Lismore, Castle Coeffin. General view from South-West.

Description Lismore, Castle Coeffin. General view from South-West.

Date 1882

Collection Erskine Beveridge

Catalogue Number AG 1394

Category Photographs and Off-line Digital Images

Copies SC 743175

Scope and Content Castle Coeffin, Lismore, Argyll & Bute, from the south-west The ruins of Castle Coeffin, strategically sited on a small limestone promontory on the north-west coast of the island of Lismore, command extensive views over Loch Linnhe to the Sound of Mull. The castle, built in the 13th century for the MacDougalls of Lorn, was photographed in 1882 by the Victorian photographer, Erskine Beveridge. This building, of local rubble and beach boulders, appears to have been an oblong hall-house of two main storeys. The ground floor had three separate entrance doorways, and the whole of the first floor was occupied by a large hall, lit by three windows. A mural staircase rose from ground-floor level to a wall- or parapet-walk, parts of which survive on the south-east and north-west sides of the building. Although the castle is ruinous and the wall surfaces clad in ivy, many of the original features are clearly visible. The first-floor hall, the principal apartment, had a large fireplace in the south-west gable, and a garderobe or medieval privy within the thickness of the south corner, with traces of the vent chutes still visible externally. A doorway, also in the south-west gable-wall, gave access to the tip of the rock promontory and the shore. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

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