Old Lachlan Castle

The Maclachlans trace their descent from Lachlan Mor, 'Great Lachlan', a powerful chieftain who lived on the shores of Loch Fyne in the thirteenth century, and beyond him, by tradition, from Anrothan O'Neill, an Irish prince said to have left Ireland in the eleventh century. Other accounts put the first documentary evidence of the clan holding Strathlachlan, on the east side of Loch Fyne, in 1292, when Gilleskel Maclachlan received a charter from John, King of Scots. The earliest reference to the place itself is from 1314, when the lands appear as ‘Castlelachlan’.

Despite that early Maclachlan presence, little is known about how the castle was built or by whom, though it is believed to have been their work. Nothing remains of the fourteenth-century castle. The enclosure that survives appears to date to the early fifteenth century and its internal buildings to the later part of that century, while the design has led architects to place the castle later still, in the late fifteenth or the sixteenth century. In 1574 the crown granted Archibald MacLachlan, the fifteenth chief, a charter confirming his lands of Cowal and Glasrie on him and his male heirs bearing the name and arms of MacLachlan.

The clan aided the MacGregors at the Battle of Glen Fruin in 1603, and fought for Charles at the Battle of Alford in 1645. In 1680 the Maclachlan holdings were erected into a free barony, consolidating all the lands under the Strathlachlan name.

Unlike the Campbells across Loch Fyne, the Maclachlans had a long history of support for the 'Prince over the Water'. Lachlan Maclachlan, the seventeenth chief, was a staunch Jacobite who supported Viscount Dundee at the Battle of Killiecrankie in 1689 and James VIII in the rising of 1715. In 1745, with the Highland clans facing a momentous choice — many of them out for the Prince, others wavering, doubting the chances of success and keenly aware of the possible consequences — he rallied a hundred men and went to Holyrood in Edinburgh.

On 16 April 1746 he led a regiment of 115 MacLachlans and 182 MacLeans of Mull, whose own chief had failed to arrive, into the Battle of Culloden alongside Clan Mackintosh and Clan Chattan. The Jacobites came through the Hanoverian artillery barrage and launched a fierce offensive against the government lines, then found themselves outnumbered and retreated. Few of the clansmen survived. Lachlan MacLachlan was struck and killed by a cannonball, and his body was later found behind the Hanoverian lines.

Writing to Robert Forbes, Bishop of Ross and Caithness, in 1748, the Rev. John MacLachlan of Kilchoan complained that 'the newspapers and magazines neglected' the colonel, and set down what he had done: he had attended the Prince at Gladsmuir, marched with him to Carlisle, and been made Commissary of the army at Inverness. At Culloden, Forbes was told, he commanded 'a regiment of 300 men, whereof 115 were his own people and 182 were Mackleans, who chose to be under his command, seeing their chief was not there', and was 'the last that received orders from the Prince on the field of battle' before he was shot as he rode forward to lead on his regiment, 'which was drawn up between the Macintoshes and the Stewarts of Appin'.

In the aftermath of the rising the MacLachlans were forced to flee the castle. It was bombarded from the sea in 1746 on the orders of the Duke of Cumberland. It has stood uninhabited since, falling into ruin. On 18 November 1749, through the intervention of the Duke of Argyll, the lands were returned to Robert MacLachlan, the eighteenth chief, then aged fourteen. New Castle Lachlan was built as a replacement 0.8 kilometres east-north-east in 1790.

The ruin has been protected as a scheduled monument since 31 August 1956. Close by stands Kilmorie Chapel, the resting place of the Maclachlan chiefs and one of the few remaining medieval church buildings in the west of Scotland. Since 2011 Clan MacLachlan has worked to conserve the ruin using traditional masonry techniques, with the aim of preventing further erosion and a possible collapse.