Publication Account
Date 1995
Event ID 1016722
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016722
Bernera Barracks, like Ruthven, was one of the four barracks built after the '45, its main purpose being to control the narrow crossing from the mainland to Kylerhea on the Isle of Skye. Bigger than Ruthven, the barracks is now more ruinous, and it stands in splendid isolation on the flat plain at the mouth of Glenelg looking across to Skye.
The design is similar to Ruthven (no. 41) except that the barracks are double blocks with a chimney in each gable, with four rooms on each floor instead to two, making a total of 24 rooms in all. There are also windows facing outwards as well as inwards over the parade ground, the outer windows having been protected by iron bars. The barracks thus had accommodation for over 200 men. The angle towers served for guardhouse and brew-and bake-house, rather than protecting the main hall with enfilading fire as their projecting position would have allowed. The entrance to each angle tower was protected by a pistol-loop built into the wall of the adjoining vaulted chamber. Some slight decorative detail was used at Bernera, unlike the other three barracks; thus dressed stone was used for the corners of the buildings and the chimney stacks, and all round the windows and doors, and there were also dressed mouldings round the arched head to the main doorway in the enclosure wall, now fallen. Like Ruthven, Bernera has open-ended vaults round the perimeter wall, again provided only with small gun-loops for use by infantry with muskets.
Before 1745 Bernera regul arly housed one or two companies of infantry. Thereafter the garrison was reduced and in the later 18th century- was often only a few soldiers under the command of a sergeant or corporal. Johnson and Boswell rode past in 1773 on their way to take the ferry to Skye, and Boswell recorded 'As we passed the barracks at Bernera Iooked at them wistfully, as soldiers always have every thing in the best order, but there was only a serjeant and a few men there'. The military garrison was finally withdrawn in about 1800.
The present road from Shiel Bridge over Ratagan to Glenelg follows the line of the old military road from Fort Augustus built by Major Caulfield in the 1750s, and rebuilt by Telford. Earlier it was a drove route from Skye to Falkirk.
Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: The Highlands’, (1995).
