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Ardvreck Castle in Sutherland, Scotland - George Blackie Sticks (1894)
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this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2024
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Gorgeous painting.
I was trying to figure out who would build a castle on an island in a lake but this image from Wikipedia makes it seem like it's a bit of land instead.
One of Scotland's most famous castles, Eilean Donan, actually is built on an island. If you go further back in history, though, the people that lived in the Scottish highlands long before Scotland became a country often lived in crannogs, which are the same idea on a smaller scale
I guess I was thinking of castles as being forts to protect a region. And not castle-towns that support a large population. You want forts at choke points, I thought. Forts on islands in the age of artillery make sense to deny a bay or harbor to enemy ships. But in a lake I couldn't figure out why you'd want it. I guess if it's meant as a refuge to retreat to it'd work.
I think the geography and history of the region is playing a part here. These castles are at chokepoints, it's just that they are water chokepoints. Eilean Donan sits at the narrowest point between the sea and two large lochs, and because the highlands are basically nothing but hills and lochs the easiest way to get around there for most of history was by boat. I'm less familiar with Ardvreck, but it looks like the waterways are navigable from the sea up to the point of the castle, and the castle controls the best place to embark or disembark.
Additionally, most of these castles were for handling other highland clans and conflicts between the lowland-based government and the highland clans. They weren't trying to stop the full weight of a massed French invasion. On that smaller scale, there's less likelihood that someone will be willing to properly siege you out and even less likelihood that they can do so when you can just take a boat to the other side of the loch.
The water level could have changed there between the two pictures.