Clan MacNaughton

History

The Macnaughtons, also spelled Macnaghten and Macnachtan, are said to descend from the Pictish rulers of Moray. That is tradition rather than record. The Register's notes on the clan tartan repeat the idea, pointing to a likeness with MacDuff, but nobody can prove it. The name itself is generally taken to come from Nechtan, a Pictish personal name.

Documented history begins in the thirteenth century. Clan accounts name three brothers, Gilchrist, Athe and Gilbert. Gilchrist is said to have had a charter from Alexander III making him keeper of a castle on Fraoch Eilean, the Heather Isle, in Loch Awe, which guarded the Pass of Brander. The island gave the clan its war cry. The clan's country ran across Loch Awe, Glen Aray, Glen Shira and Loch Fyne, bringing them alongside the rising power of the Campbells.

The chiefs later made their seat at Dunderave, on the shore of Loch Fyne near Inveraray. After Gilbert died without heirs, his brother Alexander began rebuilding the castle. His son Iain completed it in the 1590s, although sources differ between 1596 and 1598. Dunderave is a tall L-plan tower house and remains the clan's best-known building.

The family could not keep it. Debts and Campbell pressure eroded the estate, and John Macnachtan, the last chief to live at Dunderave, left to work as a customs officer at Anstruther in Fife. He is said to have died there without heirs, in 1773. One popular story ties the loss of the castle to an unhappy marriage, which we treat as tradition. Sir Robert Lorimer later restored Dunderave for the Noble family of Ardkinglas, in work dated 1911 to 1912.

The chiefly line later passed to an Irish branch of the family, which held Dundarave House near Bushmills, in County Antrim. Members of that branch were made baronets in 1836. Clan accounts record an Edinburgh meeting in 1878 which resolved that Sir Francis Macnaghten of Dunderawe, a lineal descendant of the old line, should be held chief. Dates given elsewhere for the change differ, so we leave it at that. Dundarave House has since been sold, and the clan society's accounts place the present chief in England.

Today the clan is looked after by the Clan Macnachtan Association Worldwide, and COSCA lists it among Scotland's clans. The chief is styled Macnaghten of Macnaghten, and the title is held by a baronet. A strong surname tradition runs alongside it, and many of the names the clan counts as septs, such as MacNair, MacKnight and Weir, are found well beyond Argyll.