Torsa, Caisteal Nan Con

NM 765 136 Caisteal nan Con, Torsa.

This castle (Fig. 168, Pl. 44A, B) occupies a small rocky eminence on the NE shore of the island of Torsa, overlooking Seil Sound and Ardmaddy Bay. The entire area of the rock summit was enclosed, the upper and landward portion being occupied by a small oblong tower-house or hall-house, and the lower seaward portion by an oblong bailey which incorporated a circular tower at the NE corner. The castle appears to have been approached by means of a footpath leading up to a point on the S side of the bailey. All the buildings are very ruinous and much overgrown with turf, but considerable portions of the external wall-face, both of the tower-house and of the bailey, survive.

The masonry is of local rubble bonded in coarse lime mortar. The facework is variable in character (PI. 44C) and includes flagstone-slate and split boulders, some of the slabs being set on edge; there is nothing to suggest that freestone dressings were employed. Some portions of the walls are founded upon a plinth, while others rise from scarcements carried down to natural ledges in the rock face. The tower measured about 13'7 m from NE to SW by 8·8 m transversely overall, but the thickness of the walls cannot be ascertained without excavation. Access from the bailey was evidently obtained by means of a doorway in the NE wall, while gaps in the mounds of debris that cover the side-walls probably indicate the positions of former window-openings. The bailey measured 16'2 m by 10·6 m over all, the NE angle tower having an external diameter of about 5'5 m. The angle-tower evidently contained a garderobe, of which the discharge-chute is visible in the external wall-face.

About 75 m to the NE of the castle there is a small rocky inlet which probably served as a boat-landing.

It is difficult to estimate the date of this castle, but it may probably be ascribed to the later Middle Ages. The overall dimensions of the tower-house correspond fairly closely to those of Caisteal na Gruagaich, in Morvern, which probably belongs to the 15th century.

The island of Torsa was granted to the Campbells of Lochawe (afterwards Earls of Argyll) in 1313, and the superiority appears to have remained in their possession until the late 17th century, when it passed to the Campbells of Breadalbane. During the first half of the 16th century, and perhaps earlier, the island seems to have been held from the Campbells by the MacDougalls of Rarey, but during the second half of the century Torsa, like Luing, was probably feued by the MacLeans of Duart, from whom the castle may derive its present name of Caisteal nan Con ('the Dogs' Castle') (1).

The island evidently reverted to the MacDougalls early in the 17th century, however, when it was held by Allan MacDougall of Torsa, ancestor of the MacDougalls of Gallanach (2).

RCAHMS 1975,visited June 1971

(1) ‘It is supposed to have been a hunting-seat of the Lords of the Isles; but more than likely the name is derived from a sobriquet often applied by their enemies to the powerful Clan MacLean-Clann Illeathain nan Con' (Gillies, Netherlorn, 58)

(2) Origines Parochiales, ii, part i, 101; Highland Papers, iv, 221; Skene, Celtic Scotland, iii, 438; APS, vii (1661-9), 340, 342;

Burke's Landed Gentry (1952 ed.), 1619.