Clan Ross - Balnagown Castle - Photo Print

Photographer Aly Wight captured Balnagown Castle from the air in the early morning, the pale stone building sitting in a clearing surrounded by dense Highland woodland as golden light swept across the scene.

The Rosses built this tower house in 1375, on land that had long carried the clan’s name in the far north. Descendants of the Earls of Ross, one of the great medieval titles in Scotland, they held Balnagown as their principal seat for centuries. In the eighteenth century, debt forced a sale, but the buyers were the Rosses of Hawkhead, a southern branch of the same clan. The castle stayed in Ross hands until 1978.

If your name is Ross, this was the centre of your clan’s world for six hundred years. The north of Scotland is Ross territory, and Balnagown was where the chiefs of that territory lived.