Carnasserie Castle

Carnasserie was built by John Carswell, a reforming churchman who was Rector of Kilmartin, Chancellor of the Chapel Royal at Stirling and later titular Bishop of the Isles, and who published the first book printed in Scottish Gaelic, a translation of John Knox's Book of Common Order. Construction began in 1565 with masons brought from Stirling. The house was notionally built for Carswell's patron, the Earl of Argyll, though he meant it as a residence for himself. Over the entrance are the arms of the 5th Earl of Argyll with the Gaelic motto DIA LE UA NDUIBHNE, God be with O'Duine, naming the semi-legendary ancestors of Clan Campbell. It stands on raised ground close to a strategic pass at the head of Kilmartin Glen, but was designed more for domestic than for military purposes.

On Carswell's death in 1572 the castle passed to the Earl of Argyll, and in 1643 it was sold to Donald Campbell of Auchinleck. His successor Duncan Campbell was one of the few to give active support to Argyll's Rising against James VII in 1685.

During the rising Carnasserie was garrisoned for the Earl of Argyll under Dugald MacTavish of Dunardry, 14th hereditary chief of Clan MacTavish. A Royalist force commanded by MacLean of Torloisk captured the castle and partly blew it up. The castle was surrendered on terms of peaceful capitulation; the besieging force violated those terms, and MacTavish, who was twenty-one, was hanged within bow-draught of the castle gateway immediately after the surrender.

The Atholl Raid that followed the failure of the rising devastated large parts of Argyllshire. Duncan Campbell recovered his estates in 1689 but was financially ruined, and in 1690 he petitioned Parliament claiming that Maclean clansmen had burnt Carnasserie, taken 2,000 cattle and murdered his uncle Alexander Campbell of Strondour. The outer walls came through largely undamaged, but the castle was never rebuilt, and the Auchinbrecks eventually went bankrupt. An archway in the courtyard garden carries the inscription SDC LHL 1681, for Sir Duncan Campbell, 4th Baronet, and Lady Henrietta Lindsay, whose support for the rising brought the destruction on the house.

In the nineteenth century the estate was sold to the Malcolms of Poltalloch, who also own nearby Duntrune Castle. Having been altered only slightly, and only in the late seventeenth century, Carnasserie gives an accurate picture of sixteenth-century building. The castle and its surroundings are protected as a scheduled monument, and the ruin is in the care of Historic Environment Scotland and open to the public.