Eilean Donan

Eilean Donan

A castle where three lochs meet

Few buildings say "Scotland" quite like Eilean Donan. It stands on a small rocky island at the point where three great sea lochs — Loch Duich, Loch Long and Loch Alsh — come together among the mountains of Kintail in the western Highlands. A graceful arched bridge now links the island to the mainland near the village of Dornie, on the main road to the Isle of Skye. For most of its long life, though, the only way across was by boat or over a tidal causeway that vanished beneath the water at every high tide.

The castle takes its name from the island itself: Eilean Donnáin, the "island of Donnán." Donnán was a Celtic Christian missionary who was martyred in the year 617, and tradition holds that a small religious cell once stood on this lonely rock long before any castle rose there.

From Norse raids to clan strongholds

The first stone castle is generally said to have been built in the early thirteenth century, around the 1220s, in the reign of King Alexander II. In those days the western seaways were raided by Norse fleets, and a fortress guarding the meeting of three lochs could watch the routes leading deep into the Highlands. Whatever its exact beginnings, by the later Middle Ages Eilean Donan had become a stronghold of the powerful Clan Mackenzie.

The Mackenzies entrusted the keeping of the castle to the Macraes, who served as their constables and bodyguards — earning the proud nickname "Mackenzie's shirt of mail." For centuries the castle was caught up in the feuds, alliances and rebellions of the Highlands, its walls raised and its defences strengthened as the age of the musket and cannon arrived.

Destroyed in a single day

Eilean Donan's medieval story came to a sudden, violent end in 1719. That year a small Jacobite rising — part of the long struggle to restore the exiled Stuart kings — drew support from Spain, which was then at war with Britain. A force of around forty-six Spanish soldiers was stationed in the castle, which the Jacobites used to store gunpowder and supplies.

The government answered quickly. Three Royal Navy warships — the frigates Worcester, Enterprise and Flamborough — sailed up Loch Alsh and bombarded the castle. After the small garrison surrendered, government forces used the Jacobites' own gunpowder to blow Eilean Donan apart. The proud fortress was reduced to a heap of broken stone, and the rising itself was crushed soon afterwards at the Battle of Glen Shiel, in the mountains just inland.

For the next two hundred years, Eilean Donan lay in ruins — a romantic, roofless silhouette reflected in the still waters of the loch.

Reborn in the twentieth century

The castle that visitors see today is not the medieval original but a remarkable rebuilding carried out between 1919 and 1932. It was the work of Lieutenant Colonel John MacRae-Gilstrap, a member of the very clan that had guarded the castle centuries before. Over thirteen years, and at great expense, the ruins were cleared and a new castle was raised on the old foundations, complete with a great hall, bedrooms, kitchens and the arched bridge to the shore.

The reconstruction was finished in 1932. It is not an exact copy of any single earlier castle — much of the design reflects early-twentieth-century ideas of how a romantic Highland fortress ought to look — but it was lovingly built, and it captured the imagination of the world.

Stories and legends

One famous tale belongs to the rebuilding itself. The clerk of works, a local man named Farquhar MacRae, was said to have dreamed the shape of the original castle and to have guided the reconstruction from his vision. Historians point out that surviving ground plans were also used, but the story is a good one — and it suits a castle that has always lived partly in legend.

In modern times Eilean Donan has found a new kind of fame on the cinema screen. It has appeared in films including Highlander and the James Bond adventure The World Is Not Enough, where it stood in as the Scottish headquarters of the British secret service. Thanks to its mirror-perfect setting, it is often called the most photographed castle in Scotland, and its image turns up on countless postcards, calendars and shortbread tins.

Visiting today

Eilean Donan is once again a living place. Visitors cross the stone bridge, climb the spiral stairs, and explore rooms filled with furniture, weapons and clan history, while the mountains of Kintail rise on every side. At high tide the castle seems almost to float on the water; at low tide the rocks of its little island are laid bare.

It is a place that gathers up the whole story of the Highlands — saints and Vikings, clans and kings, a sudden destruction and a patient rebirth — into a single, unforgettable view. For all that it was rebuilt in modern times, Eilean Donan still keeps its watch, as it has for some eight hundred years, where the three lochs meet.