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The ruin
The ruin stands on a headland above Loch Ness
Urquhart Castle is a ruin beside Loch Ness in the Highlands of Scotland, on Strone Point. The present ruins date from the 13th to the 16th centuries and stand on the site of an early medieval fortification.
Earlier fort
Excavations in 1983 found a large fort from the 5th to the 11th century
Professor Leslie Alcock led excavations in 1983. They showed that the rocky knoll at the south-west corner of the castle had been the site of an extensive fort between the 5th and 11th centuries.
A royal castle
Edward I captured it in 1296, and a king once spent a summer there
The first record of Urquhart Castle dates from 1296, when it was captured by Edward I of England. In 1342 David II spent the summer hunting at Urquhart, the only king to have stayed there.
The Great Raid
The Great Raid of 1545 took the cattle, the cannon and even the gates
For two hundred years the Great Glen was raided often by the MacDonald Lords of the Isles. In 1545 the MacDonalds took 2,000 cattle and stripped the castle of its furniture, cannon and gates. It was the last raid.
2,000cattle taken in the Great Raid of 1545
The gatehouse
The defenders blew up the gatehouse in 1690 to keep the Jacobites out
After the siege was lifted in 1690, the defenders blew up the gatehouse. Plundering of the stonework reduced the ruins further, and the Grant Tower partially collapsed after a storm in 1715.
Day 7, midday
It comes after Fort Augustus. Then Culloden Battlefield.
More stories from this trip idea
The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Urquhart Castle, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.