HARP’s HEART Walk Day 3

After a well earned lunch and a cooling paddle in the loch, we continued our journey for another 5 or 6 miles along the Caledonian Canal to our destination in Fort Augustus.

Fort Augustus, or ‘Wadesburgh’, is another town in the Highlands that is steeped with some interesting military history. The original fortification here was built in 1716 following the large Jacobite uprising the previous year. This barracks was apparently called the “Kiliwhimen Barracks” due to English speaking officials mistaking the Gaelic place name Cille Chuimein. This barracks did have some enclosed protection from a stone curtain wall, complete with musket loops, and two angled bastions, which would enable the defenders to provide enfilading fire on any attackers. The barracks was constructed upon an area of high ground to the west of Loch Ness and to the immediate south of the settlement, giving it a strong position overlooking the surrounding landscape.

The settlement’s original Gaelic name is derived from the “Church of Chuimein” which took its name from the Abbot of Iona, Chuimein who established a church here in the 6^th century.

Wade’s 1724 report highlights the dilapidated nature and inadequacies of these barracks and in 1729 construction work began on a new, larger and more imposing fortification closer to the banks of Loch Ness. The new fort was named Fort Augustus in honour of the second son of George II, Augustus the Duke of Cumberland. Cumberland of course would later be labelled “Butcher Cumberland” in light of atrocities carried out in the Highlands under his command. In theory, the new and improved Fort Augustus would have been rather formidable, a square plan with thick stone walls furnished with angled bastions brisling with 6-pounder cannon. These walls would be protected by an earthwork bank, a glacis, that would absorb incoming artillery fire, the gap between the glacis and the walls would create a further obstacle for attackers to get through. All the while under enfilading fire from the angles bastions. The positioning of this new fort was in part to cover the jetty for another one of Wade’s new additions to the British army in the Highlands, the Highland Galley, that would be capable of ferrying 80 troops around Loch Ness. This idea was actually a resurrected Cromwellian plan, another indication of some of the continuities in military thinking from the 17^th to 18^th centuries. During the 1740’s Wade arranged for some further additions to the fort, apparently in response to rumours of an incoming French sponsored invasion in 1743/44. In 1743 Wade authored two memorials to the Board of Ordnance requesting a “master gunner” and two further experienced gunners to be posted to Fort Augustus in company with a number of new artillery pieces. Wade made a specific request for six coehorn mortars and 2 one and a half pounders on “galloping carriages” that “may be ready to march with the partys that may be sent to the Highlands”. This is an obvious connection being made between the road network and military response to trouble, illustrating the connection between, fort, road, material culture and landscape.