Recording Your Heritage Online

Event ID 563609

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Recording Your Heritage Online

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/563609

Recording Your Heritage Online

Dunvegan Castle, 13 th century and later, occupying an earlier Norse site The seat of the Macleod chiefs (see P.257) belongs to a large group of Gàidhealtachd strongholds (for example, Tioram, Dunollie and Dunstaffnage), the key elements of which still survive beneath the castle's largely 19th century appearance. Situated high on a sea-girt plug of basalt overlooking Loch Dunvegan, the present structure was begun, probably in the 13 th century, with a curtain wall that completely enclosed the promontory; fragments of this can still be seen. It was accessed through the sea gate, the only entrance until 1748, which survives still. At the back of the enclosure would have been the main building, or feasting hall, with associated buildings. In the late 14 th/early 15th century a large tower house was added to the north - a four-storey structure with defensive features, built to provide fashionable family accommodation. In about 1500, the Fairy Tower, a smaller, independent tower house probably intended for guests, was added by Alasdair Crotach, the 8th chief, on the south-east corner of the enclosure. During the Renaissance, the feasting hall was replaced by a fairly typical 'main house' of state apartment above cellars with accommodation above, built by Ruairidh Mor, 15th Chief, in 1623 . His grandson, Iain Breac, added the splendid landward-facing Pipers' Gallery in 1664, the detail of its balustrading very reminiscent of Craigievar's belvederes; in 1684-90 he added the south wing. As was customary at this period, the old tower was abandoned for the more comfortable living quarters. It remained roofless until 1790-1, when the architect/mason Walter Boak began the Georgianisation of the castle for Gen. Norman, the 23 rd chief. The hall of the re-roofed tower became the present drawing room - incongruously, just feet from the pit dungeon below - and among other additions was a barrack block on the north-west corner of the complex. In line with fashion and the fortunes of the Macleods, Dunvegan became increasingly modernised and homogenised, with spurious battlements concealing genuine antiquity. Sir Walter Scott, visiting in 1814 , noted approvingly the efforts of John Norman, 24 th Chief, to 'medievalise' the castle 'by making a portal between two advanced towers and an outer court, from which he proposes to throw a drawbridge over to the high rock in front'. (John Norman also continued the planting begun by his father and built the walled garden and other ancillary buildings). Further mock battlements and other alterations, including the eastern approach bridge, new porch and thinly Jacobean-style internal remodelling, were made by Robert Brown Jnr in the 1840s for Norman, the 25th chief. The west-facing dining room and library, arranged as a suite with interconnecting Georgian-style doorcases, are of this period, as is the billiard room (now the North Room) in the former barrack block. Among the prize trophies preserved inside the castle are the famous Fairy Flag, the Dunvegan Cup, and Ruairidh Mor's Drinking Horn. Ancillary buildings include: Laundry Cottage, dated 1734 , long and low with moulded architraves and crowstepped gables, formerly the estate office/factor's house, later the laundry. Stables/coachhouses/steadings, 1811 , a roofless U-plan court in handsome classical style, with pavilioned corners and ends emphasised by great, round-arched recesses, and smart dressings of pale ashlar. The adjacent sawmill retains its old machinery. The Cottage, 19th century addition to earlier core - one time dower house, pretty with latticed mullions, an older, thick-walled dwelling still evident behind its cottagey Tudor front.

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