Clan Mackay - Dirlot Castle (site of) - Photo Print

Dirlot Castle once stood on a dramatic rocky outcrop above the River Thurso in Caithness, though only the site remains today. The castle changed hands several times over the centuries, passing from the Cheynes to the Gunns to the Sutherlands, before the Mackays acquired it in 1499. For Clan Mackay, whose heartland lay in the territory of Strathnaver to the west, Dirlot represented their eastward reach into Caithness, a county long contested with their most persistent rivals, the Sutherland earls. The landscape surrounding the Thurso valley, vast and largely treeless, is part of the Flow Country, one of the largest expanses of blanket bog in Europe, and it provides a sense of how remote and demanding this corner of Scotland truly was. Photographer Aly Wight documented this site as part of the Clanscape series on Mackay lands in the far north.

If the Mackay name runs in your family, these remote headwaters of the Thurso were once within your clan's reach.