Note 508 — NEIL MACEACHAIN’S NARRATIVE OF THE WANDERINGS OF PRINCE CHARLES IN THE HEBRIDES

The home of Sir Alexander of Sleat at this time was Monkstat House (also spelt Mongstat, Mougstot and other variations), in the parish of Kilmuir, Trotternish. It was built on the site of an ancient monastic foundation near the shores of a lake named Columbkill, since then drained and parcelled into crofts. The ancient home of the family was Duntulm Castle, about five miles north of Monkstat, but during the troubles of the Revolution it is said to have been burnt by a party landed from a warship. Local legendary lore gives various other versions of the reason for abandoning Duntulm. By one account the family was driven from the castle by the ghost of Donald Gorm, a sixteenth-century ancestor. By another, it was owing to the death of a child of the family, who was killed by a fall from a window of the castle, which is built on the edge of a precipitous rock overhanging the sea. Monkstat was built in its stead.