Today we visited Urquhart Castle and Brodie Castle

Urquhart Castle lies close to Drumnadrochit


DRUMNADROCHIT

Drumnadrochit sits on the shores of Loch Ness, at Drumnadrochit Bay. With its village green, it is a quaint place, though it can get
overcrowded in die summer due tourists flocking here to catch a glimpse of the Loch Ness Monster, nicknamed "Nessie". Whether a monster actually exists or not has never been proved, but that has never deterred the crowds. The loch measures just less than 23 miles long by a mile wide at its widest, and being over 700 feet deep at its deepest, eontains more water than all the other lochs and lakes in Britain combined. In fast, the vertical cliffs that descend to the loch continue right down for several hundred feet below the waterline. The ferst mention we have of a monster - though in this case it was in the River Ness and not in the loch - occurs in Adamnan's 12fe of St Columba, written in the 7th century. In the year AD 565 St Columba was heading up the Great Glen towards Inverness, when he encountered a monster attacking a man in the River Ness at die point where it enters the loch. He drove it back by prayer, and the man's companions fell on their knees and were converted to Christianity.

Nowadays the monster is a bit more timid. Most sightings have been made at Urquhart Castle (Historic Scotland), about a mile from Drumnadrochit, and curiously enough, this is where the loch is at its deepest at 754 feet. The castle is one of the largest in Scotland, and sits on a promontory that juts out into the water. A fortification has stood here for centuries, but the present ruins date from the 16th century, when the Grants occupied it. Urquhart Castle has nothing to do with Clan Urquhart, whose homeland was on the Black Isle, north of Inverness, though there may have been early links. In 1689 a government force held out against a Jacobite army which was trying to capture it, but when the government troops moved out they blew the place up, rendering it useless to both sides. A visitor centre contains a model of the castle showing what it was like in its heyday.

Two exhibitions vie for attention in the village, the Loch Ness 2000 Exhibition Centre within the grounds of a hotel and the Original Loch Ness Monster Exhibition. They each have displays about the Loch Ness Monster, and in reality there is little to choose between them.

Urquhart Castle(£ 7,00/per person)


Urquhart Castle was a large and complex place. Residential and social considerations dictated its size and layout as much as defensive ones.
Urquhart Castle was a major place of strength. It endured much hostile action, and was constantly being repaired and rebuilt. But Urquhart was also a nobleman's residence, and successive owners took every opportunity to improve their accommodation.

The most significant improvement was the relocation of the 'heut' of the castle - the lord and lady's own quarters - from the high ground, the summit, in the southern half of the site down to the more accessible, and less exposed, area in the northern half. This wholesale change seems to have been carried through during the fourteenth century.

Alas, much of the dressed stonework, used for features such as doors, windows and fireplaces, was later robbed for use elsewhere in the glen. As a result, there is little architectural detail, other than in the Grant Tower, to help date the various parts of the ruined complex.

This tour takes the visitor around the castle ruins, pointing out the features of interest. It begins at the drawbridge and ditch on the landward side (in the foreground in the aerial view) and ends at the impressive Grant Tower, at the north end of the promontory (on the far left in the aerial view). From there one can get the most magnificent views over Loch Ness and the majestic scenery of the Great Glen.

Key to Castle Plan

1Ditch
2Drawbridge (site of)
3Causeway
4Gatehouse
5Guard room
6Prison
7 Kiln
8 Service Close
9 Summit
10 Dovecot
11 Smithy?
12 Water Gate
13 Stable?
14 Outer Close
15 Chapel?
16 Great Hall cellars
17 Kitchens
18 Inner Close
19 Kitchen
20 Grant Tower
21 Kiln
22 Site of castle-toun

The Ditch and Drawbridge

The castle stands on a rugged and irregular hourglass-shaped promontory jutting into the ice-cold waters of Loch Ness. The landward side of the promontory was defended by a rock-cut ditch, 30 m across at its widest point and 5 m deep on average. The ditch has clearly been widened and deepened during its long history.
A stone causeway crosses the ditch, and a modern fixed bridge now spans the gap where the drawbridge used to be. Exactly what that drawbridge looked like is unclear. That it was a heavy and robust structure operated from the castle side of the ditch is clear from the surviving features - the large vertical sockets for timber uprights, and the stone buttresses for counteracting the immense thrust of the timbers and lifting mechanism.
The causeway between the drawbridge and gatehouse was enclosed within stone walls. Now just mere footings, they were once fitted with arrow-slits and gates, or sallyports, through which the garrison could %any forth' to engage the enemy whilst the drawbridge remained raised and barred.

