Eilean Chathastail

Eilean Chathastail
Inner Hebrides (Inverness-shire)
The north end of Eilean Chathastail from Eigg
Location
Location:	56°52’30"N, 6°7’44"W
Grid reference:	NM485835
Area:	64 acres
Highest point:	115 ft
Data
Population:	0

Eilean Chathastail is one of the Small Isles in the Inner Hebrides, and belongs to Inverness-shire. The name means Castle Island.

Geography

Eilean Chathastail protects the only harbour on Eigg at Galmisdale. It is roughly ⅔ mile in length and lies only 100 yds off the south-east coast of the island of Eigg. Eigg lighthouse was built on the island in 1906 by brothers David Alan Stevenson and Charles Alexander Stevenson.

History

In July 1884 the geologist and writer Hugh Miller arrived at the Eilean Chathastail anchorage on board the yacht Betsey. He had just begun his journey at Tobermory and he produced a diary of his travels in the Hebrides for the newspaper Witness, of which he was the editor. His contributions were later collated and published as The Cruise of the Betsey in 1856.

He wrote that: "We passed the Isle of Muck, with its one low hill; saw the pyramidal mountains of Rum looming tall in the offing; and then, running along the Isle of Eigg, with its colossal Scuir rising between us and the sky, as if it were a piece of Babylonian wall, or the great wall of China, only vastly larger, set down on the ridge of a mountain, we entered the channel which separates the isle from one of its dependencies, Eilean Chathastail, and cast anchor in the tideway."

Robert Lawrie Thomson, a former laird of Eigg, is buried at the southern end of Eilean Chathastail. This is marked by a burial enclosure on Maol an Eilean, the island's highest point.

References

Satellite view of Eigg: Eilean Chathastail in the bottom right

• Bray, Elizabeth (1996) The Discovery of the Hebrides: Voyages to the Western Isles 1745-1883. Edinburgh. Birlinn.