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Recording Your Heritage Online

Event ID 563476

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Recording Your Heritage Online

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/563476

Bernera Barracks, 1719-23, James Smith and/or his successors Andrew Jelfe and John Lambertus Romer; contractor Sir Patrick Strachan. The last of the four Highland forts built by the government at strategic points across the Highlands. This one, to guard the Skye crossing, languishes at the end of a tree-lined track on the boggy estuary of the Glenmore River. Incorporating stones plundered from the Glenelg brochs, it remains an impressive sight today, even though its two harled blocks - twin-gabled and rising to three and a half storeys each side of a courtyard - are reduced to pierced rubble shells, Bernera incorporates some notable modifications to the standard design: here, as at Fort Augustus ('Kiliwhimen'), the tenement-plan accommodation was doubled by building the five-bay blocks to a double-pile plan, each capable of accommodating two companies (120 men) in 12 almost square fire-lit rooms, each with five double beds.

Built to accommodate regular garrisons patrolling potential nests of insurrection after the Jacobite risings of the early 1700s, Bernera was conceived as more of a deterrent than a major military base. Its parapetted curtain walls, incorporating the outer face of each barrack block in one large rectangular enclosure, had limited defensive features. Provision of towers was limited to just two at opposite corners, these appearing rather domestic in character, as indeed they were in function (bake and brew houses, guardrooms and officers' quarters). Though modest, the degree of architectural refinement was greater here than at the other forts; the archway in the west wall was decorated, and the windows all have keystoned segmental-arches and smooth ashlar dressings. The rugged roofline retains one ovolo moulded skewputt and two coped chimney stacks, but many other freestone dressings have been robbed.

Bernera's role during the '45 was not a vigorous one and its status as a military force in the area became increasingly low key. Indeed, in 1750, (?) Lang wrote that 'the People are Protestants and are much Civiliz'd and Polished by the Barracks of Bernera'. By 1795 the fort had succumbed to dereliction, with only a sargeant or corporal and a few privates billeted in the still habitable officers' quarters. Military occupation continued until 1797, after which the increasingly ruinous structure was utilised by the poor and, later, by victims of the Clearances.

Taken from "Western Seaboard: An Illustrated Architectural Guide", by Mary Miers, 2007. Published by the Rutland Press http://www.rias.org.uk

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