The Gatehouse

Only the lower two storeys of the twintowered gatehouse remain more-or-less intact. The upper levels, including the battlements, came crashing to the ground, possibly after the Jacobite Rising in 1689-90. Parts from those upper storeys lie on the grass in front of the gatehouse; they incorporate chimney flues and latrine chutes.
The gatehouse controlled entry into the castle and provided residential accommodation on the upper floors.
At ground level is the entrance passage, wide enough to allow carts to pass through. lt was strongly defended. A portcullis protected the outer portal - the grooves for it can still be seen; it was raised and lowered from an upper floor. Further into the passage were two more barriers, either stout timber doors or openbarred iron grilles, called yetts in Scots; one opened outwards, the other inwards. The passage between the portcullis and these inner doors was covered over by a timber deck containing `murder holes', through which the garrison could shoot down on the attacking force trying to break in.

The Guard Room

On the north side of the passage (on the left as you enter) a door leads to the guard room or porter's lodge. The porter was the medieval equivalent of today's security guard, controlling entry into the castle, checking visitors' credentials during the day and ensuring all was securely locked and barred at night. He also guarded any prisoners in the prison cell at the rear of his lodge. The long, narrow cell has a latrine at the far end.

A second gatehouse lodge, in the south tower and entered from the courtyard, was later converted into a kiln-house, where corn was dried, stored and ground into meal or flour.



The Constable's Lodging

The first floor of the gatehouse, now reached by the modern spiral stair in the porter's lodge, comprises a two-roomed lodging, a hall and chamber, with a latrine closet attached. This was most probably the lodging of the constable, or keeper of the castle, and from where he could control access into the castle. The hall, over the porter's lodge, was the equivalent of our living room, whilst the chamber, above the kiln-house, was a retiring room where he also slept, on a bed in the large wall cupboard. Both rooms had fireplaces and latrines. The odd space between the two rooms, directly over the entrance passage, originally gave access via a stair (a couple of treads remain in the wall) to the room high over the outer portal that housed the winding mechanism for the portcullis.
tact.

The Water Gate

At the narrow waist of the promontory, almost directly opposite the gatehouse, is the water gate. This gate gave access to the loch shore and was an important means of entry, and exit, in medieval times. In an age when roads were almost non-existent, most of the castle's provisions came by boat and were offloaded below the water gate. During the siege of the castle in 1689-90, the garrison was temporarily relieved by men and provisions successfully disembarking `verry safe' at the water gate.

The Service Close

To the south (right) of the gatehouse is the highest part of the promontory. This summit area may have formed the focus of a welldefended Pictish stronghold in the first millennium AD. Quantities of vitrified stone* have been found on its slopes. The summit was probably also the heart of the first castle, built in the thirteenth century. But that heart clearly shifted later to the lower ground to the north of the gatehouse. Thereafter, the southern half was downgraded to a service close. A cross-wall, now largely gone, running between the gatehouse and the water gate screened off the service dose from the rest of the castle.
The footprint of a building to the north (left) of the water gate may have been a stable; although clearly an addition, it is in the most convenient place - just inside the service dose near where the lord, lady and visiting guests would have dismounted on entering the outer dose.
The stone walls on the summit are a confusing web of masonry devoid of any features that might help us to interpret them. The one recognisable structure is the circular dovecot on the terrace below the summit. Typical of sixteenth-century Scottish dovecots, it is almost certainly the 'clovegrove' referred to in the 1509 charter. Four nesting-boxes for the Moos' (pigeons) survive. Dovecots were common features in medieval castles, providing a regular supply of pigeon meat and eggs for the lord's table, particularly through the Jong, harsh winter months.

The only other significant surviving structure in the service close overlooks the loch. Its ground floor has previously been interpreted as a smithy, and it is possible that this was what it had become late in the castle's life. But the building clearly started out in the thirteenth century as one of high quality, perhaps a great hall or guest range to complement the lord's private accommodation on the summit. The ground-floor hearth could just as easily have served a kitchen (the scar of the wide chimney flue can be seen rising up through the masonry).
The upper floors were entered from the courtyard across what must have been a fine timber gallery, supported on large timbers held in the sockets still visible in the wall footings. The latrine closet high up in the surviving south-west corner (far right) confirms that this was no humble building.



The Outer Close

By 1400 the 'Iwan' of the castle had moved to the northem half of the promontory (on the left from the gatehouse). After 1509, the Grants further developed the far, north end for their private lodging, the Grant Tower, thus forming two closes, an outer and an inner one.
The outer close is defined by the stone curtain wall skirting the outer edge of the rock. The section around the landward side survives almost to wallhead height, and has various arrow-slits through it.

