Loch Ness and the Great Glen
Urquhart guards the Great Glen, An Gleann Mòr in Gaelic, that runs 73 miles (117km) from coast to coast. People have sought to control this route since ancient times. The castle commands Loch Ness as well as Glen Urquhart, which includes the best farmland in the area.
The Loch Ness Lynchpin
Traces of the earliest locals date back some 5,000 years and there was probably an important Pictish fortification here by the middle of the first millennium AD.
Medieval Urquhart was the prosperous hub of a network that brought timber, cattle hide and other raw materials from the Highlands to the markets of Inverness and beyond.
Waterside Guest House
Guests may have stayed in the building on your right in the 1200s. Later, it might have been used as a smithy.
Did You Know ...
The last recorded beavers in mainland Britain lived nearby before the species was hunted to extinction in the 1500s. The animals were reintroduced as a trial in Argyll in 2009.
'Ther was an erth-quak quhilk maid all the North parts of Scotland to trirable' [quhilk: which; trirable: tremble] James Melvill, 1597
Earthquakes and Glaciers
The castle sits on top of an epic geological struggle —
the Great Glen Fault that cut across Scotland 400 million years ago. It is one of Britain's most active earthquake zones.
Loch Ness is the longest of the lochs scooped from the glen by Ice Age glaciers. Its deepest point, which at 227m is more than twice the average depth of the North Sea, is right in front of you.
( photo captions )
- Below: Beavers have recently returned to Scotland.
- Left: Timothy Pont's map of 1580 shows Urquhart guarding the route along Loch Ness.
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