Old Dunoon

This corner of Dunoon lies close to the site of the 12th century castle and is what I think of as the original town. The pleasant looking building is now The Braes restaurant; it used to look much more down-at-heel and was a pub. Beside it is the High Kirk, the present building of which probably stands on the site of a much earlier church which until 1688 was the Cathedral Church of both the Roman Catholic and Episcopalian Bishops of Argyll. Towards the end of the 18th century the building became dilapidated and was demolished, the stone being used to build Gillespie Graham's Late Decorated Gothic Revival church of 1816.

We passed here as it was growing dark today - a phone call kept me in longer than intended, so that it looks as if we spend much time in Stygian gloom. Today was in fact one of unrelieved gloom as the slow thaw ground on. But there's a change coming ...