Dirlot Castle, Scottish Highlands
Photo © Jim Bain, 23 April 2006
Dirlot Castle, Scottish Highlands
Photo © Jim Bain, 23 April
2006
Next to nothing now remains of the castle. The small keep stood on top of this rock spike with a curtain wall and perhaps two smaller towers on the low ground below the spike. Never much of a defensive position it served more as a frontier post on the edge of the Keiss, Sinclair and Gunn clan lands.
The base of a small tower, built either by the Cheynes in the 14th century or the Gunns in the 15th century, lies on a rock above the river Thurso in a lonely position far inland. On the summit of a crag by the western bank of the River Thurso in a remote and barren area south of Halkirk, are foundations of a tower built by Donald Cheyne. It measures 9.5 m by 6.5 m with walls 1.6 m thick. It had a courtyard on the south-east, measuring 13 m by 7 m, which had only a parapet to defend it. In 1464, Dirlot was held by George, chief of the Gunn clan, but it was held by Alexander Sutherland at the time of his execution in 1499, for killing Alexander Dunbar. The castle was subsequently granted to the Clan MacKay by King James IV of Scotland.
DIRLOT CASTLE, CAITHNESS-SHIRE.
A fragmentary ruin, occupying a very picturesque position on the top of an
isolated crag close to the River Thurso, about fifteen miles south from the
town of the same name. It is said to have been held in the
fourteenth century by Donald Cheyne, one of the scions of that family, long
so powerful in the North. In 1464 it was in the hands of George Gunn, Crumer
or Crown representative, and head of the Clan Gunn. The keep occupied an almost
inaccessible peak and to have been accessible only by a drawbridge. It has been
of the usual quadrilateral form, and has had a small courtyard attached to it;
but it is now reduced to a few remains of the walls.
The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland by David Macgibbon and
Thomas Ross 1889
Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland.