House of Tongue

The House of Tongue is primarily a 17th century laird’s house lying within private grounds which are open very occasionally under the Scotlands Gardens scheme. It replaced an earlier tower which may have been on the same site.

The Mackay family rose to dominance in Strathnaver in the 15th century, and whilst their early history (like all the Highland clans!) is a mixture of myth and oral history, they almost certainly rose to power under the aegis of the de Moravia/Murray/Sutherland family who conquered the area, and perhaps due to support of the Stewart dynasty against the Macdonalds – but by the 16th century the family were uneasy neighbours, often feuding. Tongue appears in Mackay records from the 15th century, and a house (probably the tower shown on Pont’s map) was maintained here from the late 16th. Their house was destroyed during the mid 17th century by the order of General Monk and rebuilt by the 1680s. The Mackay lairds fought against the Jacobites, but eventually sold the estate to the Earl of Sutherland in 1829.

HES Canmore database entry