Dunyvaig Castle

Dùn Naomhaig — anglicised as the fort of the galleys, and also known as Dunnyveg — occupies a rocky promontory jutting into Lagavulin Bay on the south side of Islay, four kilometres from Port Ellen. A castle was built here by Somerled, King of the Isles, on top of an older fort or dún.

Through the 13th and 14th centuries it was held by Somerled's Macdonald descendants, the Lords of the Isles — Angus Mor Macdonald and his sons Alexander Og and Angus Og — who used Lagavulin Bay as an anchorage for their fleet of galleys.

Forfeited in 1493, the castle passed to the MacIans of Ardnamurchan, who descended from John Macdonald, younger brother of Angus Og Macdonald, Lord of the Isles and friend of Robert the Bruce. The MacIans suffered when that clan was punished for the 1501–1506 insurrection of Black Donald; the castle was transferred to a branch of the Campbells. In 1545, however, the MacDonald holdings in Islay and Jura were restored to them.

Mary, Queen of Scots, planned a visit to Argyll in June 1563. Lady Agnes Campbell, wife of James MacDonald of Dunyvaig, gave the queen a "marvellous fair" costume of "Hyeland apparell". In 1598 the castle was kept by John Stewart of Arskok, who was given £3,000 Scots yearly for the expenses.

On 2 August 1608 the King's lieutenant, the 3rd Lord Ochiltree, and Andrew Knox, Bishop of the Isles, arrived with a royal naval force of 1,000 men, and Angus MacDonald, 8th of Dunnyveg, surrendered the castle to them by negotiation. Three days later Angus MacDonald and others came aboard the Advantage to celebrate Gowrie day, the anniversary of the rescue of James VI at Perth in 1600. A garrison loyal to the King was installed.

In 1614 the castle was taken by Ranald Og Macdonald, and then retaken by Angus Og MacDonald, who attempted to bargain its surrender. Bishop Knox tried to recover it that September, was defeated and compelled to retreat, leaving his son Thomas and his nephew John Knox of Ranfurly behind as hostages for his good faith.

Accused of inaction and sloth that had let the MacDonalds take the castle, Knox wrote to the lawyer Thomas Hamilton setting out his difficulties: his negotiation for a surrender had stalled, boats were hard to hire from Arran at harvest time, the MacLeans and McLeods of Harris refused to serve with him, and he could raise no more than seventy men. When he landed on Islay the Clan Donald of Islay outmanoeuvred him and cut him off from his boats, which they looted and destroyed; the next day he was told to surrender the two hostages or all his men would be executed. Knox noted that the MacDonalds had built a new fort in the loch, and that some of his men had heard Angus Og MacDonald say he was working for the Earl of Argyll, who would give him the castle and the whole lands of Islay.

George Graham negotiated the freedom of the two "gentlemen prisoners" with no official backing beyond a verbal promise of a cash reward from the Chancellor, the 1st Earl of Dunfermline. On 6 January 1615 Sir John Campbell of Calder retook the castle with the assistance of Sir Oliver Lambart, who brought artillery and men in the Phoenix; twenty-two men were captured, while twenty-two others including Coll Ciotach escaped from a postern gate into a longboat. That June Sir James MacDonald and Coll Ciotach captured it again, killing the captain and some of the garrison. The Privy Council of Scotland asked for a pinnace with cannon to batter the castle. Sir James fled, and on 13 October 1615, before the guns were landed from the Charles and a barque, Coll Ciotach surrendered to Argyll.

The castle was seized in 1647 by the Covenanters and passed into the hands of the Campbells of Cawdor, who held it until 1677, when Sir Hugh Campbell pulled the castle down and moved to Islay House. What stands today is mainly the ruin of the sixteenth-century castle, on a site that also holds a thirteenth-century courtyard and a fifteenth-century keep. Dunyvaig was designated a scheduled monument in 1989.