Fort Augustus

Sir George Macdonald—in relation to the finding of a hoard of Roman coins in 1767 near the city's ancient Benedictine Abbey—wrote about the possibility that Fort Augustus was built on a Roman small fortification built under Diocletian's rule. The Gaelic name for the modern village is ' () and until the early 18th century the settlement was called Kiliwhimin. It was renamed Fort Augustus after the Jacobite rising of 1715. The accepted etymology is that the settlement was originally named after Saint Cummein of Iona who built a church there. Other suggestions are that it was originally called ' after one of two abbots of Iona of the Comyn clan, whose badge ' refers to the cumin plant, or that…

In the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1715, General Wade built a fort (taking from 1729 until 1742) which was named after Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland. Wade had planned to build a town around the new barracks and call it Wadesburgh. The settlement grew, and eventually took the name of this fort. In December, 1745, during the Jacobite rising of 1745, a force of 600 men from the recently formed Independent Highland Companies, formed to support the British-Hanoverian government, laid siege and liberated the fort from the Jacobite Clan Fraser of Lovat after a small skirmish. From 22 February to 1 March 1746, the Jacobites laid siege to the fort and the government garrison…