Clachan Strachur

The Smiddy may not have been built for General Campbell, the first owner of Strachur House, but there must have been plenty of extra work for a smith as the estate grew. Ornamental fencing gates, coaches and horses - all would have boosted the smith's business and perhaps even have funded the construction of the massive forge we see today. It may be no coincidence that the first reference to the Smiddy is from 1791, the time of the establishment of Strachur Park.
The Smiddy, the planned landscape you can walk through and the Clachan have grown up together, though smiths would have been in Strachur for centuries before the establishment of the Park.

Strachur House was mainly built in the 1780s for General John Campbell. He was also responsible, before 1790 for building an "excellent inn" (to use the words of the then minister). This is the house now known as The Old Inn. It stands opposite the church, the construction of which, at much the same time was probably also funded by him.
Strachur Park's woodland walks take you through a landscape that owes much to the General's designs, just as the countryside around Inveraray was influenced by the Duke of Argyll around the same period.
The estate buildings at the Square - designed as coach-house, stables and worker's housing - were said to "perhaps exceed the proportion they should bear to the house".
There is a disused walled garden with garden cottage, two decorative bridges, a gateway and an ornamental lochan as well as woods and parks.

Duns are stone-built defensive sites built by Iron Age Celts between about 500 BC and 500 AD. There are at least 450 hill forts and duns in Argyll from this time, mostly not far from sea and good farmland. Duns were usually smaller than hill forts. This one, on its knoll, shows only the outlines of the wall base, enclosing an area about 12m across.
An access track can be traced on the west. The site is naturally strong and would have given good shelter to the people of the surrounding farmland when unfriendly groups passed by. The day-to-day houses of these people have left no traces hereabouts.

From the Smiddy you will see the Church on a rise at the bottom of the road. Built in just over 200 years ago and extensively altered in 1902-3, it is well worth a visit. Inside the church you will find a written guide describing its most interesting features.
There are a number of tombstones similar to those found on Iona (13th - 15th Century) which were discovered in an older graveyard nearby and subsequently built into the outside wall of the church.
Just to the right of the church door is a tombstone commemorating the McPhunn's of Dripp. The story of a notorious member of that family -"Half-hung Archie" - is celebrated at the bar named in his honour at the Creggans Inn!

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