Argyll - The Rough Guide to Scottish Highlands and Islands - page 56

Rothesay Castle
Castle Hill St • April-Sept daily 9.30am-5.30pm; Oct-March Mon-Wed, Sat & Sun 9.30am-4.30pm • £4.50; HS • T 01700 502691
Rothesay boasts the militarily useless, but architecturally impressive, moated ruins
of Rothesay Castle , hidden amid the town's backstreets. Built around the twelfth
century, it was twice captured by the Norwegians, firstly in 1230, then in 1263;
such vulnerability was the reasoning behind the unusual, almost circular, curtain
wall, with its four big drum towers, only one of which remains fully intact. Look
upwards inside the tower and you'll see a superbly preserved dovecot (with nesting
boxes), which was a seventeenth-century addition. The wall was actually heightened
in the early sixteenth century - the line of which is clearly identifiable in the

1

Inveraray

Buttock
Point

BUTE

Colintraive

Ferry
Crossing

Rhubodach

Tighnabruaich

Kames

Torran Turach
(746ft)

Windy Hill
(913ft)

Glecknabae

Port
Bannatyne

Ettrick
Bay

Ardencraig
Gardens

Rothesay

Ascog

Ardlamont
Point

Loch
Fad

Kerrycroy

St Ninian's Point

Mount
Stuart

Inchmarnock

Scalpsie
Bay

Kingarth

Sound
of
Bute

N

Kilchattan
Bay

St Blane's
Chapel

0 3

miles

Garroch Head