The historic Fort George in Ardersier

The large 18th-century fortress in the Highland council area of Scotland. Work began in 1748, with Colonel Skinner in charge, and the Adam brothers, John, Robert and later James, acting as contractors, overseeing soldiers who provided labour and defended the site against attack.

**The barracks are still in use as a military establishment, but much of the site is open to the public / Image: memolands.com**

20180815_212828 — The entrance is reached via a ravelin, a free-standing defensive structure incorporating a guardhouse and completely exposed to fire from the main fort, then by a raised wooden walkway, complete with drawbridge, bridging across a wide ditch set between heavily defended bastions. The ditch forms a wide killing ground openly exposed to gunfire from these walls / Image: memolands.com

With its own harbour below the walls, the fort could be supplied by sea in the event of a siege. The main walls are stone-faced, in plan faceted and angled with projecting bastions and redoubts so that every wall face is covered by fire from guns sited on top of other walls.

Fort George was built to control the Scottish Highlands in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising (was the attempt by James Francis Edward Stuart to regain the thrones of England, Ireland and Scotland for the exiled House of Stuart), replacing a Fort George in Inverness. The current fortress has never been attacked and has remained in continuous use as a garrison.