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Recording Your Heritage Online

Event ID 564572

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Recording Your Heritage Online

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/564572

Duntulm Castle, 14 /15th century with subsequent additions Now a much eroded and stone-robbed ruin, sea-girt and defended to landward by a wide ditch. It surmounts an outcrop of pillared basalt on which, in prehistoric times, a broch or dun -Dun Dhaibhidh (David's fort) -is believed to have stood. The late medieval curtain wall of irregular plan was contemporary with a four-storey tower to the landward side, only the vaulted cellar of which survives. The curtain was remodelled in the 16th century when the castle's defences were updated. Abutting the tower immediately to its north, another tower was added, probably as part of the early 17th century renovations (a good section of its wall collapsed as recently as 1990). Duntulm's ascendency as the symbol of Macdonald patrimony peaked around 1650. The original tower was embellished at parapet level and a new rectangular structure erected to the north-west of the enclosure. The only surviving evidence of an entrance is on the seaward side, giving acces to a cleft in the cliff edge which leads down to the sea.

[During the 13th and 14th centuries, Duntulm and the lands of Trotternish were caught up in the rivalry between the Earls of Ross and the Lords of the Isles, and through the later middle ages they continued to be the subject of territorial feuding between the Macdonalds and the Macleods. The 17th century brought a more settled era, Trotternish being finally settled in favour of the Macdonalds. Their return to north Skye was marked by an extensive rebuilding and enlargement of Duntulm, in accordance with their charter of 1618. This required Sir Donald Macdonald ('Donald Gorm Og', 9th chief) to make the castle his residence and, if it be derelict, 'with all convenient diligence prepair materiallis and cause build ane civile and cornelie house'. Duntulm was abandoned for the last time c.1732, its stones used to build Sir Alexander Macdonald's new residence - Monkstadt House, about 5 miles away.]

Taken from "Western Seaboard: An Illustrated Architectural Guide", by Mary Miers, 2008. Published by the Rutland Press http://www.rias.org.uk

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