Foulis Castle

Clan Munro held Foulis, two miles south-west of Evanton in the parish of Kiltearn, from the twelfth century or earlier, and had a stronghold there. The remains of an 11th-century motte — a man-made mound topped by a wooden palisade, and believed to be the first fortification on the site — still stand in the castle grounds. The original Tower of Foulis is believed to have been built in 1154, though the castle itself appears only briefly in records from the 14th century.

Contemporary evidence records that Uilleam III, Earl of Ross, granted Robert de Munro of Foulis a charter for the lands of "Estirfowlys" with the "Tower of Strathskehech" from 1350. Euphemia I, Countess of Ross, granted two further charters to Robert's son Hugh Munro, 9th Baron of Foulis, in 1394; one of them, dated 4 May, concerns "Wesstir Fowlys" and the "Tower of Strathschech", named for the River Sgitheach, which runs through nearby Strath Skiach into the Cromarty Firth.

A document signed and sealed at Foulis in 1491 calls it, in Gaelic, "caisteal biorach, nead na h-iolair" — castle gaunt-peaked, the eagle's nest — an allusion to the clan chief's heraldic emblem. In times of clan warfare a signal beacon was lit on the highest tower to gather the clan under arms, from which comes the Munro gathering cry "Caisteal Foghlais na theine", Castle Foulis ablaze.

In 1542 Donald Mackay of Strathnaver, chief of Clan Mackay, was imprisoned at Foulis, having been captured after the Battle of Alltan-Beath. Fraser's Wardlaw manuscript, written in the following century, holds that it was the Munros' kindness and civility towards their prisoner that linked a correspondence between the two clans lasting to the writer's own day. The castle's "tower and fortalice" are mentioned again in a crown charter of 1587.

Foulis survived to the 18th century and was attacked by Jacobites in 1746. Sir Robert Munro, 6th Baronet, was killed at the Battle of Falkirk Muir that year, and in the same year the castle was sacked and burned. His son and successor as chief, Sir Harry Munro, 7th Baronet, returned home from captivity to find the place set on fire and much of it destroyed. The Jacobites were defeated a few months later at Culloden.

Sir Harry set about rebuilding, incorporating what he could of the original structure, but with Culloden having brought a complete end to the Highland clan system there was no longer any need for a defensive fort. Foulis was rebuilt between 1754 and 1792 as the large classical mansion that stands today, whitewashed and taking in the old tower house with its gun loops.

No records survive of what the fortifications looked like before 1746. The tower was built for defence, its walls five feet six inches thick at ground level. Work in 1957–59 found evidence suggesting that horses and cattle had been kept in the courtyard area, and that the place was a self-contained community able to withstand a siege; it is thought the castle was ringed by smaller dwellings, possibly of a fortified nature. Munro sources report that stone from the wall of the original castle was found beneath the plaster of the present mansion.

In May 1985, during repairs to part of the courtyard building, four cannon loops "of an inverted key hole type", dating from the early 16th century, were found behind four wedge-shaped blocked apertures facing north, south, east and west. This building, once separate from the castle, had certainly been built as a small defensive fort with an all-round field of fire. At some later date — perhaps after 1746, when the chief judged the chance of attack to have lessened — three of the apertures were blocked completely and the fourth left as a narrow barred slit, giving light and air and a means of passing food through to a prisoner. It was likely the castle's gaol.

Foulis was listed category A in March 1971. It remains the home of the Chief of Munro, Hector W Munro of Foulis, though the most recent baronets of Foulis-Obsdale have lived in southern England.