Lunga House, Ice House

This substantial mansion is situated 450m SE of Bagh anTigh-Stoir, an inlet on the S approach to Loch Melfort. It owes its present baronial appearance to extensive 19th century alterations, when concrete crow-steps and ornamental turrets were added to an earlier core, and the window-margins replaced. Formerly known as Daill, the house originally belonged to the Campbell of Craignish estate and was assessed for thirteen windows in 1748, when it was occupied by 'Lady Campbell', although this total was reduced to seven in 1770. In the late 18th century it was acquired by John MacDougall of Lunga, who took his designation from his island of that name situated 8.1 km to the W, and this name came to be applied to the mainland property in the middle of the 19th century (en.1).

The house is built on a NE-SW axis and the earliest portion appears to be the central block of the NW front, where a ground-floor return wall incorporates a lintelled doorway with a circular recessed gunloop to the W. This part of the building, which may be ascribed to the middle of the 17th century, appears to have belonged to a semi-fortified L-plan house with the main staircase situated in the re-entrant angle. The early entrance is now enclosed by a block on a NW axis, which is of mid-18th-century date. Both blocks of this L-plan are of two storeys with garrets. There are no significant early internal features.

ICE-HOUSE. Some 70m N of the house and facing N there is an 18th-century ice-house built of mortared rubble and finished with stucco. It measures 1.8m across within 0.75mwalls, by 2.45m in depth, and has a barrel-vaulted roof rising to a maximum internal height of 2.85m.

RCAHMS 1992, visited June 1989