Architecture Notes
Event ID 678624
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Architecture Notes
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/678624
ARCHITECT for Restoration: c.1912 - 32 George Mackie Watson
with Farquar MacRae, Carpenter-in-charge
Transcribed from Architecture Catalogue slip:
This Castle has been referred to under the names of Donnan, Donan, and Eileandonan, and latterly by MacGibbon and Ross as Ellandonan. It stands at theWest extremity of the Parish of Kintail, Ross-shire, and Loch Duich. At full tides this Castle, consisting of a Tower and Rampart, and with a built well, became isolated from the Mainland.
According to Statistical Accounts, it was demolished in 1719, after the Battle of Glensheal, by a warship.
In the National Library of Scotland is a series of Military Maps and Drawings of the Board of Ordnance (Reference MSS.1645-1652), and in Case, or Volume, No.1648 is this Drawing numbered Z.3/26 : -
"Plan of the Castle of Island Dounan", scale 10 Feet to every Inch, with Profile or View. It is indicated as 'Surveyed & deliver'd' by Lewis Petit. There is no date, but there is a copy dated 1741.
It is recorded in the Index Volume No.1652 of the series mentioned above that the Castle of Island Dounan has been restored as a dwelling by Major Macrae Gilstrap, who purchased the ruins.
MacGibbon and Ross, in "The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland", Vol.111, page 82, give a small Plan and a Sketch in pen and ink. They say that unfortunately its Architectural features were almost entirely destroyed and on the Plan the buildings seem to have been in a ruinous state. The Keep is shewn as a rectangular building some 57 Feet long and some 43 Feet wide, with walls 10 Feet in thickness. What they call an heptagonal Tower 20 Feet in diameter internally and placed at a considerably lower level that the Courtyard of the Castle, they presume to have been a Water Cistern.
REFERENCE:
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND
MSS 1645 - 52 Military Maps and Plans transferred from Bord of Ordnance
has view of castle and plan by Lewis Petit No.1648
(NMRS has photographic copy & negative of this view and plan)
& sketch by A. Rollo 1949
NMRS LIBRARY
Old Statistical Account, Vol VI. Kintail Parish (1793), page 253
Footnote descibing history of Eilean Donan Castle and how the 'oldest inhabitant of the parish' recollects seeing Kintail 'men under arms', dancing on the leaden roof...setting out for battle of Sherrif-muir...' etc.
Wanderings in the Western Highlands & Islands, Miss M Donaldson (1923), pages193 - 5
Hostile description of Restoration
The NMRS holds copies of Miss Donaldson's prints (negatives in Inverness Museum box 63 No.s 759, 760, 762, 766) which show the early stages of restoration (work which was possibly substantially altered)
'Eilean Donan Castle, Ross-shire'
Antony Woodward
Country Life, 13th January 1994, pages 50 - 53