Accessibility

Font Size

100% 150% 200%

Background Colour

Default Contrast
Close Reset

Recording Your Heritage Online

Event ID 563543

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Recording Your Heritage Online

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/563543

Eilean Donan Castle

Former stronghold of the Mackenzies of Kintail, destroyed by government fire in 1719 and by 1900 little more than a few fingers of shattered masonry. It was recreated, 1912 -32 , for Maj. John MacRae-Gilstrap by George Mackie Watson and stonemason/carpenter Farquhar MacRae of Auchtertyre, who is said to have forseen the appearance of the rebuilt castle in a dream. The result - now the Macrae Clan Centre - is a romantic reincarnation in the tradition of early 20th-century castle revivals. It follows, more or less, the plan of the earlier castle as it was in its later phases, but uses much Picturesque licence. The main tower is a rebuild of the 14 th century tower house. This was the dominant structure of the tightly composed 15th century defensive enclosure built over part of a much larger 13 th century enceinte (visible now only in fragmentary outline). The castle's appearance in 1714 was recorded in plans and elevations drawn by Lewis Petit for the Board of Ordnance, but was not used as a source in the rebuilding. Only part of the L-plan block was recreated - as an austere crowstep-gabled house - while the south east building was altered and extended. Mackie Watson introduced a much more elaborate version of the 17th-century entrance, and invented machicolations, bartizans, crude gothic-style windows, verandah, a seagate in the west curtain, and a threearched bridge to the mainland. He ignored the plain early 18th century aesthetic, yet omitted decorative mouldings where they were known to have existed. Inside the tower, the style is Edwardian baronial, with oak beamed ceilings, unplastered walls and a canopied 15th-century-style chimneypiece in the first floor banqueting hall. Two of three narrow loops are original. For more information on the Mackenzies and Eilean Donan, see p.194.

[From the late 13th century, the Mackenzies held Eilean Donan as hereditary constables of the Earls of Ross, but by the mid-14th century they had lost control of the castle. Expanding east and westwards over the next two centuries, they re-acquired Eilean Donan in their own right in the later 15th century, receiving a charter for the castle and lands of Kintail in 1509. The castle is strongly associated with their devoted allies, the Macraes - 'Mackenzie's shirt of mail' - who populated this region from the mid-14th century and became hereditary constables under the Mackenzie Earls of Seaforth. The involvement of Eilean Donan in a Jacobite plot of 1719, and its disastrous finale at the Battle of Glenshiel, spelt its downfall. While harbouring a small Spanish garrison, the already damaged castle was bombarded to smithereens by Hanoverian frigates, and remained an uninhabitable ruin until the 20th century.]

Taken from "Western Seaboard: An Illustrated Architectural Guide", by Mary Miers, 2008. Published by the Rutland Press http://www.rias.org.uk

People and Organisations

References