Overlooking Tarbert's once natural harbour and north up along Loch Fyne Tarbert Castle ruin hold's a fantastic position at the headland no doubt once used to watch over Loch Fyne.
The castle outline is featured on almost all of Tarbert's holiday brochures noted among Scotland's best-known strongholds in history.
It is possible that Agricola and his Roman legionaries crossed the isthmas in AD 82 when they sailed down the firth and "placed forces in that part of Britain which fronts Ireland". Tarbert's strategic importance would be recognised even at that early date.
Later, after years of incursions by the Scots from Ireland, Kintyre and a large part of the seaboard of Argyll were seized by Loarn, Angus and Fergus Mor, the founders of the Scottish kingdom of Dalriada.
Tarbert castle appears in Histpry's headlines in 1098 when Magnus Barfod (Bare Leg) King of Norway had his ship drawn across the neck of land between West Loch Tarbert and Loch Fyne in order to claim Kintyre along with all the other islands on the West of Scotland. The "Treaty of Tarbert" agreed between Magnus and the Scottish King Edgar granted to Norway all the Western Isles round which a ship could sail. In 1263 King Haco of Norway still held sway over the Western Isles including Kintyre and Islay until the Norwegian hold was finally broken at the Battle of Largs in October of that year. Even as late as the seventeenth century, Kintyre was still regarded as one of the South Isles or "Sudreys".
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