The Mingary Castle restoration blog was written by Jon Haylett, who lives in the local village of Kilchoan. Now that restoration is almost complete Holly and Chris Bull will take over to report on bringing the Castle back to life.

Thursday 3 July 2014

Locally-Sourced Timber

A mile or so along the road out of Kilchoan village, in an area called Caim, stand three large sheds.  The nearer two are used by the farming side of Ardnamurchan Estate for their extensive cattle and sheep-rearing activities, but the more distant shed has a special purpose for Mingary Castle.  It was built recently to house....

....two large ovens, one of which is shown here, that are being used to dry timber for use in the rebuilding of the three ranges in the castle.  This wood has all come from Ardnamurchan Estate land and is part of the effort being made to source materials locally in the way they would have been, over 700 years ago, when the castle was first built.

John-Paul Ashley, one of the partners in Ashley Thompson, the company which is carrying out the building work, was kind enough to show me the facility.  The wood which has been through the drying process is seen in this picture stacked up ready for grading.  It includes oak, Douglas fir and larch.  It is planned that much of this will go in to the extensive panelling work that will be such a feature of the interior of the castle when it's completed.

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