History
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Early history[edit]
Section of dismantled railway south of Fort Augustus
Sir George Macdonald—in relation to the finding of a hoard of Roman coins in 1767 near the city's ancient Benedictine Abbey—wrote about the possibility that Fort Augustus was built on a Roman small fortification built under Diocletian's rule.
The Gaelic name for the modern village is Cille Chuimein ([ˈkʲiʎə ˈxumɛɲ]) and until the early 18th century the settlement was called Kiliwhimin. It was renamed Fort Augustus after the Jacobite rising of 1715. The accepted etymology is that the settlement was originally named after Saint Cummein of Iona who built a church there. Other suggestions are that it was originally called Ku Chuimein after one of two abbots of Iona of the Comyn clan, whose badge Lus mhic Chuimein refers to the cumin plant, or that it was called Cill a' Chuimein ("Comyn's Burialplace") after the last Comyn in Lochaber.
The Fort[edit]
In the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1715, General Wade built a fort (taking from 1729 until 1742) which was named after Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland. Wade had planned to build a town around the new barracks and call it Wadesburgh. The settlement grew, and eventually took the name of this fort. In December, 1745, during the Jacobite rising of 1745, a force of 600 men from the recently formed Independent Highland Companies, formed to support the British-Hanoverian government, laid siege and liberated the fort from the Jacobite Clan Fraser of Lovat after a small skirmish. From 22 February to 1 March 1746, the Jacobites laid siege to the fort and the government garrison surrendered.
A hoard of Roman coins was unearthed in 1767 near the ancient Benedictine abbey that are thought to be from Roman to Late Iron Age - 79 AD to 560 AD.
In 1867, the fort was sold to the Lovat family, and in 1876 they passed the site and land to the Benedictine order. The monks established Fort Augustus Abbey and later a school. The school operated until 1993 when it closed owing to changing educational patterns in Scotland causing a decline in enrollment. The monks employed Tony Harmsworth to devise a rescue package which saw the site converted into the largest private heritage centre in Scotland which operated between 1994 and 1998; however, the heritage centre failed to generate sufficient profit to maintain the buildings. In 1998 the monks abandoned the site, and it reverted to the Lovat family which in turn sold it to Terry Nutkins. He also owned The Lovat Hotel that stands on the site of the old Kilwhimen Barracks, one of four built in 1718. This site houses the west curtain wall of the old Fort, intact with gun embrasures. The Lovat was originally built as the local Station Hotel.
The old fortThe old fort
