Clan MacDougall - Mingary Castle - Photo Print

Photographer Aly Wight captured this aerial view of Mingary Castle jutting out on its rocky promontory over the Sound of Mull, the flanks of Ben Hiant catching the warm evening light to the east, its ridges reaching down to the coast behind the castle.

The MacDougalls were among the most powerful clans in medieval Scotland, descended from Dougall, son of the Norse-Gaelic warlord Somerled, who once commanded the entire western seaboard. At their peak in the thirteenth century, they held Argyll through a network of coastal fortresses, and Mingary was one of them. Set where the Sound of Mull meets the Ardnamurchan coast, it commanded the shipping lanes completely. Nothing moved through these waters without Mingary knowing about it. Their fall came through opposing Robert the Bruce. Bruce defeated them at the Pass of Brander and forfeited their lands, with most of Argyll passing to the Campbells.

If your name is MacDougall, your clan's stronghold stood here on the edge of the western sea, when they were lords of Argyll and the Isles.