Isle of Mull

Duart Castle

The seat of the Clan Maclean on a rocky point over the Sound of Mull, a medieval keep restored from ruin after 1911.

Welcome

Duart Castle stands on a rocky point at the east end of Mull, guarding the Sound of Mull, and it has been the seat of the Macleans of Duart since the thirteenth century.

Its great keep, perhaps built in the later fourteenth century for Lachlan Lubanach Maclean, rises three storeys over a courtyard closed by an older curtain wall, and a house was added in the seventeenth century, dated 1653 over its door.

The Macleans lost their lands, and in 1692 the castle passed to the Earl of Argyll. It was abandoned in 1751 and fell into ruin, until in 1911 Colonel Sir Fitzroy Maclean, the clan's twenty-sixth chief, bought it back and had it restored by the architect Sir John James Burnet as the home of the clan. His great-grandson, the twenty-eighth chief, lives there still. There is a tearoom with home baking and soup, and a walk through the Millennium Wood.

Round the cornerLismore LighthouseRobert Stevenson's lighthouse of 1833 on Eilean Musdile, off the south end of Lismore, where Loch Linnhe meets the Sound of Mull.1 min by roadSee it

The white lighthouse and its buildings on the rocky islet.

Before you go

Open daily from 10.30am to 5pm in the season; check before you go.

The tearoom, with home baking and soup, is open from April to October. Duart is on the east of Mull, a short drive from the ferry at Craignure.

Getting there: CalMac ferry: Oban to Craignure (50 minutes), Lochaline to Fishnish, or Kilchoan to Tobermory.
Hours: 10:30 to 17:00 daily, in season.
Tearoom: April to October.

Opening hours