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Samuel's Cave

Glen Nevis, Opposite upper parking area alongside Water of Nevis, Invernessshire.

Cave lying just above Blar Bhan Farmstead but hard to find and best approached from above and to the side.

The entrance opens up to a chamber ranging from 2 - 5 m high. At the far end are two passages one of which goes [deeper?] underground.

Glen Nevis, Samuel's Cave. - Hard to find among the crags and trees opposite the end of the road below the Gorge. Fox was guided to it at Easter, 1948. Entrance the size of a door, 100 ft. above the torrent. Chamber about 40 ft. high, four passages, longest 50 yards. Great joints in Archaean rock. [YRC, 1949]

Alternate Names: Hoirle ( Uaigh - t'), Soirle (Uaigh - t'), Sorlie's Cave, Shomhairle (Uamh), Somerled's Cave

Notes: Uamh Shomhairle or Somerled's Cave is associated with countless tales and legends.

During the early 1120s, Gillebride and his Irish allies returned to Argyll and fought unsuccessfully to regain the lost territories in Ardnamurchan and Morvern. But eventually, those Irish who survived returned to Ulster empty handed, and the dispirited Gillebride and young Somerled retired to caves on Loch Linnhe in Morvern to rethink their future.

Somerled had fallen on some hard times and was hiding out with his father in a cave in the Morvern area. Donald MacInnes, before his passing, had found this area and historians agreed this could be the cave.

The tide turned suddenly when clan MacInnes on Morvern lost its chieftain and sought Somerled to serve in his place. And, serve he did, proving himself a brilliant strategist and valiant sea warrior. By the 1130s he had not only driven the Norse usurpers out of Argyll and captured their galleys, he'd sailed on Lorn, Knapdale, and Kintyre bringing more of coastal Scotland into his realm. Gillebride, called now "Gillebride of the Cave," had sired a son in whom he was well pleased.

It is said to have provided crucial refuge for Glen Nevis Camerons on at least two occasions; once after the massacre of the MacSorlie clan at Dun Dige by the Mackintoshes and again when Glen Nevis House was raided by Cumberland's troops in 1746.

Correspondence between Francis Cameron-Head and Seton Gordon about a possible connection between Somerled and a cave near Ardgour. REply by Cameron-Head at the turn of the year shows shared enthusiasm and keeness to examine the cave but no reference in subsequent books so connection probably not proven.