The Chapel

On top of the rocky knoll in the outer dose are the foundations of a rectangular building. It may have been a chapel, although the
orientation is more north-south than east-west, not what we would expect in a Christian building. The `chapel' may originate from the
time when the promontory was a Pictish fortress; St Columba baptised a Pictish nobleman and his family here around AD 580.
It was normal for a large medieval castle to have its own place of worship, to save the castle residents from having to trek to the parish church, situated where Drumnadrochit village is today.

The Great Hall

A medieval nobleman required much more in the way of accommodation than his own private lodging. Second only in importance to his own residence was the great hall, a spacious room used for various purposes, but chiefly as banqueting hall and courthouse (the lord was responsible for law and order in his barony). The great hall was situated along the east side of the outer dose overlooking the loch. In addition to the large hall, there would have been a dais chamber, or retiring room, entered from the `top', or lordly, end of the hall, The kitchens and storerooms were beyond the `bottom' end and below.

A medieval nobleman's life was lived largely at first-floor level - the piano nobile, or noble floor - and the great hall at Urquhart was no exception. Sadly, little survives other than the sills of four great windows that lit the hall from the east, giving stunning views across the loch. The undercrofts, or storage cellars, are more complete. But as with the ruined buildings in the service dose, they defy more precise interpretation. The kitchens seem to have been housed in the southern end, nearest the gatehouse and furthest from the lord's residence. The four small oblong windows lighting the cellars directly beneath the great hall are among the few surviving pieces of architectural detail, and their `shouldered' internal lintels give us the clue that this block probably dates from the fourteenth century.

The Inner Close

Beyond the outer dose lies the inner dose, a small cobbled courtyard dominated by the lofty Grant Tower on the north (far) side. This dose was the most important of the three courtyards. It was therefore walled off from the outer dose and entry into it barred by a gate; both are now just low footings. A stone gutter still drains the dose of rainwater.
Two other buildings were accessed off the dose. Little can be said about the building on the east (right) side other than that its undercroft was probably a storeroom. The building on the west (left) side has a fireplace at either end, indicating that this was perhaps the `kitchen' referred to in the 1509 charter. Until the later sixteenth century, most Scottish tower houses did not possess `fitted kitchens', and the Grant Tower was no exception. The kitchen building was two storeys high, with additional living accommodation on the upper floor.

The Grant Tower

The most prominent feature of the entire castle is the tower house at the northern end of the promontory. It is now popularly known as the Grant Tower, after the family who built it. In 1509 Sir John Grant was held bound 'to repair or build at the castle a tower'.
The massively-thick basement walls possibly predate the Grants' arrival on the scene. It also seems likely that the parapets and turrets at the top are later alterations, carried out towards the dose of the sixteenth century, or even into the seventeenth. The refinement may even have been the handiwork of James Moray, master-mason, who was carrying out major repairs at the castle as late as 1623. Despite the collapse of much of the tower's south wall, probably during a `storme of wind' in February 1715, the building retains much of its sense of space and grandeur as a residence of nobility.

Access to the Grant Tower was extremely limited and security measures strong. A deep, stone-lined ditch along the two sides facing the inner close (the stretch along the south side was later filled in) increased the building's defence. The weakest point, the entrance doorway, must only have been reached by a removable bridge, whilst high above, at the wall-head, a projecting stone platform, carried an four stone corbels, enabled those within to 'cover' the entrance.

The Grant Tower is five storeys high, and the entrance door leads into the second of these, the hall. This was the least restricted of the rooms in the tower, an outer reception room that may also have been put to limited use for dining. lt was lit by good-sized windows and heated by a large fireplace in the south wall. A narrow spiral stair leads down to a dimly-lit stone-vaulted storeroom in the basement and a well-defended postern, or back entry. A second spiral stair leads to the upper floors.

We do not know quite how the Grants used these upper floors, but we can speculate. The fine room directly over the hall was most likely their outer chamber, an altogether more private space, where the lord and lady could relax and entertain dose friends. They would have dined here when not entertaining in the great hall. Above that again was their inner chamber, also a reception room but one reserved for their most intimate companions. It would also have contained their elaborate four-poster bed.
The topmost storey had a garret in the main tower, perhaps used by the servants, and pretty, square-gabled turrets at the corners, each containing a little chamber, complete with fireplace and window. Where once lords and ladies admired the view, now countless visitors can do likewise.

THE STORY OF URQUHART CASTLE


A FORTRESS OF THE PICTS

Around AD 580, St Columba visited Urquhart. The noble Pict whom he baptised there was one in a long line of lords who for centuries had ruled over the glen from the promontory jutting into Loch Ness.
Urquhart* steps onto the pages of history around AD 580. St. Columba, founder of the monastery on Iona in Argyllshire, was making a long and tiring journey to the court of Bridei, king of the Picts, at Inverness. His mission was to bring Christianity to them. To reach his destination, the holy man had to travel up Loch Ness. As he was passing Glen Urquhart, he was called to the residence of an elderly Pictish nobleman who was dose to death.
Columba baptised not only Emchath but his whole household. The holy man evidently got there just in time for Emchath thereafter `gladly and confidently departed to the Lord'.

