Recording Your Heritage Online
Event ID 564616
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Recording Your Heritage Online
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/564616
Caisteal Camus (or Caisteal Uaine; also known as Knock Castle from 17th century) Fragments of an early 15th-century rectangular tower, surviving best on the seaward side, with a late 16th/early 17th-century house at right angles. Evidence suggests that an earlier west range enclosed a courtyard. Fused to a rocky knoll on the north-east headland of Knock Bay, with a ditch to its landward side, Caisteal Camus occupies the site of an Iron Age fort, Dun Thoravaig, with sweeping views out over the Sound of Sleat.
[Caisteal Camus, like Dun Scaich, was caught between the medieval rivalries of the Macleods and Macdonalds. In the 14th century, it was a residence of the Macleods, who had tenure of southern Skye as vassals of the Earls of Ross. But it became one of two Macdonald strongholds in Sleat in the early 15th century (the other being Dun Scaich). When in 1596 it was returned with a charter following a period of forfeiture, it came with the provision that it should be made readily available as a royal residence. It was never used as such and, by 1689, had been abandoned.]
Taken from "Western Seaboard: An Illustrated Architectural Guide", by Mary Miers, 2008. Published by the Rutland Press http://www.rias.org.uk
