Eilean Donan Castle — castle
Image by rzierik from Pixabay

Eilean Donan Castle

  • 2 min read
  • 57.274° N 5.516° W

Interesting facts

  • Fragments of vitrified stone, melted by intense heat, show that an Iron Age or early medieval fort stood on the island long before the castle.
  • According to legend, the castle was founded by a Matheson chief's son who could talk to birds and won the favour of King Alexander II.
  • When the Royal Navy took the castle in 1719 it found 343 barrels of gunpowder inside, and 27 barrels were used to blow the walls apart.
  • Before the Battle of Sheriffmuir in 1715, Macrae clansmen are said to have danced on the castle roof; 58 of them died in the battle.
  • The only drawing of the castle before 1719, made in 1714, was rediscovered when rebuilding was almost complete, so today's details differ from the original.
  • Clerk of works Farquhar Macrae is said to have based the reconstruction on a dream in which he saw the castle restored.
  • A Gaelic inscription over the door promises that while a Macrae is inside, a Fraser will never be left outside, recalling a bond between the clans.
  • The Douglas fir beams of the Banqueting Hall were shipped from British Columbia as a gift from the Macraes of Canada.
  • Dredging the well of the old bastion in 1893 brought up two small brass guns and an iron gate, or yett, now displayed in the castle.
  • The castle appears in the Bollywood hit Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and stood in for England's Fotheringhay Castle in Elizabeth: The Golden Age.

Why it is worth it

Eilean Donan stands on a small rocky island where three sea lochs meet – Loch Duich, Loch Long and Loch Alsh – on the road to the Isle of Skye. A long, arched stone bridge leads out to it, and at high tide the castle seems to float, its grey walls reflected in still water against a backdrop of steep green hills. The scene has become one of the defining images of the Scottish Highlands, reproduced on shortbread tins, calendars and film posters, and it still stops drivers on the A87.

The island takes its name from Donnán of Eigg, a Celtic saint martyred in 617. A fortified castle was first built in the 13th century, in the reign of Alexander II, and over the following centuries it grew and shrank as a stronghold of the Clan Mackenzie and their allies, the MacRaes. Its end as a working fortress came in 1719, during a Jacobite rising backed by Spain: a garrison of Spanish soldiers held the castle until Royal Navy frigates bombarded it, and the landing party blew it up with the defenders' own gunpowder. For two centuries only broken walls remained.

What visitors see today is a 20th-century rebuilding. Between 1919 and 1932 Lieutenant-Colonel John MacRae-Gilstrap, working with the architect George Mackie Watson, raised the castle again on the old footings, adding the bridge that now makes the view. It is a reconstruction that has itself become a monument – a romantic, carefully crafted vision of a clan seat, set so perfectly in its landscape that it is hard to imagine the lochs without it. Films such as Highlander (1986) and The World Is Not Enough (1999) used it as a location. Since 1983 the castle has belonged to the Conchra Charitable Trust.

The best views are from the shore road near the visitor centre and from the slopes above Dornie, especially in the evening, when the light falls low across Loch Duich.

Getting there

The castle is beside the village of Dornie, about 8 miles (13 km) east of Kyle of Lochalsh on the A87, where the bridge crosses to Skye; Kyle of Lochalsh has a railway station on the line from Inverness. Fort William, the nearest large town, is about 57 km away in a straight line. The practical airport is Inverness (INV), about 71 miles by road; the nearest in a straight line is Stornoway Airport (SYY) on Lewis, about 116 km away across the sea. Scottish Citylink coaches between Inverness or Glasgow and Skye stop nearby.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in the Scottish Highlands 11The Most Beautiful Places in Scotland 39The Most Beautiful Places in the United Kingdom 154The Most Beautiful Castles, Palaces and Fortresses in Scotland 8The Most Beautiful Castles in the United Kingdom 12The Most Beautiful Castles, Palaces and Fortresses in the United Kingdom 24The Most Beautiful Castles 94The Most Beautiful Castles, Palaces and Fortresses 302

From the encyclopaedia

Eilean Donan is a small tidal island situated at the confluence of three sea lochs in the western Highlands of Scotland, about one kilometre from the village of Dornie. It is connected to the mainland by a footbridge that was installed early in the 20th century and is dominated by a picturesque castle that frequently appears in photographs, film and television. The island's original castle was built in the thirteenth century; it became a stronghold of the Clan Mackenzie and their allies, the Clan MacRae. In response to the Mackenzies' involvement in the Jacobite rebellions against the newly United Kingdom, Royal Naval ships destroyed the castle in 1719. The present-day castle is Lieutenant-Colonel John Macrae-Gilstrap's 20th-century reconstruction of the old castle.

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