Charleston, Black Isle

Landscape and setting

Charleston forms part of the ribbon of settlement along the Black Isle shore beside North Kessock. The Beauly Firth, wooded Ord Hill and agricultural ground provide a setting in which ferry infrastructure, farms and estate buildings remain closely connected.

How Charleston, Black Isle developed

The long-running Kessock ferry linked the Black Isle with Inverness until the bridge opened in 1982. Estate improvement, farming and the growth of shore settlement added houses, an inn and formal architecture around a landscape already marked by medieval worship and a major prehistoric fort.

Architecture and archaeology

The launch group combines the Telford ferry pier, a verandah-fronted inn, Bellfield farmhouse, Old Allangrange and later estate buildings, Kilmuir church and burial ground, Drynie Mains and Coulmore. Ord Hill fort carries the story back into later prehistory.

Explore responsibly

Use public roads, signed woodland trails and lawful shore access. Houses, farms and estate buildings are private, the old pier is exposed to tides and weather, and church ruins and memorials are fragile. Check Forestry and Land Scotland guidance before visiting Ord Hill.

Context sources

Heritage records

Explore Charleston, Black Isle on the map

Every teal SA marker is a reviewed Scotland’s Architecture record. A small A, B, C or SM badge records its designation without turning it into a live HES marker. Optional map layers add separate official HES listed buildings and scheduled monuments, nearby Wikipedia articles, NLS historical mapping, walking notes and device location. Nearby SA markers are grouped at wider views. Skip the map and browse the A–Z record list.

Marker key: reviewed Scotland’s Architecture record small badge = designationHES, SM and W markers belong to the optional live layers
Map layers:SA records: 10HES listed: offScheduled monuments: offWikipedia: off

Use the + and − controls at the map’s upper-left to change scale. They work with both the modern and historical maps.

Showing 10 mapped records. Locations are approximate catalogue points.

Map information, accuracy and rights

Locations are approximate catalogue points, not property boundaries or route guidance. Showing your location is optional: the site uses it only in this page and does not save it. Nearby distances are straight-line estimates. Current-use notes do not establish opening, access, ownership or route safety. Modern map tiles are supplied by OpenStreetMap. The optional historical overlay is the Ordnance Survey six-inch first edition for Scotland, principally surveyed in the 1840s–1880s, supplied by the National Library of Scotland. Sheet dates and coverage vary, and the historical map must not be read as current geography.

Marker links open the exact coordinates in Google Maps satellite view; they do not automatically select a panorama and do not require a paid Street View integration. On desktop, drag Pegman onto a blue road. On mobile, turn on the Street View layer and tap a blue road. Other photo markers may be user-contributed. The optional listed-buildings layer appears from city and large-town scale (zoom 12), clusters nearby designations, and links to official HES records. Lettered markers show the authoritative HES listing categories A, B and C. The separate scheduled-monuments layer appears from regional scale (zoom 10), uses purple SM markers at approximate designation centres, and links to official HES records for the full statutory boundary. It is independent of the listed-building category filter. Purple SM markers already attached to Scotland’s Architecture records remain curated catalogue markers. The separate, opt-in Wikipedia layer shows geotagged English Wikipedia articles in the current close map view. W markers are supplied independently by Wikipedia, may cover subjects beyond architecture, and are not affected by HES filters. Turning it on sends the visible map centre and approximate radius to Wikimedia; Scotland’s Architecture does not save that request. Plan a heritage walk loads a Place-wide inventory independently of the current zoom, suggests a Category A-led order of principal stops, and divides longer itineraries into Google Maps legs. It uses no paid Google integration and does not reproduce Google route geometry. The site map deliberately shows numbered stops without a connecting line; Google supplies the live pedestrian streets, paths, distance and time. Optional Category B and C candidates are selected only by proximity to a principal landmark marker and are not assumed to lie on Google’s route. Printable notes retain complete active URLs. This is a discovery aid rather than a statutory property-boundary search. For additional historic-map comparison and wider archaeological layers, visit PastMap; check current designation status and full legal extent in the linked official HES record.

Historical map: Ordnance Survey six-inch first edition, Scotland, 1843–1882, National Library of Scotland, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Listed-building and scheduled-monument data contains Historic Environment Scotland and OS data © Historic Environment Scotland and Crown Copyright and database right 2026, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Wikipedia article titles, coordinates and links are supplied by Wikipedia contributors.

Coulmore

Bold bowed bays added in 1912 transform an early nineteenth-century house while John Rhind’s earlier wing remains legible beside it.

Drynie Mains

Red rubble, a polished portico and curving links make this farmhouse unusually formal within the improved Black Isle landscape.

Eilean Dubh Inn

A deep verandah with latticed timber spandrels gives this shore-side inn a distinctive public face near the former Kessock ferry.

Kilmuir Old Church Burial Ground

A coped boundary encloses three centuries of memorials around church ruins governed by a separate scheduled-monument designation.

Kilmuir Old Parish Church

Standing gables, pointed windows and a later mausoleum preserve the outline of a possibly fifteenth-century parish church.

Old Allangrange

A tall, precisely ordered 1760 house uses a raised entrance, heraldic stonework and shaped wallhead gable to command its estate setting.

Old Ferry Pier, Kessock

Telford’s massive ramped pier preserves the landing place of a ferry route that linked the Black Isle and Inverness for centuries.

Ord Hill Fort

A vast fort occupies Ord Hill’s uneven summit, overlooking the narrows where the Beauly and Moray firths meet.