Finlaggan

Today, Finlaggan can be a lonely and windswept moorland on the Island of Islay, but in the time of the MacDonald, Lords of the Isles, it was the very centre of their territories which stretched from Ayrshire to the Great Glen and Buchan to Antrim in Northern Ireland, essentially a kingdom within a kingdom. The Lords of the Isles were descended from Somerled, a 12th-century prince, and these Lords of the mighty Clan Donald chose Finlaggan as their power base. The Lords of the Isles is an ancient title which predates the Kingdom of Scotland, founded in the year 875 and held by the Clan Donald for much of that time, but in 1493, conflict between the Clan Donald Lords and King James IV of Scotland saw them stripped of their lands & titles, the lands coming into the possession of the Campbells.