Clan MacGregor - Kilchurn Castle, Loch Awe - Photo Print

Photographer Aly Wight took this photograph of Kilchurn Castle, the great ruin on the edge of Loch Awe, in what was once the heart of the MacGregor world. The MacGregors’ ancestral territory covered three glens, Strae, Orchy, and Lochy, with Loch Awe at the western edge. When Robert the Bruce granted the barony of Loch Awe to the Campbells, and the Campbells built Kilchurn to enforce that grant, the balance of power in this landscape shifted permanently. The land around the loch that had belonged to the MacGregors began to narrow, and would go on narrowing until the clan was outlawed by royal proclamation in 1603 and the name itself banned.

If you carry the MacGregor name, Loch Awe is part of what was lost, and this landscape carries something of that story.