Sven the Red, founder of Clan MacSween – standing outside Skipness Castle in the early part of the 13th century – looking over Kilbrannan Sound to the sister castle he had also just built on the other side at Lochranza on the Isle of Arran – must have felt like a Lord of Creation.
With Skipness the dominant position [its seaward gate top], the two fastnesses commanded Kilbrannan Sound, the north coast of Arran, the entrance to Loch Fyne and the approaches to the West Kyle of Bute.
On the far side of the long, slim Kintyre peninsula, three sea lochs to the north west in Knapdale, was Sven’s principal castle, the massive stronghold of Castle Sween [below], guarding the narrows at the entrance to the great inland harbour of Loch Sween. He had built Castle Sween at the end of the 12th century and it is one of the earliest, possibly the earliest, of Scotland’s stone castles. Skipness, slightly younger, is itself amongst the earliest.
Not long after this, with the Viking power weakened when Haakon IV was seen off by the Scots at the Battle of Largs in 1263, the MacSweens were driven from Kintyre and from Knapdale; and by the end of the 13th century, Skipness had been given to the MacDonalds of Kintyre and Islay.
The MacDonald’s, who also acquired Castle Sween itself, are credited with adding the doughty curtain wall that dictates the nature and scale of the structure we see at Skipness today, peppered with arrowslits and with protected positions for archers in the crenellations of the parapets.
Where Sven the Red had built a two storey hall-house and a chapel, St Columba’s, within a common wall, the MacDonalds built a new chapel, St Brendan’s [below] away to the south east of the castle and down near the shore, looking across to Arran. They are understood to have downgraded Sven’s hall-house and to have built another two storey residence in the north east corner, to the left of the landward gate.
The square tower structure on the outside of the east wall of the castle [below] is a latrine tower, part of the MacDonald revisions – and which fairly bizarrely, was later converted into a dovecot. Latrine towers [Skipness interior further below, left] were used mainly for guards, with all the guard privies grouped together and with a pit in the basement. Sometimes called necessariums, they were famously horrible places.
The soaring tower house inside the walls to the left of the landward gate today, is a further two storeys built on top of the Macdonalds’ two. It was added by the Argyll Campbells in the 16th century when they, in turn, became owners – the enduring owners – of Skipness after the MacDonalds lost power at the end of the 15th Century.
This tower house became the main residential part of Skipness. Today it is open, even to the external roof area, during the summer season; and access by key can be made available out of season by permission from the estate house to the west of the castle. The views from up there are said to be – and must be – spectacular. Another visit has to be on the cards.
The mass of the masonry is simply stupendous, The seaward gate, when ready for action – was closed by a heavy pair of wooden gates, held shut by a hefty wooden bar, protected by a portcullis on its outer side and with a murder hole in the ceiling of the entrance passage.
The strength, spaciousness and proportions of Skipness are magnificent. The justified self confidence with which is sits on its open ground at the head of Kilbranan Sound is an thrillingly arrogant audacity.
Everything about Skipness, as a settlement, is secret and defensive. As you drive the slow, scenic, single tracker east to Skipness, on past the ferry slip at Claonaig for Lochranza, the rock formations along part of the shoreline are like a natural cheval de frise [here's the fabricated one at Dun Aengus fort on Inis Mor in the Aran Isles in Galway Bay].
The little village shrinks away from the Sound into the shelter of its own bay. At the end of it, a little humpbacked stone bridge rises over a burn beside an intriguing church. [Note: This photograph is coming from the other direction.]
And you’re there. Here on the right is the entrance to the Skipness Castle estate and, on the left, is a free car park – access to the castle and to St Brendan’s Chapel is also free.
You walk past one of those fantastically quirky gate lodges and up the winding tree lined avenue where dedicated attempts are clearly being made to eradicate rhododendron ponticum and, after snatches of views to Kilbrannan Sound on the way, there, ahead of you on top of its hill, is the Castle, its lines masked by a light curtain of trees.
A quick detour of yards into the neck of the road down to the estate house [in the approaches to which there is a summertime cafe], gives you a clear view of it before coming back to the road swinging on up the hill to its landward gate.
For a place so powerful, in such a position, with such a history of passage of ownership between dominant local clans, Skipness Castle has lain unoccupied since 1700.
But there’s still St Brendan’s Chapel to explore, as well as a dizzying climb to those views from the parapet at the top of the Tower House.
Note: Later in November 2014, Martin Briscoe went to Skipness to photograph the remains of the Bombing Range direction indicators and associated Quadrant Tower there. He has written about this and illustrated it with his own photographs in Martin Briscoe: the Skipness bombing range here.
Other articles in the Argyll and the Isles Secret’s collection are:
- Argyll and the Isles’ Secrets Collection: Southend and Dunaverty, St Columba’s Footprints, the Keil caves and The Bruce
- Argyll and the Isles’ Secrets Collection: Dunadd Fort
- Argyll and the Isles’ Secrets Collection: Kilmory Knap Chapel
- Argyll and the Isles; Secrets Collection: Castle Lachlan and Kilmorie Chapel
- Argyll and the Isles’ Secrets Collection: The bird hide at Ettrick Bay
- Argyll and the Isles’ Secrets Collection: The view from Aqualibrium – and the Dorlin
- Argyll and the Isles’ Secrets Collection: St Munns and the Argyll Mausoleum
- Argyll and the Isles’ Secrets Colletion: Otter Ferry at Port Ann
- Argyll and the Isles’ Secrets Collection: The Brainport Alignment
- Argyll and the Isles’ Secrets Collection: The Watchman