Clan Fletcher

History

The name is an occupation. A fletcher made arrows. Families of the name turn up in several parts of Scotland, and not all are related. The Argyll family are linked with Glenorchy, near the head of the glen at Achallader (also spelt Auchallader). A castle there is traditionally credited to the Fletchers in the later 15th century, though that is tradition rather than documented fact.

Their hold on Glenorchy did not last. One account has the Fletchers losing Achallader to the MacGregors in the late 15th or early 16th century, with the Campbells in possession by 1567. A popular story says Black Duncan Campbell had his men turn horses into a Fletcher chief's cornfield, that a quarrel and a killing followed, and that the castle then passed to him. The sources present this as legend with, at most, some basis in truth, and so do we. What is clear is that Sir Duncan Campbell, 7th of Glenorchy, built a tower there shortly before 1600.

Achallader later fell to ruin. It was attacked by Montrose's troops in 1646, and tradition says MacDonalds destroyed it in 1689. Even so, the Earl of Breadalbane met Jacobite chiefs there in 1691, in talks that fed into the events at Glencoe. A farm grew up beside the site by the mid-18th century and was tenanted by Fletchers. The ruin now stands within the farmyard.

Meanwhile a branch of the family settled at Dunans in Glendaruel, in Cowal. Historic Environment Scotland says the Fletchers acquired that part of the estate in 1745. Electric Scotland instead dates their arrival to 1764, and says they brought a door from Achallader, a place they had been asked to leave because of their MacGregor links. We cannot reconcile the two dates. Dunans Castle is a mid-19th-century Scots Baronial house, listed Category B, built for Angus Fletcher, 4th of Dunans. It was later damaged by fire and has since been under restoration.

The chiefly line is where the evidence runs thin. The Council of Scottish Clans & Associations lists no chief for Fletcher, and we found no current source naming one. We therefore treat the name as having no recognised chief, and we do not give a numbered line of chiefs.

Not every Fletcher belongs to the Argyll family. Electric Scotland records that the Fletchers of Innerpeffer in Angus purchased the Saltoun estate in East Lothian in 1643. It also names the lawyer and reformer Archibald Fletcher, who was born in Glenlyon and lived from 1746 to 1828, as a kinsman of the Dunans family. The tartans below are worn by Fletchers of every origin.