There is no certainty that Emchath's residence was on the rocky promontory. However, the discovery there of a fragment of Pictish brooch has led to speculation that his residence was where the ruined castle now stands. The discovery of pieces of vitrified rock on the slopes of the summit confirms that the promontory was a well-fortified place around Columba's time. It was an ideal site for a fort - surrounded on three sides by the deep waters of the loch, easily defended from the landward side, and commanding extensive views.

We know there were Picts living in fertile Glen Urquhart. A number of place-names are Pictish in origin (eg Pitkerrald - pit meant 'farm' or `share', hence 'Cyril's farm'; Duldreggan - dul meant `rneadow', hence `meadow of the dragon?'). Although little now survives of the homes of the Picts, one of their burial grounds has been found at Garbeg, just 2 miles (3 km) from the castle, on ground overlooking the village of Drumnadrochit.



Columba and the Water-Beast

Today, people visit Urquhart Castle not only to view the ruins of a once-mighty medieval castle but to try to catch a glimpse of the famous `Loch Ness Monster'. Tales of mythical water-beasts have long been associated with Highland lochs. But the sighting of a monster in or around Loch Ness was first recorded in Columba's time. His biographer, Adomnan, describes the unforgettable moment in the life of the holy man:

'When Columba reached the river bank, he saw a poor fellow being buried; and the buriers said that, while swimming, the man had been seized and most savagely bitten by a water beast [aquatilis bestia].

Notwithstanding, the holy man ordered Lugne, one of his companions, to swim across to the other side and bring back a boat. Lugne obeyed without delay, but the monster . . . suddenly swam to the surface and with gaping mouth and great roaring rushed towards the man in midstream.

While all there were struck down with extreme terror, the blessed man raised his holy hand and commanded the savage beast: "Do not touch the man; turn back speedily." The beast, as if pulled back with ropes, fled terrified in swift retreat.
The brothers with great amazement glorified God, and also the pagan barbarians [Picts] who were there at the time.'

THE•FIRST• CASTLE

In the early thirteenth century, following the quelling of an uprising in Moray, King Alexander IIgranted the lordship of Urquhart to the powerful Durward family. They built the first castle.

In 1228, the men of Moray' - a huge province of Scotland reaching from the North Sea to the Atlantic coast - rose up against their king. King Alexander II ruthlessly crushed the rebellion, and by Christmas 1230 he was in Elgin celebrating his victory.

The king straightaway began bringing in men he could trust to help him secure the rebellious province. He granted the large and
sprawling lordship of Urquhart* to Sir Thomas `le Durward'. Thomas died soon after and his new prize passed to his son, Alan, the king's son-in-law. It was probably Sir Alan who built the first castle.
Thomas and Alan were descended from Normans who had come to Scotland in the twelfth century. They held the prestigious post of usher, or door-ward (door-keeper), at the royal court - hence their surname. Alan Durward was already Earl of Atholl, claimant to the earldom of Mar, and holder of extensive estates in Angus, the Mearns and Mar (a great slice of eastern Scotland), as well as the stately castle and broad acres of Bolsover in the English Midlands. For many years thereafter he was the real power behind the throne.

If a castle existed at Urquhart before the Durwards came there, there is no mention of it in the records and no evidence of it on the ground. But for Sir Alan to secure his lordship against a hostile population, he certainly needed an impregnable fortress. Some parts of the present ruin were certainly built for him, including the great ditch on the landward side and stretches of the perimeter wall.

THE•CASTLE•AS•RESIDENCE

Urquhart Castle was not just a stronghold. It was also the occasionalresidence of a nobleman, his lady and their large retinue. It served also as hotel, estate office, barracks, law court and prison.

Urquhart Castle never served as the main residence of its noble lord. The chief seat of the Durwards was at Coull, in Aberdeenshire, and the Grants, who held Urquhart in the twilight of its days, resided mainly at Freuchie (now Castle Grant), beside Grantown-on-Spey. For most of the period in between, Urquhart was a royal castle, though only one king of Scots ever slept there -David IIin 1342. For muck of that time the castle was looked after by a keeper, or trusted lieutenant, generally a local knight, who could be relied on to do his king's bidding. When the MacDonald Lords of the Isles held the castle, they too rarely stayed there, relying like the king on faithful henchmen to maintain the stronghold in readiness for their coming.

