Finlaggan Castle

Finlaggan is a historic site located on Eilean Mòr, one of the three islands in Loch Finlaggan on the Scottish island of Islay. It was the administrative center of the Lordship of the Isles, a semi-autonomous Gaelic kingdom in the Hebrides, from the 13th to the 15th centuries. The site includes Finlaggan Castle, also known as Eilean Mòr Castle, which was a residence and stronghold of the Lords of the Isles and Clan Donald. The castle was built in the 13th century, with an earlier construction dating back to 1138. It was used as a principal court and meeting place for the clan chiefs, and was likely demolished in the 15th or 16th century. The Finlaggan Trust maintains the site and has refurbished a derelict cottage into a museum that contains numerous artifacts discovered during archaeological excavations. The site has also been the subject of recent archaeological investigations and was featured on the television program Time Team in 1995. In 2019, researchers at the University of St Andrews announced the creation of a virtual reality reconstruction of the settlement in the early 15th century based on archaeological data.