Recording Your Heritage Online
Event ID 566513
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Recording Your Heritage Online
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/566513
Kisimul Castle
Probably early-mid 15th century; recreated 1956-70 by Robert Lister MacNeil The former seat of Clan MacNeil and the best preserved castle in the Western Isles, Kisimul comprises a main tower and later structures within an enclosing curtain wall - an arrangement that continues the form of the Gàidhealtachd stronghold into the late medieval period. One of the castles associated with an under-lordship of the Lords of the Isles, it parallels Breachacha, its contemporary on the Isle of Coll, and may have been built by the same master mason. The enclosure surrounds a small island occupied since prehistoric times. It is entered via steps up from the water through a wide, late 16th/early 17th-century gateway with a slot-machicolation and yett, the two-leaved gate having been removed from the castle and taken to Eoligarry, Balelone, Kilmuir Kirk to Kisimul in 1939. This gateway replaced two 15th-century entrances - one to the east, blocked by the later Watchman's House (which no longer survives), and a postern gate on the north-west curtain wall, blocked-up since the 17th century. Beside the main entrance stands the earliest identifiable building - a plain, three-storey unvaulted residential tower of local gneiss rubble, its parapet raised, probably at the same time as the curtain walls, in the 16th century. A stone forestair leads up to the curtain wall-walk, from which a bridge flies out to a platform cantilevered out from the tower entrance. The door is located between the first and second floors, to which it is connected by mural stairways. These floors contained separate lodgings with latrine closets in the walls, the second floor, lit by windows on all sides but with no fireplace, being the laird's private apartment. The unlit ground floor, from which access to the floors above was via a trap door, was entered by a low doorway reached by a stone forestair. The building on the north-west side was the hall (with two sea-flushing garderobe projections), which would have been thatched and lit by a central hearth. It acquired an upper floor and was extended south west in the 17th century, blocking the postern gate. The rounded internal tower, built into the north corner of the enclosure and later raised, contained the pit prison and latrine below a guard room; this and the hall were substantially rebuilt in the 1950s, when the building on the north east was reinvented as a mortuary chapel. Other buildings of c.1500 included the Watchman's House (foundations survive), Tanist (heir's) House (now rebuilt), and kitchen (now re-roofed). Only a fragment survives of the late 16th-century crew or boat house, which stood outside the walls south of the tower. Putlog holes indicate the position of the former wooden wall-walks, which would have been intended principally as viewing platforms. It is doubtful that the aim of this castle was primarily defensive, and evidence for external hoardings is weak, although as late as 1675 the MacNeil was using 'hagbutts, guns and pistols' to fend off a party of government officials who had arrived to serve a writ, and earlier that century Ruairidh the Tartar's piracy resulted in the castle being captured by 20 men with 'swerdis, gantillatis, plaitslevis, bowis, darlochis, durkis, targeis, Lochaber aixes, tuahandit swerdis, and othuris wapponis invasive'. Kisimul was abandoned in the early 18th century, and burnt out in 1795. During the herring boom, stone was taken for ballast and much of the curtain wall and other buildings was destroyed. The 20thcentury rebuild was largely conjectural, making liberal use of concrete and cement render. In 2000, the present chief, Iain R. MacNeil, made Kisimul over to Historic Scotland on a 1,000 year lease, the annual rent being £1 and a bottle of whisky. (Open to public; guidebook available)
Taken from "Western Seaboard: An Illustrated Architectural Guide", by Mary Miers, 2008. Published by the Rutland Press http://www.rias.org.uk
