Recording Your Heritage Online
Event ID 564314
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Recording Your Heritage Online
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/564314
Well of Seven Heads Monument (Tobar nan Ceann), erected 1812 by Col. Alasdair Ranaldson Macdonell, 15th Chief of Glengarry, in commemoration of the 'foul' Keppoch murders of 1663. Re-sited in the 1930s after road widening along Loch Oichside, the short, ashlar-plinthed obelisk bears inscriptions in many languages, confusingly inaccurate in their content. Its finial is a hand holding a dagger over seven carved heads, '... so grouped ... that they look as if they grew from the single neck of a Hindoo God' (Robert Southey, 1819).
[The Keppoch Murders are one of the best known incidents in a string of bloodthirsty inter-clan hostilities. The assumed perpetrator of the murder of the young chief Alasdair Macdonell and his brother at Keppoch in 1663 was their uncle, tacksman of Inverlair. Reprisals taken with the be-heading of him and his six sons at Inverlair on the orders of Macdonald of Sleat. The Monument marks the site of a spring or well at which the heads were washed before being presented to the Chief, Macdonell of Glengarry, at Invergarry Castle.]
Taken from "Western Seaboard: An Illustrated Architectural Guide", by Mary Miers, 2008. Published by the Rutland Press http://www.rias.org.uk