Mighty noblemen like the Durwards, MacDonalds and Grants were constantly on the move, attending their king and sittings of parliament, visiting their peers (social equals), and fighting wars. They also had to visit their various estates frequently, to dispense justice and consume their rents, most of which were paid in kind (corn and animals) not cash. Urquhart though had a special attraction for any owner, for it gave him unlimited access to one of the best hunting reserves in Scotland, the royal forest of Cluanie, which the lord of Urquhart administered on his sovereign's behalf.

THE•ESTATE•OF•URQUHART

Urquhart Castle was the centre of a vast estate reaching from Loch Ness far into the mountains to the west. The lord of Urquhart controlled everything that moved or grew in the lordship.

There are no details of the extent of the estate, or lordship, granted to the Durwards in the 1230s. However, thanks to the survival of royal charters granted to Sir James Grant and his two sons in 1509, we have a remarkably accurate picture both of the extent of the ancient lordship and of the settlements within it at that time.

The estate was vast, covering an area roughly the size of the Isle of Man. It enveloped both Glen Urquhart and Glen Moriston to its south, and extended from the fertile cornlands beside Loch Ness inland over good pasture as far as the rich hunting-grounds of the Cluanie Forest high in the mountains to the west. The high proportion of deer bones, almost 10%, found in archaeological excavations at the castle, demonstrates how valued hunting was in medieval times.
The lord's own `desmesne', or domain (from the French de main 'of the hand', from which we get the place-name Mains, `home farm'), which he farmed at his own hand, was located on the higher ground overlooking the castle to the west. lt comprised four fermtouns, or farming townships - Borlum (a corruption of `boardland', board being the lord's table; hence 'board and lodgings'), Strone, Clunebeg and Boglashin.

Much of the human settlement elsewhere in the estate was clustered in lower Glen Urquhart, on the fertile soil beside where the gushing waters of the River Enrick flow into Urquhart Bay. There, a number of fermtouns were all sited within walking distance of the parish church, St Ninian's, a fragment of which survives in Drumnadrochit. The fermtoun names, derived from either Gaelic or Pictish, belie their ancient roots. For example, Corrimony (Gaelic - Cöire Mhönaidh, `Monie's cauldron) most likely refers to the Bronze-Age cairn there. Glen Moriston was noticeably less intensively settled and farmed. Dr Johnson and Boswell visited the inn at Aonach, high up in the mountains, in 1773.

The 1509 chartern also mention the shieling grounds, or summer grazings, dotted itbout the royal forest of Gluanie in the mountains to the West. This reminds us that each May the younger members of the family (the vife and children mostly) wentwith their ciittle and goats into the upland pastures for the summer. leaving the husband and grandparents back home to tend the crops and `hoUse-sit'. Only atter die harvest was safely gathered in did thev return.

The lord of Urquhart held all this of his sovereign, in retum for ensuring that good order prevailed, and that the estate contributed to the nation's economic well-being.
There was another royal expectation, and ihm was that the estate would contrihute its share of military muscle whenever the king demanded it. What Sir Alan Durward was expected to bring to the `hose, or common artny of Scotland, is not known, but in 1509 Sir James Grant was held bound to provide one lance and three horsemen for every parcel of land valued at £10 - a total of five lance and fifteen horsemen. Whether such a force was sent south four years later to join James IV's ill-fated expedition into northem England that resulted in disaster on Flodden Field is not known. However, listed among the fallen on that dreich September day was Master John Grant, the chiefs son.





URQUHART•AND•THE WARS•OF•INDEPENDENCE

For much of the time Urquhart would have been a peaceful place. But there were many times when that peace was shattered, beginning in 1296 and the Wars of Independence.

Alan Durward died without male heir in 1275. The king granted his castle and estate at Urquhart to another powerful 'incomer', John Comyn, lord of Badenoch and Lochaber. It proved a brief association for Scotland was soon embroiled in the bloody Wars of Independence* with England.
In March 1296, Edward I of England, `Hammer of the Scots', invaded Scotland. By July he had reached Elgin. Scotland lay at his mercy, its army routed and its great castles captured. Urquhart was among them. Seizing castles was one thing; holding on to them proved more difficult. In the general rising of 1297, Sir Andrew de Moray, a powerful local nobleman, spearheaded a night attack on Urquhart, but was beaten off.

Undaunted, Moray marched south, and with William Wallace defeated the English at the Battle of Stirling Bridge. The English garrison holed up in Urquhart must have surrendered shortly after, for by the following year Urquhart was back in Scottish hands.

Back came the English. In 1303, Edward of England returned to Moray and retook Urquhart Castle despite Sir Alexander de Forbes's stout defence. Such was the confused state of loyalties that Edward was able to install Sir Alexander Comyn of Badenoch as his new constable. This time the English were
set for a longer stay, and in July 1306 we read of the garrison being supplied with wheat and wine. By then, though, Robert the Bruce had emerged from the shadows and been crowned King of Scots. In 1308, he swept through the northern part of his realm, annihilated his avowed enemy, the Comyns, and took control of their castles and lands, including Urquhart. Thereafter, little is heard of Urquhart for the rest of the Wars of Independence.

