Tor Castle

An Iron Age fort occupied the site before any castle stood there. Local tradition held that it had once belonged to Banquo, Thane of Lochaber — the figure who also features in the play Macbeth — and the Ordnance Survey's 1872 name books for the parish of Kilmallie recorded the ruin's Gaelic name among local people as Tigh Bhanco, "Banquo's house", noting a nearby path called Sràid Bhanco, "Banquo's Walk". Sir Walter Scott styled the site "Togarma" in a note to The Lady of the Lake, but the name books gave the correct designation as Tigh-ghairm nan Cat, "the house of invocation of the cats".

According to Donald B. MacCulloch's Romantic Lochaber (1939), a castle already stood on the site in the 11th century, built by Gillicattan Mor, an early chief of Clan Chattan. By 1291 Angus Mackintosh, chief of Clan Mackintosh, had married Eva, the only daughter of Dougal Dal, 6th chief of Clan Chattan, a match that brought him the lands of Glen Loy and Loch Arkaig. Angus and Eva lived at Tor before withdrawing to Rothiemurchus, apparently after a dispute with Aonghus Óg of Islay, chief of Clan Donald and Angus's maternal uncle.

MacCulloch writes that the lands around Tor were later given by John, 1st Lord of the Isles, to Alastair Carrach (1380–1440), progenitor of the Keppoch branch of the MacDonalds, who built an early keep there. At the Battle of Inverlochy, Alastair gathered forces and attacked alongside Donald Balloch against the forces of King James I.

The Battle of Inverlochy changed the allegiances of Clan Cameron and Clan Chattan, who turned from the Lord of the Isles to the King. Clan Cameron then seized Tor Castle, built a massive tower house and courtyard there, and at first used it as a refuge from attacks by the MacDonalds of Keppoch. A feud with Clan Mackintosh and Clan Chattan followed, the Camerons holding that the lands and castle had been abandoned by their former holders. By 1528 the old Clan Chattan lands in Lochaber were legally ceded to the Camerons under a charter from King James V, and in 1530 Ewen Mor Cameron of Lochiel, 13th chief of Clan Cameron, rebuilt the castle.

By 1665 Scotland's Privy Council ordered the chiefs of Cameron and Mackintosh to appear before it and settle the Lochaber dispute, ruling that Cameron should pay Mackintosh 72,000 merks. Mackintosh, unsatisfied with the ruling, was arrested and bound to keep the peace; on his release he called on the Chattan Confederation to launch an expedition into Lochaber, leading to the stand-off at the Fords of Arkaig. Afterwards the Cameron chief crossed the river to meet his former enemy at the House of Clunes and signed a contract for the formal sale of Loch Arkaig and Glen Loy, paying in three instalments over two years — a settlement the Camerons themselves reckoned something of a Pyrrhic victory, since pursuing their claim over the years had cost them lands worth four times as much.

Cameron struggled to raise the money and was offered a loan by the Earl of Atholl, who hoped to curb the power of the Earl of Argyll, but Argyll offered a similar loan at lower interest with strings attached: Cameron had to pay £100 Scots in feu-duty and acknowledge Argyll as superior of the lands. Tor Castle remained the seat of Clan Cameron until a new residence was built at Achnacarry after 1665, and the castle appears to have been finally abandoned after the Jacobite rising of 1745.

What survives is a very ruinous tower house on the rocky ridge west of the River Lochy, its walls standing up to four metres high and averaging over two metres thick, with fragments of a probable barmkin and the platforms of the earlier castle still traceable; a deep, now water-filled ditch cuts the site off from the rest of the ridge. Tor Castle has been a scheduled monument since December 1992.