Eilean Ruaridh Beag

NG87SE 4 896 728.

(NG 896 728) Eilean Ruaridh Mor and Eilean Ruaridh Beag are named after the celebrated chief of the Macleods, Ruaridh MacLeod, who flourished about 1480. He lived on Eilean Ruaridh Beag, where there are the remains of the house of John Roy MacKenzie, 4th Lord of Gairloch, who lived in the latter part of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th. In 1638 Kenneth McKeinzie of Gairloch was served heir male to his father when his inheritance included "...the manor place and gardens in the island of Ilinroy (Eilean Ruaridh Beag)..." The ruinous dry-stone walls of the buildings present no architectural features.

J H Dixon 1886.

On Eilean Ruairdh Beag are:-

(1) The dry-stone footings of a building 13.4m x 4.5m., the walls having been 0.5m thick, the building is divided into two compartments.

(2) A small 'U'-shaped structure, 4.0m x 4.0m., which may have been a building, since the SW side is an entire gable 1.7m high, its walls being 1.0m thick. However, the gable is constructed of rubble stone with lime filling whereas the remaining two walls are of dry-stone construction. At the NE end of the SE wall is the segment in semi-circular remains of what may have been a circular structure 1.7m diameter.

(3) The remains of a large, rectangular, walled enclosure, probably the garden referred to by auth.1. The wall of dry-stone, is, where best-preserved, 1.4m thick and 1.0 high.

Visited by OS (E G C) 4 October 1964.