A•ROYAL•CASTLE

The Wars of Independence resulted in Urquhart becoming a royal castle, held for the Crown by a succession of royal constables. Royalty rarely visited.

The downfall of the Comyns, the proEnglish holders of Urquhart, early an in the Wars of Independence resulted in the Crown annexing the lordship of Urquhart. The castle then effectively became a royal castle.

There is one brief record of its role in the defence of Scotland during the dark days following Robert the Bruce's death in 1329. The defeat of the Scottish host in 1332 at Dupplin, near Perth, once more called into question the independence of Scotland. Mighty Urquhart Castle, alone of all the Highland castles, held out against the aggressor.

'The English resumed possession of the whole kingdom, excepting only five castles, that is Dumbarton, Loch Leven, Kildrummy, Loch Doon and Urquhart, whose keeper was Sir Robert de Lauder who was called "the Good".'
(from Abbot Bower's Scotichronicon, c.1440)

It proved to be the last occasion Urquhart was threatened by the English.

A succession of constables, or keepers, thereafter maintained the place in readiness for their king's coming. A great deal of money was spent by the exchequer keeping the place in good repair. However, the only 'royal' known to have visited was David II, Robert the Bruce's son, who bided there during the summer of 1342. Presumably the attraction was the chance to indulge in a Spot of hunting in his royal forest of Cluanie.

THE•RQUHART•EWER

Remember the day we found the teapot?'

John McDonald of Glen Urquhart, Ministry of Works workman, 1921

This `teapot' was found by workmen clearing the castle ruins in 1921. It is in fact a very fine example of a ewer, or water jug, probably made in the Netherlands in the fifteenth century. The bronze ewer once had a hinged lid, now lost.
Such an object took pride of place in the lord's hall. lt would have been used by the lord and his guests for ritually cleansing their hands before sitting down to their meal. The Urquhart Ewer now takes pride of place in the Castle Visitor Centre.



URQUHART•AND•THE LORDS•OF•THE•ISLES

In 1395 Donald MacDonald, Lord of the Isles, seized the castle. Over the next 150 years the MacDonalds and their henchmen made life a misery for the people of Urquhart.

After the drama of Dupplin in 1332, Glen Urquhart and its castle returned to a state of calm. When the noise of war returned to the glen, it came not from the south and the kings of England but from the west and the Lords of the Isles.

The MacDonald Lords of the Isles exercised a powerful influence over a great swathe of the western seaboard of Scotland. As the fourteenth century drew to a close, they sought to extend it even further, by casting their covetous eyes over the earldom of Ross, to the north and east of their ancestral lands. Glen Urquhart was in the way. Time and again they swept through the glen, burning crops and homes, seizing cattle and anything else of value, and generally wreaking havoc. The castle passed back and forth between the Crown and the Lords of the Isles like a bone between two dogs.

The Lords of the Isles first appeared in the glen in 1395 when Donald MacDonald seized the lands of Urquhart and installed his henchman, Charles MacLean of Lochbuie, as keeper of its castle. The Crown made a feeble attempt to retake it but failed. MacLean was still holding sway when MacDonald himself marched by in 1411, an his ill-fated invasion of north-east Scotland.

The Battle of Harlaw, near Inverurie in Aberdeenshire, was neither a victory nor a defeat. But the bloodshed spilled that day beside the River Don effectively stopped the MacDonald war-machine in its tracks. The Crown regained the initiative and drove them back over the mountains to the west. Urquhart returned into royal hands. lt brought only temporary reprieve to the beleaguered inhabitants of the glen.

James I's murder in 1437 saw Donald MacDonald's successor, Alexander, wrest the estate back. He failed, however, to retake the castle. Exchequer accounts from the time show major expenditure on repair and new building at Urquhart to enable the royal garrison to cling on. An uneasy stand-off between the two warring parties ensued, broken in 1452 when Alexander's successor, John, then a high-spirited lad of 18, succeeded in seizing the castle. A compromise was reached whereby the lordship of Urquhart with its castle was granted by the Crown to John MacDonald for his lifetime only. Peace of a sort returned to the glen.


Lord John continued to further his ambition clandestinely. In 1462, he signed a pact with Edward IV of England whereby the Lord of the Isles would receive most of northern Scotland in return for supporting the English king. When news of the pact reached the ears of the Scottish king, James III, the latter was compelled to act. In 1476, John was stripped of his earldom of Ross, and the strategic castle of Urquhart was entrusted to George Gordon, second Earl of Huntly, then the most
powerful figure in north-east Scotland.

