but it remains to this day the home of the chief of Clan MacLeod after more than 700 years. And at least the sea-gate was preserved as seen in this picture of the castle from the west ...


Image Copyright Pam Brophy and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence
... although as this picture from the 1949 guide book shows, it was narrowed from a wider arch to a lintelled gate in the 16th century. We can live with that, though.