Eilean Chathastail

Scottish Gaelic name	Eilean Chathastail
	; The north end of Eilean Chathastail from Eigg
Location
	Eilean Chathastail shown within Scotland
OS grid reference	NM485835
Coordinates	56°52′30″N6°07′44″W / 56.875°N 6.129°W
Physical geography
Island group	Small Isles
Area	25 hectares (0.1 sq mi)
Highest elevation	35 metres (115 ft)
Administration
Council area	Highland
Country	Scotland
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Demographics
Population	0
References

Last updated June 20, 2025

Eilean Chathastail (Eng: Castle Island^[2]) is one of the Small Isles in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland.

Geography

Satellite view of Eigg (Landsat image viewed using NASA World Wind software). Eilean Chathastail is the island in the bottom right of the picture
Map of Eigg 1892, with Eilean Chathastail to its Southeast

Eilean Chathastail protects the only harbour on Eigg at Galmisdale. It is roughly 1 kilometre (1,100 yd) in length and lies only 100 metres (110 yd) off the south-east coast of the island of Eigg. Eigg lighthouse was built on the island in 1906 by brothers David A. 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.^[3]

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."^[4]

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.^[5]

Notes

↑ Rick Livingstone’s Tables of the Islands of Scotland (pdf) Argyll Yacht Charters. Retrieved 12 Dec 2011.
1 2 Haswell-Smith, Hamish (2004). The Scottish Islands. Edinburgh: Canongate. ISBN 978-1-84195-454-7.
↑ Bray (1996) pp. 222-24, 233
↑ Bray (1996) p. 226, quoting The Cruise of the Betsey
↑ Historic Environment Scotland. "Eigg, Eilean Chathastail (Site no. NM48SE 62)" . Retrieved 19 June 2025.

References

The Cruise of the Betsey - title page (1858) CruiseOfTheBetsy-Miller-TitlePage.jpg — *The Cruise of the Betsey*– title page (1858)

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

External links

56°52′20″N6°7′30″W / 56.87222°N 6.12500°W / 56.87222; -6.12500

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[Rick-1] Rick Livingstone’s Tables of the Islands of Scotland (pdf) Argyll Yacht Charters. Retrieved 12 Dec 2011.

[HSmith-2] 1 2 Haswell-Smith, Hamish (2004). The Scottish Islands. Edinburgh: Canongate. ISBN 978-1-84195-454-7.

[3] Bray (1996) pp. 222-24, 233

[4] Bray (1996) p. 226, quoting The Cruise of the Betsey

[5] Historic Environment Scotland. "Eigg, Eilean Chathastail (Site no. NM48SE 62)" . Retrieved 19 June 2025.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]