Qualla: McCaig's Tower

McCaig's Tower: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit BriYYZ from Toronto, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0. John Stuart McCaig wanted a Colosseum. Not a small one, not a tasteful Roman echo - the actual Colosseum, rebuilt in granite on a hill above the port town of Oban, with statues of himself and his family staring out across the Sound of Mull. He got the outer ring. Then in June 1902 he died of cardiac arrest at the age of 78, his heirs went straight to court, and the will that would have funded the inside was overturned. The shell is still up there, ninety-four lancet arches catching the sea wind, waiting for the museum and the gallery and the tower that never came.

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Image: BriYYZ from Toronto, Canada | CC BY-SA 2.0

McCaig's Tower: The Banker With Roman Dreams

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Camjor, CC BY-SA 4.0. McCaig made his money quietly, as bankers tend to. He worked for the North of Scotland Bank, accumulated wealth, and developed an obsession with classical architecture that most of his neighbours probably regarded as harmless eccentricity. By the time he was in his seventies he h...

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Image: Camjor | CC BY-SA 4.0

McCaig's Tower: Ninety-Four Arches

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ulrich McCowan MacDonald, CC BY-SA 2.0. What got built is what survives: a ring of Bonawe granite roughly two hundred metres in circumference, with two tiers of lancet arches stacked on top of each other - forty-four below, fifty above. The granite came across Airds Bay from Loch Etive, the same quarries that supplied ...

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Image: Ulrich McCowan MacDonald | CC BY-SA 2.0

McCaig's Tower: What Sits Inside the Shell

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bewahrerderwerte, CC BY-SA 4.0. The empty ring is now a public garden. You reach it by climbing the 144 steps known as Jacob's Ladder, or by squeezing into the rather small car park. From the lawn inside, the arches frame views west across the water to Kerrera, Lismore, and Mull - which is, perhaps unintentiona...

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Image: Bewahrerderwerte | CC BY-SA 4.0

McCaig's Tower: Folly Or Monument

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The Carlisle Kid, CC BY-SA 2.0. Locals split the naming. Some call it McCaig's Tower. Plenty call it McCaig's Folly. Both are accurate, in the way that the same artefact can be a tribute to ambition and a warning about it at the same time. The thing about a folly is that it tends to outlast the financier who bu...

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Image: The Carlisle Kid | CC BY-SA 2.0