Tower on Dun na Cuaiche

The tower on Dun na Cuaiche stands on a hill above Loch Fyne, part of the Inveraray Castle estate in Argyll and Bute. Built in the 1740s by architect Roger Morris, it was supervised by master mason William Douglas. A lightning strike in the 1960s left the structure in poor condition, but by 1971 it had been restored and placed in Scotland’s highest listed building category. The climb rewards walkers with views across the loch and surrounding hills. The gaelic name Dun na Cuaiche means ‘cup hill’, describing the shallow hollow at the summit. Excavations for the tower may have deepened this hollow, or it could date back to the early Iron Age. The single-storey stone tower has a square plan, a vaulted cellar and two pointed neo-Gothic windows without glass. A 2.5-kilometre path from the castle car park leads up through beech hedges and past a cedar planted for Queen Victoria’s 1875 visit. A 1754 monument marks the execution of seventeen Campbells by John Stewart, Earl of Atholl. The route crosses the Aray on a garden bridge, enters an old conifer grove planted by 18th- and 19th-century landowners, and passes the ruins of a lime kiln used until about 1912. The final section follows a farm track up the western slope to the summit at 348 metres.