The third floor, or fourth stage, differs from the rest in that a small chamber is contained in the south-eastern angle, the door into which is in the south wall, near its east end. This may have been an oratory, but, as the east wall of the keep is gone, and with it the east end of this chamber, which also is inaccessible, such details as may remain have not been examined. In the west wall of the main chamber is an excellent flat segmental arch in ashlar, which spans a fireplace and a window looking down the loch. This upper story was covered with a vault, in the west side of which are traces of a side arch, covering that over the fireplace and window. Most of the main vault has fallen in.
There do not appear to be remains of any garderobes. The parapet is gone, but the wall is crowned by a bold moulding, and beyond this, at each angle, there is a row of short corbels, which probably carried the usual bartizan turrets. Over the door, at the top of the wall, are four bold corbels, which evidently carried a machicolation for its defence.
Urquhart is more extensive than most Highland castles, and the traces of barracks show that its area was turned to full account. It would contain a garrison of from 400 to 500 men. Though the masonry is rough, it is good, the proportions of the keep are excellent, and the ashlar work used for the doorways, quoins, and window dressings, is well executed. What arches remain are round-headed or segmental, not pointed. At the north-east angle the keep has a small short buttress set on anglewise, and one, also short, of a pilaster character, and slight projection, set on the west face of the north-west angle. The curtain springs from the keep, half of which is outside it.
Urquhart is one of the chain of fortresses which stretched across the great glen from Inverness to Inverlochy, and were employed from an early period to defend and overawe the country. By some accounts it is spoken of as belonging to the Comyns of Badenoch, but certain it is that when Edward I. was at Kildrummie, near Nairn, in 1303, he despatched a party who laid siege to this castle, and with some difficulty took it, putting Sir Alen de Bois, its governor, and the garrison, to the sword. In 1334 it was held for Baliol by Sir Robert Lauder, of Quarrel Wood, as governor; and the office seems to have been heritable, for Lauder’s daughter married Chisholm, and their son, Sir Robert Chisholm, of Chisholm, who had Quarrel Wood, had also the constableship of Urquhart, then, and probably always, a royal castle. Chisholm’s title, however, was insecure, for in 1359 David II. disponed the barony and castle to William, Earl of Sutherland, and John, his son.
After this, Urquhart was held under the Crown by the Grants of Freuchie, afterwards of Castle Grant, who, as chamberlains for the Crown, got possession of most of the adjacent lands. In 1509, James IV., under an Act of the Scottish Parliament, granted three-fourths of Urquhart Lordship, and of the Baronies of Urquhart and Glenmoriston, to Grant of Freuchie, and his two sons, from whom descended the Grants of Glenmoriston and Corriemony. The castle has since remained in the Grant family, and is now the property of the Earl of Seafield, whose house of Balmacaan is in the lower Valley of Urquhart.
It appears that the Knights of the Temple had an establishment in the Bay, and brought into cultivation the lands on its eastern shore. Probably they were constables of the castle. On the farm of Phinians is still a place called Temple.
Until after the rebellion of 1745 Glen Urquhart was in a very disturbed state. Grant did not reside there, and the people were continually attacked by the clansmen from Glengarry, Lochiel, and Kintail.
It is difficult to establish with any precision the date either of the early or the present castle of Urquhart. The ditch is no doubt much older than the siege of 1303. The remains of the castle now standing can scarcely be older than the fifteenth century, and probably it was one of those built about the middle of it, in accordance with the strong recommendation published by James I. on his return from his captivity in England.
An excellent account of this part of the Highlands, and of the descent of the Urquhart property, will be found in the “New Statistical Account of Scotland, for Inverness-shire,” p. 43.
