The crumbling shell of Caisteal Ormaceit — Ormiclate Castle — sits quietly in a farm steading now, unmarked by the brown tourist signs, its past more dramatic than its present suggests. Once a grand new seat for Allan Macdonald of Clanranald, it burned to ruin on the same day he was fatally wounded at the Battle of Sheriffmuir in 17151Caisteal Ormacleit. Canmore ID 9897. http://canmore.org.uk/site/9897.
Macdonald had it built between 1701 and 1703, in a thriving township known for its cattle market. An 1805 map by William Bald still showed the place as a sizable community. But it was Lady Penelope, Macdonald’s wife, who likely spurred its construction. She is said to have sneered that her father’s henhouse outshone the old 16th-century Clanranald house. So he replaced it with a grand French-style chateau — but which stood for only 12 years before it went up in flames.
Excavations suggest that the castle was built over the remains of the earlier house. Local tales claim it was once roofed with marble. During digging, fragments of green gneiss slabs turned up — not marble, but striking enough. This stone may have come from Stulaidh, an island off the east of Uist, the Scottish mainland or Inner Hebrides, and is thought to have been transported across South Uist by water.
That leads to the most curious part: the canal system. The route, running from Loch Aineort on the east coast to Loch Ceann a’ Bhaigh, then north via An Lige Mòr, links to Loch Olaidh an Ear and Loch Olaidh Meadhanach — once one loch, now split by the main road. On foot, across soaked moorland, the old canal is still there. It runs arrow-straight with dry-stone walls, looking distinctly artificial2Water Channel, Ceann a Bhaigh. Canmore ID 315952. http://canmore.org.uk/site/315952.
Drainage of the machair on the west coast began in the 1740s, but this east-west route may have existed earlier, built not for farming but to move goods from sheltered eastern sea lochs to the scattered settlements of the west.
This is not the only suspected canal in South Uist. Local accounts and early maps hint at a network of navigable waterways linking machair lochs along the western coast, used long ago to move boats across the island. The signs are faint, but they are still there.
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