Pricing Change
New pricing for orders of material from this site will come into place shortly. Charges for supply of digital images, digitisation on demand, prints and licensing will be altered.
Publication Account
Date 1985
Event ID 1018746
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1018746
This magnificent castle occupies the summit of an isolated rock stack at the head of Loch Etive, with the sheltered anchorage ofDunstaffuage Bay to the east. The castle was founded by the MacDougall family, Lords of Lorn, either Duncan MacDougall, who founded the priory of Ardchattan, or his son Ewen, and it dates in origin to the middle of the 13th century. The ground plan is largely determined by the quadrangular shape of the top of the rock stack; the walls are massive, rising from the conglomerate stack to form a castle of enclosure but with stout slightly projecting angle towers at the north and west corners and with an entrance tower at the east angle.Doubtless much of the accommodation within the castle would have been in stone and timber ranges against the curtain walls particularly on the northwest; rather grander accommodation, possibly including a first-floor hall, is implied by the architectural details of the east side, with the blocked windows of these rooms still visible from the outside. The castle was captured from the MacDougalls by Robert Bruce in 1309 and for some years it remained in royal hands. After several other holders in the 14th and 15th centuries the castle was, in 1470, granted to Colin, 1st Earl of Argyll; in 1502 the custody of the castle was vested by the then earl in his cousin, who became known as the Captain ofDunstaffnage. Today the castle belongs to the Duke of Argyll, with the hereditary Captain as the keeper of the castle with right of residence, though the guardianship of the castle is now vested in the Secretary of State for Scotland.
It is a measure of the success of the original concept that the castle has, except at the entrance tower, been so little altered. In the late 15th or early 16th century the entrance was re-arranged with the rebuilding of part of the east tower; access was across a wooden drawbridge at the head of angled steps leading from the base of the rock stack. The upper part of the gateway is probably oflate 16th century date. Further alterations continued till 1810 largely to improve the domestic arrangements of the north-west range and the gate-tower, though work to allow the greater use of firearms in the defence of the castle was also undertaken.
The chapel situated about 150m WSW of the castle was built in the second quarter of the 13th century, with the burial-aisle of the Campbells of Dunstaffnage continuing the line of building at the east end. The chapel is of simple rectangular plan, but the detail of the mouldings of the windows is of an intricacy and quality remarkable in the west of Scotland at this time. The three pairs of windows of the chancel have been the main areas of such decoration with dog-tooth ornament on the outside; the paired windows on the north and south sides of the chancel are particularly fine examples of Gothic embellishment. The architectural style of the chapel has been compared to contemporary work at the Nunnery on Iona (no. 43)and the parish church at Killean (no. 46).
Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: Argyll and the Western Isles’, (1985).
