FORT AUGUSTUS

Before the arrival of the Hanoverian fort builders, Fort Augustus had been known by the Gaelic name of Cill Chuimein. There seem to be two schools of thought on the origin of the name; the first and more commonly held, is that the name means the cell or church of Cuimen. Cuimen Albus, St Cuimen the fair was the 7th Abbot of Iona between 657 and 699 AD and was a kinsman of St Columba. He reputedly travelled through the Great Glen and established a church or cell midway, the later settlement taking the name Cill Chuimein.

Cill is the old dative-locative of the Gaelic ceall, from the Latin cella cell or church and suggests a background of Christian religion, and more specifically to the existence of churches, churchyards or at the very least, hermit’s cells. Cill as a place-name element does not appear to be the dedication of a missionary speaking a foreign language but a commemoration by people to whom cill was the natural word for a church-like structure.¹ 
 

The second suggestion for the name Cill Chuimein is that the Cuimein referred to is a warrior of the Comyn or Cumming family. This warrior was fatally wounded high on the hills of south Loch Ness-side where the name Suidhe Chuimein, Cuimen’s Seat, or rest, marks the area of his death. Cill Chuimein is named for his tomb and burial place.
 

In the last years of the 16th century Timothy Pont, a graduate of St Andrews University, surveyed and mapped much of Scotland. It is not known if he was a Gaelic speaker but “K of Kilchuma” on the precise location of the current Kilchuimein Burial Ground suggests an attempt at writing the Gaelic name by a non Gaelic speaker.  By the time the military mapmakers and draughtsmen arrived, the name Cill Chuimein was recorded in numerous, anglicised spellings including Killiwhymen, Kiliwhiman and Kiliwhimun!
 

Pont’s map also shows a castle type building below the word ‘Kilchuma’. A Board of Ordnance plan for the first barracks, dated 1719, show an ‘old castle’ on a mound and with a moat in the exact location where the later fort was built. There are further similar Board of Ordnance maps, with close dates, extant. Supporting evidence for the existence of a castle pre-dating either the barracks or fort may be in the name of Borlum farm to the east; the farm providing the ‘board lands’ for the castle.
 

In the wake of the 1715 Jacobite uprising, the first barracks were built on the slope above Loch Ness, on the site now occupied by the Lovat Arms Hotel where one wall remains. However it soon became apparent that this was not the most sensible place to site a barracks; there was the potential for it to be cut off from their main supply route, by galley up Loch Ness. A mere ten years later the new fort was begun on the suggestion of General Wade, who, of course, was also busy building roads to facilitate troop movement across the Highlands. It was this fort that was named in 1729 after William Augustus, the second son of King George II. The same William Augustus who less than twenty years later was better known in these parts as
‘Butcher Cumberland’, the architect of the ethnic cleansing that took place in the aftermath of Culloden.
 

In the decade after Culloden, William Roy, a draughtsman for the Board of Ordnance undertook a major mapping survey of the Highlands. The map of Fort Augustus clearly shows the old barracks, the new fort and the settlement of Killiwhimen in a similar location as Pont’s earlier map; by the river Tarff in the area of Kilchuimein Burial Ground and spreading across to the Tarff, towards the loch.
 

By the beginning of the 20th century the settlement had moved from its early location by the Tarff to the banks of Loch Ness. There is probably a combination of reasons for this; as the horror of Culloden and its bloody aftermath receded the local Highlanders may have been perceived the
economic benefits of providing services for the remaining garrison. The building of the canal brought many workers to the area needing accommodation, shops to buy essential comforts and ale house to spend their wages. It probably made more sense to the local inhabitants to move nearer where the money was. In 1876 the fort was given to the Benedictine order by Lord Lovat who had bought the now redundant fort nine years previously for use as a shooting lodge.

For over 100 years the monks maintained a community and school in what was now an abbey.
In the 21st century the old Gaelic name of Cill Chuimein is remembered in the name of the doctor’s surgery, the sign at the Service Point and on the new road signs, albeit in a variety of spellings! The anglicised version using the letter K, which is not used in the Gaelic alphabet, appears in the school and burial ground. In the summer the village is alive with visitors, arriving by road or canal, in the winter the village is quiet with only the occasional visitor braving the Highland winter.
 

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¹Nicolaison, W.F.H., 2001.  Scottish Place Names. 2nd ed. Edinburgh: John Donald, p156-191