Moy Castle (Caisteal Magh)

The castle, in "Tower House" style, stands on a low rock platform at the head of Loch Buie on southern Mull. The site commands a wide prospect of the Loch and a fertile plain on the landward side. The lack of natural defenses on the landward approach was made good by the construction of a rock ditch to the NW and by the erection of a barmkin wall enclosing the area to the SE of the castle extending 8.8 meters from the north angle and 12.8 meters SE of the east angle of the tower. There is a boat landing some 36 meters from the castle.

Much of the surviving fabric of the castle is from the first half of the 15th century, following acquisition of the lands from the Lord of the Isles in the last quarter of the 14th century by Hector, elder brother of Maclean of Duart. The castle first appears on record in a royal charter of March 1494.

Alterations and additions, confined mainly to the upperworks, were carried out about the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries and are attributed to Iain Maclean or his son Hector, 8th Chief of Lochbuie who died about 1614. In October 1690 the Laird of Lochbuie was obligated to surrender to the government and Archibald, 10th Earl of Argyll, garrisoned Moy Castle with twenty-four men under the command of Colin Campbell of Braglen. Moy castle was abandoned as the Chief's residence in 1752 in favor of the nearby (smaller) Lochbuie House. A much larger Lochbuie House, a Gregorian-style mansion, was built about 1790 and is now occupied by the Corbett family.

Building materials of the original castle are schistose slabs quarried from nearby Laggan, harled stone, and beach boulders, all laid with lime mortar. Quoins and margins to all openings are a fine-grained sandstone of greenish hue quarried at Carsaig on the Ross of Mull. Large blocks of slate paving for the parapet-walk were probably quarried from Ballachulish.

The north-facing gateway was protected by a wooden door which in turn was guarded by a hinged iron grating or yet (now preserved in Lochbuie House).

On the ground floor a vaulted lobby immediately within the entrance doorway is served by a guard chamber. The main ground floor room is reached through a large doorway with pointed head and arched embrasure. Near the center are the remains of a well with a stone shaft descending 1.2 meters. Though cut into solid rock, the well always has water in it but never goes dry.

At the main first floor is an impressive barrel-vaulted chamber which probably served as the main hall in the original arrangement. At the NE end of the hall appears to be a raised platform or dais. The hall is served by two original mural chambers in the diagonally opposed east and west corners. There is a garderobe and latrine chute still visible on the SW wall. Near the angle formed by the limbs of the chamber is a hatch providing the only access to a well-constructed pit-prison, 3.3 meters in depth and 1.2 meters square at the base with tapering side walls and corbelled at the neck.

Spiral stone stairs and a short lintelled passage lead from the stairs to a long narrow apartment formed within the thickness of the SE wall, possibly intended as a bed chamber, though some historians claim it was used to hold the dead during funeral obsequies. The second level rooms are reached through a fine original doorway with pointed arched head composed of four voussoirs and the dressed surround uniformly wrought with a broad chamfer. The next two stories had their floors of wood, though the walls are 2.2 meters thick.

Externally the most interesting features are the upperworks of the tower where the parapet is embattled with broad merlons and crenelles of deep and narrow proportions. Each turret is provided with small windows and smaller square openings, possibly firing apertures. A steeply raked loop with double aperture at the base protects the entrance to the castle.

The interior of Moy Castle is not accessible to the public due to much-needed repairs and is therefore under lock-and-key. Plans are being made to restore the six-hundred year old structure beginning in 2005.