Dunaverty Castle

In 1248 Henry III of England permitted Walter Byset to buy stores from Ireland for Dunaverty Castle, which Byset had seized and was fortifying, reportedly in revenge for the hospitality Alexander II of Scotland had shown to English pirates. That same year, Allan, son of the Earl of Atholl, took the castle back and made Byset his prisoner, ending the episode almost as quickly as it began.

By 1263 Dunaverty was garrisoned by Alexander III of Scotland during the Norwegian campaign of King Hákon Hákonarson. The castle was eventually surrendered to the Norwegian king, who granted it to Dubhghall mac Ruaidhrí, a loyal supporter in the Hebrides. When Norwegian sovereignty in the region evaporated after 1263, Alexander III appears to have retaken the stronghold for the Scottish crown.

Late in 1306 the embattled Robert I fled to Dunaverty and to his friend Aonghus Óg Mac Domhnaill, Lord of the Isles. According to the medieval poem The Bruce, Aonghus Óg sheltered the king there for three days before taking him on to Rathlin Island. Some contemporary sources instead suggest the castle was already under Robert's control, acquired from a certain Maol Coluim that March; by September, when the English arrived, the king was gone.

In 1493 the fourth and last Lord of the Isles forfeited his title to James IV of Scotland, and by 1494 the king had garrisoned and provisioned Dunaverty. The MacDonalds, led by the newly knighted Sir John MacDonald, are said to have retaken the castle before James had even left for Stirling, hanging the body of the king's castle governor over the walls in sight of his departing entourage. Sir John was later captured by MacIain of Ardnamurchan and hanged on the Burgh Muir near Edinburgh.

The crown repaired the castle between 1539 and 1542, and in January 1544 a commission ordered its captain, constable and keeper to hand it over with its artillery and ammunition to the Earl of Argyll, who that April received a twelve-year tack of North and South Kintyre including the fortress. In October 1588 the Earl of Sussex sailed from Dublin and burnt Saddell, Dunaverty and Machrimore in retaliation for Clan MacDonald activity in Ireland, before burning farms on Arran, Bute and Cumbrae.

In 1626 the Lordship of Kintyre was reconstituted for the Earl of Argyll, with Dunaverty Castle named as its principal seat. Argyll granted the lordship to his son James, who in 1635 issued a charter of it at Dunaverty to Viscount Dunluce; the Scottish Privy Council set the transfer aside after a complaint from Argyll's elder son, the Marquis of Lorn, who received his own charter to the lordship, castle included, on 12 December 1636.

During the Civil War, in 1647, Dunaverty was besieged by Scottish supporters of Oliver Cromwell under General David Leslie. The MacDonald garrison surrendered, and around three hundred of them were massacred afterwards — an event remembered as the Battle, or Massacre, of Dunaverty. The castle has stood as a ruin ever since, and the rock is still known locally as Blood Rock.