If the inhabitants of Urquhart were expecting some respite following the years of unrest, they were to be disappointed. Continuing arguments over who held what from whom led to further devastation, so that by 1479 no rents at all were forthcoming from the lordship of Urquhart. In desperation, Huntly looked to one of his loyal supporters to take a grasp of the situation. When Sir Duncan Grant, Lord of Freuchie (now Castle Grant, beside Grantown-on- Spey), arrived in the glen in 1479, an association began that was to last for 500 years.




URQUHART•AND•THE CHIEFS•OF•GRANTS

In 1509, the chief of Clan Grant was formally gifted Urquhart by a grateful king. Under the Grants, the castle became an active noble residence once more.


Sir Duncan Grant of Freuchie was an ageing warrior by the time he took an the lease of Urquhart, and he left it to his grandson, John, 'the Red Bard' (Am Bard Ruadh), to try to bring order to the troubled glen. By degrees he did so, for rents were soon flowing into the Crown coffers. His grateful sovereign, James IV, acknowledged the Bard's achievement, firstly in 1502 by offering him a five-year lease of Urquhart to be held directly of the Crown, and then, in
1509, by gifting the ancient lordship to the family in perpetuity. After 200 years in Crown hands, Urquhart was once again a baronial castle and seat of lordship.

'Know ye that for the
increase of our rental .. .
we have given, granted, and
in feu-farme demitted, and,
by this our present charter
confirmed to our loving John
Grant of Freuchie and his
heirs male all and sundry the
lands underwritten
(James IV's charter to the first chief of Clan Grant of the lordship and castle of Urquhart, sealed at Stirling Castle, 8 December 1509)

The bestowal of this honour resulted in the vast lordship being divided into three. Sir John himself took the most lucrative portion, fertile Glen Urquhart, whilst two sons, Iain Og, `young John', and lain Mor, `big John', received Corrimony, at the head of Glen Urquhart, and Glen Moriston respectively. The terms of the gifts left the three in no doubt as to what they were expected to achieve. The chief of Grant and his heirs `are taken bound to repair or build at the castle a tower, with an outwork or rampart of stone and lime, for protecting the lands of the people from the inroads of thieves and malefactors.'

The chances of them realising their king's wishes immediately were slight for, despite the complete forfeiture of John, Lord of the Isles, in 1493 and his death five years later, the `thieves and malefactors' from the west persisted.

The catalyst for renewed conflict was James IV's death at Flodden, in Northumberland, in 1513. The new 'Lord of the Isles', Donald MacDonald of Lochalsh, poured his clansmen once more into the glen, looting and killing, and capturing the castle. They stayed three years, stripping the inhabitants of all that they owned. When they eventually left, they took with them 300 cattle, 1000 sheep, countless sacks of barley and oats, and from the castle itself pots, pans, kettles, napery [linen], beds, sheets, blankets, coverings, fish, flesh, bread, ale, cheese, butter, salt hides and muck else besides. Little wonder that when Hector Boece described the castle in 1528, he wrote of the castle's `rewinous wallis'.

THE•GREAT•RAID • OF • 1545

Worse followed in 1545. This time a bloody encounter at Blar-na-Leine, beside Loch Lochy, was the immediate cause. The day-long battle between Lord Lovat's Frasers and the men from the west, in which the Grants and the men from Urquhart joined with the Frasers, saw both sides cut each other to pieces. In retaliation, the MacDonalds of Glengarry with the Camerons of Lochiel stormed again into the glen. A list of the plunder makes for sorry reading and shows why their attack became known as 'the Great Raid' - 2000 cattle, 383 horses, 3000 sheep, 2000 goats, 122 swine, 64 geese - and from the castle itself, 12 feather beds, with bolsters, blankets and sheets; brewing vats, roasting spits and yet more pots and Pans; a chest containing £300; 20 guns, powder and stands of armour; yetts (iron gates); tables and other items of furniture; and three great boats.

The 'Great Raid' proved to be the last the inhabitants saw of the men from the west. Gradually the tenor of pastoral life was resumed in the glen, and the Grants began to repair the battered castle. They took the opportunity to build anew, as the lofty Grant Tower shows.

DECLINE•AND•FALL

As Urquhart declined as a residence, time took its toll on the ancient fabric. When the last soldiers marched out in 1692, they blew the place up.

