Archaeology Notes

Event ID 664354

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/664354

NH93NE 1 9745 3632

(NH 9745 3532 ) Lochindorb Castle (NR) (In Ruins)

Human Remains found AD 1866 (NAT)

OS 6" map, Inverness-shire, 2nd ed., (1900)

Substantial remains of a 13th century island castle of enceinte comprising a large quadrilateral curtained enclosure with angles strengthened by round towers of comparatively slight projection. No special arrangments appear to have been made for the defence of the entrance gateway, which is centrally placed in the east wall and gives access to a landing stage on the loch shore.

A peculiarity of the site is a forewall on the south possibly a 14th century basse-court addition, with its own port-cullis gateway but with no access to the inner court.

Traces of a range of buildings along with south wall of the main enclosure are still discernable, and the most westerly is known as 'The Chapel'.

Lochindorb was a stronghold of the Comyns Lords of Badenoch and was captured by Edward I in 1303 and again by his son, who strengthened it, a few years later. From 1372 it was occupied by 'The Wolf of Badenoch', Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan, who died in 1394 [1405 has also been suggested as his date of death]. It was ordered, by royal mandate, to be destroyed in 1458, having been fortified against the king, but the walls still stand to almost full height.

The Statistical Account (OSA, 1793) quotes local opinion as saying that the castle is built on an artifical island - apparently confirmed by the appearance of great rafts, or planks of oak, by the beating of the water against the old walls.

Ordnance Survey name book (ONB, 1871) gives no further information on the human remains found in 1866.

OSA 1793; Name Book 1871; D MacGibbon and T Ross 1887-92; J G Dunbar 1966.

(Lochindorb Castle, 10.4km NW of Grantown-on-Spey). Island stronghold in the loch of the same name.

The castle is first recorded during the Wars of Independence when Sir John ('the Black') Comyn died there in 1300. By 1455 the castle was in the hands of Archibald Douglas, Earl of Moray, The next year, after Douglas's defeat and death at Arkinholm, Lochindorb was again forfeited to the Crown and this time ordered to be slighted, the work of dismantling its defences being entrusted to the Thane of Cawdor. Since then, it has been left as a ruin.

J Gifford 1992.

The 1974 edition of the OS 1:10,000 map notes the winter water level of Lochindorb as being at an altitude of 295m above Newlyn datum in 1965.

Information from RCAHMS (RJCM), 7 October 1998.