The fort’s strategic value is obvious... Ullapool is the town.
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Images
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Western enclosure... northern defences looking approx west.
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
The enclosure to the west... the original fort.
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Toward the broch..
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Note the staircase.... the footprint is very ‘broch-like’ to be fair.
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
It’s also quite exquisite upon a sunny, late May day...
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
The summit of the ridge is occupied by what was apparently a prehistoric ‘blockhouse’... why not broch?... later adapted to form the donjon of a castle.
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
The whatever-you-want-to-call-it commands the narrowest part of Loch Broom. Apparently.
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Perfect site for a fort/broch/castle
Image credit: Robert Gladstone
Articles
In retrospect it is clear I mistook Dun an Ruigh Ruadh – just up the road – for this. Serves me right for not having the OS map of the area or that would have been two sites for the price of one. Anyway, to get to Dun Lagaidh it appears the traveller needs to proceed to the end of the tarmac in Loggie and follow the path NW (ish). The broch commands the most narrow part of Loch Broom. Apparently.
Anna and Graham Richie (once again) supply some detail by way of my battered Oxford Archaeological Guide to Scotland; in summary in seems that excavations undertaken during the 1960’s established the first phase of the site to be a large, univallate stone walled fort founded c700 BCE and then ‘vitrified’. Make of that what you will. Later the eastern section of the fort became the site for a powerful, defensive roundhouse.... a broch to you or I. Or perhaps dun. Finally, sometime during the 12th century, it seems this ‘broch’ was upgraded to serve as the donjon (keep) of a castle, the remainder of the fort similarly upgraded to serve as the bailey. So there you are, some two millennia of human occupation. Seems ‘recycling’ to save the environment is actually rather old hat. We’ve been doing it for years.
Sites within 20km of Dun Lagaidh
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Dun Rhiroy
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Kildonan Farm
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Beinn Ghobhlach Standing Stone
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Rhue
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Loch Poll An Dunain
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Cromalt (west)
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Cromalt (east)
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