Breachacha Castle, Coll

Breachacha Castle, located on the island of Coll, dates back to the mid-15th century and has undergone later modifications. It was once in ruins but was restored in the late 1960s by Ian Lindsay and Richard Avery. The building is a four-storey tower house with a rectangular plan, featuring a garret and a parapet wall. A tall curtain wall encloses a courtyard to the south and east. To the south of the courtyard is a three-storey dwelling house with a rectangular plan and crowstep gables, which incorporates the southern side of the wall and has a tall round tower attached to the southeast corner. There is also a low battery wall and former kitchens located at the northwest corner.

The castle retains original small slit window openings, along with a small timber-boarded entrance porch and a kitchen block that opens into the courtyard. It is constructed from Lewiscian Gneiss stone, with greenish-yellow Mull freestone dressings around the larger window openings, which are now harled. The windows feature fixed timber casements, and the doors are boarded timber. The roof is covered with graded grey slates, and the tower house has cement skews. Plain rendered stacks with plain clay cans are present, along with rooflights and plastic dome rooflights in the linking kitchen wing. The former kitchens have corrugated roofing and cement capping. An aluminium stair and railings connect the tower house to the dwelling house in the courtyard.

Inside, the original simple floor plan of the tower is evident, with single rooms on each floor and guardrobes still visible. Large projecting rough stone corbels support the new floors. There are two aumbry recesses in an unlit, unconverted basement room, and a rough stone circular stair tower is located in the southeast corner. The interior decorative scheme and finishes are from the 1960s reconstruction.