'Tigh Dige', Flowerdale House

NG87NW 8 8137 7526

(NG 8137 7526) The old Tigh Dige and its gardens and outbuildings stood in the field on the seaward side of the paddock (in which is the 'Place of Justice' - NG81NW 7) below Flowerdale House. The Tigh Dige itself was a house in a ditch or moat. Its remains still existed up to the time of the late Sir France MacKenzie in the centre of this field but agricultural operations have entirely obliterated them. The lines of the garden walls can still be traced in the part of the field lying to the east. This was the Gairloch home of Hector Roy MacKenzie, the founder of the family in the latter part of the fifteenth century. The Tigh Dige is said to have been originally a turf hut, with a roof made of sticks and divots. Kenneth MacKenzie erected on the same site, within the same moat, about the middle of the seventeenth century, a more substantial building, which was called the Stank House or Moat House, and continued to be the home of the family until 1738, when Sir Alexander Mackenzie erected the present residence called Flowerdale House.

J H Dixon 1886.

The garden walls of Tigh Dige were still visible about 1931.

D MacDonald, A Polson and J Brown 1931.

The original house known as Tigh Dige was built on a field below where the present Flowerdale House stands. It was a 'black house', built of turf, roofed with large thin turfs, and surrounded by a moat or ditch. It was in existence about 1480.

S Gordon 1935.

The site of the moated house indicated by Dixon (J H Dixon 1886) is a very marshy area unsuitable for building, save for a natural grassy hillock planted with trees centred at NG 8137 7526, 80.0m NW of the place of justice (See NG87NW 7). It is steepest on the S side and less well defined/ defined on the other three. On the flat top of it, several large earthfast stones suitable for building purposes can be seen, but they form no pattern of a structure. No moat is visible, but 0.3m high vague grass-covered banks of stones, probably the garden walls mentioned by Dixon (J H Dixon 1886), are in evidence immediately to the E of the hillock.

Site surveyed at 1/2500.

Visited by OS (N K B) 6 April 1965.