Kisimul

Today's the day .................... for the castle in the sea

Kisimul Castle, from which Castlebay on the Island of Barra gets its name, lies just offshore from the town on a rocky island - and is accessible only by boat.

It is the seat of the Clan Macneil, masters of the island of Barra - although their ambition stretched further afield than that. The MacNeils of Barra sat on the Council of the Isles, a quasi-independent Gaelic kingdom dominated by the Islay MacDonalds. The earliest verifiable evidence for the clan is a charter of 1427 in which one Gill-Adhamnain Macneil was given Barra by Alexander MacDonald, the Lord of the Isles. The oldest bits of Kisimul Castle date from then.

In 1837, the insolvent 41st chief of the Clan Macneil was forced to sell Barra - which included his ancestral seat - and the castle fell into ruin. It wasn't until 1937 that it returned into the ownership of the clan and was restored to its present state.

It's an interesting place to go and see and would make a very nice little holiday home away from the hustle and bustle ......................!