Publication Account

Date 1995

Event ID 1016682

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016682

RCAHMS: Exploring Scotland's Heritage - The Highlands, 1995

This interesting hall-house contrasts with the numerous surviving tower-houses in the Highlands. Built in the late 13th or early 14th century, it now stands roofless and floorless, but apart from a modern breach in the east wall the stonework is almost complete to roof height and in good repair.

The main structure consists of the rectangular hall and a round tower. Only fragments remain of a narrow latrine tower which projected from the north wall. The roof was pitched, with gables at either end set back behind overhanging parapets, for which corbelling survives at the east end. The walls are rubble, with dressed sandstone framing the doors and windows. The ground floor, reached by a wooden stair from the floor above, was used for storage. Tiny windows secured by iron grilles supplied ventilation, while the room in the base of the tower had defensive arrowslits. The hall on the first floor had a wooden floor supported on a scarcement ledge. It was entered through an imposing arched doorway in the south wall, reached by an outside wooden stair. The door was defended by a portcullis (the slot can be seen from below), and a wooden door inside it secured with a drawbar. The small lancet window by the door was for the porter. The hall is lit by large pointed windows with benches either side, and part of the simple window tracery survives. The windows had both iron grilles and wooden shutters, which have left traces in the stonework, and the roofs of their embrasures have ribbed vaulting.

At the west end of the hall was the raised dais for the high table, lit by two windows, with a hooded fireplace in the south wall flanked by brackets for lamps. Doors led to the latrine and to a private chamber in the tower. The tower room has two arrowslits and one large window with bench seats, together with a fine domed roof built in concentric courses of stone. The joist holes for the floor have disappeared in the course of modern repairs.

The hall stood on the north side of a courtyard with other buildings round it, some vestiges of which remain. One must have been the kitchen, another may have been a chapel of St Mary recorded in the late 12th century. There were magnificent views from the site before the trees grew up, though it is in a poor defensive position, with its courtyard bounded by higher ground. The castle belonged first to the de Raits, who took their name from the manor and may actually have been Comyns, later to the Mackintoshes and to the Campbells of Cawdor.

Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: The Highlands’, (1995).