Castle Tioram

Castle Tioram stands on Eilean Tioram, a tidal island in Loch Moidart, roughly 80 kilometres (50 miles) west of Fort William. Its beginnings are uncertain: some trace the site to the 12th century under Somerled, while others place its building in the 13th or 14th century. Tradition preserved in the 17th-century Sleat History attributes its raising to Áine Nic Ruaidhrí. The castle served as the principal stronghold of Clann Ruaidhrí and later became the seat of the Clanranald branch of Clan Donald. Its story turns on the Jacobite era. In 1692, government forces seized it after chief Allan Macdonald joined the exiled court of James VII. During the 1715 rising, Allan recaptured the castle and set it alight, reportedly to keep it from Hanoverian hands. It was never lived in again. Eilean Tioram is one of seventeen tidal islands that can be reached on foot from the Scottish mainland, though the ruin is now unsafe to enter. A 1997 proposal by Anta Estates to restore the castle as a clan centre was refused Scheduled Monument Consent, a Dangerous Buildings Order followed in 1998, and part of the north-west curtain wall collapsed in 2000. The site later featured in the television series Highlander.