In the last years of the 19th century John Stuart McCaig decided to erect a monument on a hill overlooking Oban. Whilst a pillar of the  local community, McCaig did not choose a column or obelisk, but instead a colossal circular wall, pierced with gothic windows, giving magnificent views of the harbour and out to sea.

In 1895 McCaig (1823-1902) applied for permission to erect a ‘stone and lime wall and granite tower with freestone dressing’ on a piece of land he owned called Battery Hill. A year later McCaig sold his interest in Oban pier and harbour for £16,500, so he had money to spend, and he made further applications in 1896 and 1897 to add to the wall and increase it in height.

McCaig intended his hilltop project to provide work for local men, so the great wall was built sporadically with work stopping whenever there was employment elsewhere. But by September 1897 a visitor could note that ‘there is rising by degrees a mighty structure’. The tourist was informed that ‘a lofty tower’ would in due course ‘rise from the centre of the gigantic circle’, and whilst that was never built, history has confirmed his opinion that ‘when this is finished Oban will possess a building absolutely unique in the United Kingdom’. A plaque above the entrance records that the tower was

ERECTED IN 1900
BY
JOHN STUART McCAIG
ART CRITIC
AND PHILOSPHICAL ESSAYIST
AND BANKER, OBAN

With his brother, McCaig was appointed agent to the North of Scotland Bank when it opened a branch in Oban in 1873. However it is his work as an art critic and an essayist that McCaig chooses to first highlight on the stone, which is something of a mystery as he appears to have left no published works: a trawl of the catalogues of the National Library of Scotland and the British Library gives no results.

McCaig died suddenly in the summer of 1902 before the planned central tower could be built. However his will stipulated that his estate should fund the erection of 12 statues within ‘Stuart McCaig’s Tower’ representing himself, his parents and his siblings. Scottish sculptors, especially ‘young and rising artists’, were to be commissioned to design the statues: they were to work from photographs of McCaig’s late family, and if images were not available the artists were to ensure the statues had a family likeness. Prizes were to be offered for the best design, with a competition also to design ‘artistic towers’ to stand in prominent positions on McCaig’s estates.

His only surviving sibling Catherine successfully challenged the will. But then in a bizarre twist Catherine too left a will stipulating that bronze statues of the family be erected. This will was also challenged – unsurprisingly, as Catherine had already set a precedent. Two years after Catherine’s death in 1915 the case made headlines across Britain when the court declared that the ‘directions in question were wholly void, having neither reason nor public sentiment in their favour and involving sheer waste of money’. Local feeling seems to have been against the statues, with one paper reporting in 1905 that ‘we doubt the people of Oban will be prepared to give them a welcome.

The McCaig fortune was eventually used to create Catherine McCaig’s Trust Settlement, which continues to offer bursaries and grants today, and the trust did honour Catherine’s request that her trustees would be ‘bound to properly upkeep the McCaig Tower’. In 1961 the trust spent about £4,000 on repairs before handing the tower to Oban Town Council later that decade. The council began a programme of improvements including landscaping (which the Governors of Catherine McCaig’s Trust had ‘never got around to’) and floodlighting. In the 1970s the council drew up plans to erect an historical centre within the tower, and in the 1980s a very ambitious plan to create an arts and conference centre in the shell was proposed, but neither project came to fruition.

Although McCaig’s dream of twelve statues on his great wall was never realised, he has certainly not been forgotten in Oban where the tower is popular with locals and visitors.

Thanks to Jackie Davenport, Archives Officer at Live Argyll for her help with this post. Jackie’s favourite folly is the little watchtower on the hill called Dun na Cuaiche high above Inverary Castle in Argyll (although, as she admits, this is possibly because of the sense of relief you feel when you see it and realise the climb is over).

Thank you for reading. If you have any thoughts or comments please scroll down to the foot of the page to get in touch. 

Islay House was known as Kilarrow House until the middle of the eighteenth century. It was given its new name by Donald Campbell the Younger after he remodelled the house in the 1760s. Four lookout towers were built on the island, and the two known simply as the East and West towers, survive today in the park.

Donald Campbell junior (c.1737-1777), so-called to distinguish him from his grandfather Donald ‘the Great’, inherited the estate in 1753 whilst still in his teens. After a Grand Tour lasting 5 years, he returned to the island. He then began to improve his estate which stood near Bridgend overlooking the sea loch, Loch Indaal. By early the next century it was described as a ‘handsome mansion […] in grounds tastefully laid out, and embellished with plantations’.

In 1766 Campbell began to build the handsome model village of Bowmore, which would eventually replace the ancient settlement of Kilarrow. In December of that year he advertised the venture and invited ‘mechanics’ of all kinds, but especially carpenters, coopers, net-makers and all those versed in the linen and fishing industries to move to the island and prosper there. Built on a grid system, the ‘new town’ centred on the circular church, which a 1767 account described as ‘now building after a new Model in the Form of the Pantheon at Rome’. It’s a rather loose interpretation, and for rather obvious reasons the Hebridean version has no oculus in the dome. Instead there is a central pillar supporting the structure.

At around the same time Campbell may have ornamented his park with a belvedere or lookout tower. The East Tower, which stands on the knoll called Cnoc na Croiche (‘hill of the hanging’, after the Gallows which once stood there), is a rubble-built octagon, over 11 metres high, which formerly contained 4 floors, although it is now simply a shell.

Above the door is a carved cartouche containing the initials DC, for the builder, and GR, which is assumed to show allegiance to George III (George Rex). The presence of this plaque has led to the assumption that Donald Campbell built the tower, but an alternative theory is that the stone was removed from the house when it was remodelled in the early 19th century, making the tower the work of Daniel junior’s brother and heir Walter (died 1816).

Few contemporary descriptions survive but in the middle of the 19th century it was described as having ’embrasures in the bank for small cannon, giving it the character of a miniature fortification’. Some of these cannon survive today in the undergrowth around the tower, including one that can be identified as dating from the reign of George III.

Until fairly recently the East Tower, on its slight eminence, was clearly visible from the passing road, but it is now becoming obscured by young trees, and with the rooftop platform lost, so too is the view to the loch.

Further from the house, the West Tower is the simpler of the two follies – a squat square tower built of rubble with rough castellations. It carries no inscription, but was built by Daniel Campbell’s descendants as a lookout tower and battery (there were also towers armed with cannon at Bowmore and Port Askaig, both now demolished). They were built to protect Islay during the Napoleonic Wars, and a flashpoint may have been the events of December 1813, when an American privateer, the True Blooded Yankee, entered the loch and plundered ‘several vessels’ before setting them alight.

In more peaceful times both towers were maintained as ornaments within the pleasure grounds of Islay House.

Both towers are listed category B, and both appear on the Buildings at Risk Register in Scotland, although in the ‘low’ category suggesting that general maintenance is all that is required.

Islay House, now a hotel, is a rambling building which has been extended since it was described in 1827 as a ‘large uncouth structure’.

Speaking of which, the Folly Flâneuse’s uncouth companion, who has not made an appearance in these pages for some time, has clearly found something more to his taste than follies…

Islay House is currently on the market, if you fancy life as a Hebridean hotelier you can read more here https://www.knightfrank.co.uk/properties/residential/for-sale/bridgend-isle-of-islay-argyll-and-bute-pa44/edn012287140

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