By the seventeenth century the days of the castle as a noble residence were fast drawing to a close. Landowners throughout Scotland were abandoning their medieval castles and building more comfortable residences. The rocky promontory that had served their predecessors well no longer held any attraction for the chiefs of Grant.
The end came around Christmas 1644. Lady Mary Grant was residing in the castle when in stormed a band of Covenanters*, angry at Lady Mary's continuing loyalty to her sovereign, the beleaguered Charles I. They robbed her, rifled the castle of its contents and drove her ladyship out of her estate. She bemoaned: 'there is not left with me one serviette to eat my meat on'.

An inventory of the castle's contents, taken in 1647, confirms the castle's sorry state. The only items in the Grant Tower were
- a bed, small table and bench in 'the chamber above the hall', a bed and table in 'the vault chamber', a large dining table, bench, table and chair in 'the hall', and in 'the cellar an old chest'. As for the rest of the once-mighty castle, it was `without any kind of wares, planting, goods, or gear whatsoever . . . except only bare walls'.

Thereafter, the castle's decline was swift. Following Oliver Cromwell's invasion of Scotland in 1650, the English built new forts, called citadels, at either end of the Great Gien - Inverlochy (now Fort William) and Inverness. But they chose not to garrison Urquhart, content to patrol Loch Ness from a vessel, what one observer called 'a statly friggot'.

The castle was garrisoned for the final time 40 years later, during the troubles that followed James VII of Scotland's flight into exile in 1689. The chief of Grant, throwing in his lot with William and Mary, the new sovereigns, garrisoned Urquhart with three companies of Grant Highlanders, about 200 men in all.

Though they were poorly armed, `having neither swords nor bayonets, and only a few carbines', they did have 'a fortnight's or three weeks' provisions'. They were soon besieged by a Jacobite** force more than twice their number. The garrison managed to hold out until the Jacobites' final defeat on the Haughs of Cromdale, above Grantown-on-Spey, in 1690.

When the soldiers finally marched out of the castle, they reportedly blew up some of the buildings to stop the enemy from holding it again. The results of their action are still visible in the great chunks of masonry lying beside the gatehouse. The damage was never repaired.

`I am certainly inform'd that 500 of the rebells were come to Urquett; they threatned the castle, but 1 looke
upon it to be in little dainger, they [the garrison] haveing a fortnight's or three weeks's provisions.'

(despatch sent from Sir James Leslie to Lord Melville, commander of William II's Scottish army,
on 6 December 1689, at the height of the first Jacobite Rising)




A•NOBLE•RUIN

Bereft of residents and soldiers, Urquhart soon feil into decay. But attitudes changed, and the ancient castle came to be viewed as a noble ruin in a majestic setting.

When the last garrison marched out, the castle buildings rapidly feil into decay. People from the glen came and salvaged what they could for use elsewhere the best of the stonework, lead from the roofs, timber, ironwork, and so forth. The death knell for the ancient stronghold was sounded on 19 February 1715, when part of the Grant Tower came crashing to the ground during a violent storm. The gaping hole in one side of the tower house bears witness to that unfortunate event.

Thereafter, time and weather wrought their slow but cumulative effect on the fabric. A survey of the castle and grounds made about 1770 shows the ancient castle buildings roofless. But it also shows a long, narrow building immediately beyond the castle ditch at the very north end of the site, dose to where the large com-kiln remains today. Presumably somebody had received the Grants' permission to `move in'.

By then perceptions were slowly changing about the value of crumbling ruins like Urquhart. Encouraged by the writings of Sir Walter Scott and others, people began to take a greater interest in their history, and to appreciate that ruins in the landscape had a worth beyond their value as builders' salvage yards. The noble ruin beside Loch Ness, set against one of the most dramatic of Highland landscapes, drew an increasing number of visitors, to gaze in awe, to think on times past, to sketch and to paint.




STATE•CARE

In time this awakening of interest in the built heritage led the Grant family to seek better ways of securing their castle's future. In 1884, Caroline, Countess Dowager of Seafield, widow of the seventh earl of Grant, assumed control of her son's estates, including Urquhart and Glenmoriston, following his untimely death. When she too died, in 1911, her will instructed that Urquhart Castle be entrusted into State care. On 6 October 1913, a guardianship agreement was signed between the late Dowager's Trustees and the Commissioners of His Majesty's Works and Public Buildings transferring responsibility for the castle's upkeep.

Her obituary in The Times noted that:

...every function of a great landlord was splendidly performed by her, and she will be remembered with affection and respect. She was the greatest owner of woodlands in the United Kingdom, and it is computed that the number of pine trees planted by her husband, her son and herself amounted to 50,000,000 in Strathspey and Aviemore alone'

`The preservation of the ruins of the said castle is a matter of Public interest by reason of the
historic, traditional and artistic interest attaching thereto' .

(from the 1913 Deed of Guardianship)

Historic Scotland, as successors to His Majesty's Office of Works and Public Buildings,
continues to maintain the ancient ruins to this day.