History of Tomdoun

The History of the Glengarry and Glen Quoich Areas.

The Tomdoun Hotel lies at the meeting of the West Highland glens of Glengarry and Glen Quoich, which are steeped in the rich history of the Lochaber district where the glens are located. The hotel itself lies slightly east of the site on an old inn which probably dates back to droving times, when the area round Tomdoun provided an overnight stance for cattle being driven south from Skye and Knoydart. Hundreds of the beasts would gather with their drovers and dogs, before setting off on the three-week walk to Falkirk or Crieff.

Traditionally this area was the land of the MacDonells of Glengarry, one of the most powerful of the Highland clans. The ruins of their main castle stronghold can still be seen at Invergarry. Close by is the infamous Well of the Seven Heads, raised in 1812 by the last MacDonell laird to commemorate a bloody clan vengeance executed on a group of the MacDonell’s enemies in the seventeenth century. The MacDonells supported the Jacobites in the eighteenth century and 400 men from the glens around here joined The Pretender (Bonnie Prince Charlie) in 1745. Charles spent the night after the Battle of Culloden in 1746 at Invergarry Castle, which was then burnt down by Redcoat troops led by the Duke of Cumberland.After Culloden, the MacDonell’s lost their lands for a while. They later tried to recover their fortunes by evicting local people from their homes and by bringing in sheep; about 500 people were cleared from Kingie west of Tomdoun in 1785. At Daingean, a few miles east of Tomdoun lies one of the best excavated and preserved of the cleared villages from this infamous period, with an interpretive trail which brings the history alive.

The Clearances were followed by a brief period of prosperity in the mid nineteenth century when the herring boom led to thousands of workers converging on Loch Hourn in the short fishing season. Around the head of the loch at Kinloch Hourn can still be seen some of the remains of this industry, quays, steps and other workings.The break up of the clans led to the emergence of lawlessness and banditry on a wide scale, and MacDonald of Barrisdale preyed on travellers and drovers from his base in Knoydart till the the authorities using military force suppressed organised banditry. However, as late as 1850, Glen Quoich saw the activities of Britain’s last bandit, Ewan MacPhee, who occupied an island in Loch Quoich. Here he lived for thirty years in the wilds after deserting from the Army, poaching, rustling sheep and distilling illicit whisky. MacPhee has recently become the subject of an historical novel, Mountain Outlaw by Ian R Mitchell. MacPhee became a friend of Edward Ellice who bought the entire estate from the bankrupt MacDonells in the 1830s, and who built a large shooting lodge on the shores of Loch Quoich, turning the area into a sporting estate. Ellice was an M.P. who had made his fortune in Canada in the Hudson’s bay Company.At Glen Quoich Ellice entertained many famous guests, including the painter Landseer, and the latter is reputed to have painted his most famous work, The Monarch of the Glen on the estate, at a place called Landseer’s Rocks to the east of Kinloch Hourn. The Ellices were good landlords, and built roads, a school and the church which lies near the hotel. The original Ellice’s nephew, another Edward Ellice, wrote a fascinating collection of tales and folklore form the area, published in 1898 as Place Names of Glengarry and Glen Quoich, which has been recently re-printed. It makes fine reading of an evening sitting in the bar of the hotel, with a glass of malt whisky by the roaring log fire, after one of the hotel’s wonderful meals.A little further afield the West Highland Museum at Fort William has much fascinating information about the history of the Lochaber region, including that of Glengarry and Glen Quoich, and is well worth a visit. Fort William, about 40 minutes by car from the hotel, is also the home of a fine Highland malt whisky distillery, nestling under Britain’s highest mountain, Ben Nevis. The whisky is named after the mountain, and the distillery is open for tours and tastings.An unmissable sight is the magnificent locks of the Caledonian Canal at Banavie near Fort William, called Neptune’s Staircase. The canal was built by Thomas Telford the renowned Scottish engineer and opened in 1822, and is regarded as one of the greatest works of nineteenth century engineering. The Caledonian Canal is still in use and you can watch boats going through Neptune’s Staircase, or entering the world famous Loch Ness at the equally impressive locks further north at Fort Augustus, which is less than half an hour from Tomdoun. Here on Loch Ness you have a wide variety of pleasure craft offering cruises on the loch, with the chance of sighting its famous monster “Nessie”, or the opportunity of visiting the dramatic ruins of Castle Urquhart.And if all this were not enough, the magic Isle of Skye and its Cuillin Mountains is less than an hour’s drive from Tomdoun. Remote - six miles along its winding, dead end road Tomdoun may be - isolated, it certainly is not. And with regular flights to Inverness airport an hour away, as well as the overnight sleeper to Fort William which is even nearer - and car hire available at both points - getting to Tomdoun has never been easier.