A rare surviving west-Highland tower house set on its own tidal islet, whose ownership passed between the Stewarts of Appin and the Campbells before a 20th-century restoration saved it from ruin.
Castle Stalker stands on a small tidal islet in Loch Laich, an inlet off Loch Linnhe roughly a mile and a half north-east of Port Appin. The four-storey tower house that survives today took its present shape around the 1440s, raised by the Stewarts after they assumed the Lordship of Lorn about 1388. An earlier, smaller fort had occupied the site from around 1320, built by the MacDougalls who held Lorn before them.
Ownership swung between the Stewarts and the Campbells over the following centuries. King James VI is recorded as having visited, and a drunken wager around 1620 is said to have carried the castle into Campbell hands. They eventually let it fall empty, abandoning the keep about 1840, and it stood roofless for decades afterwards. Charles Stewart of Achara bought the ruin in 1908 and carried out basic conservation, but the thorough rescue came later: in 1965 Lt Col D. R. Stewart Allward acquired the castle and, over roughly ten years, fully restored it to the habitable tower seen today.
Film-goers may recognise its outline. It appeared in Monty Python and the Holy Grail as ‘Castle Aaaaarrrrrrggghhh’, and its silhouette on the water is visible from the A828 between Oban and Glen Coe.
What follows is drawn from published sources, with each claim labelled by how firmly it is established.
What to look for
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The four-storey tower house, shaped into its present form around the 1440s
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Its tidal-islet setting in Loch Laich, reachable across the water only at low tide
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The roadside vantage on the A828 between Oban and Glen Coe
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Traces of the 1908 conservation and the fuller restoration completed after 1965
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Its film role as 'Castle Aaaaarrrrrrggghhh' in Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Plan your visit
- Location
- General area near Argyll and Bute, Argyll and Bute
This is a sensitive or fragile site, so we show only its general area. Please check official heritage sources for access before visiting, and take care not to disturb it.
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