Gaelic Place Names in Glen Lyon

by Dr Jacob King

Last month’s article took us from Fortingall to MacGregor’s Leap; continuing our travels up the glen, we encounter Chesthill. This is a good example of how names can be deceptive. This has nothing to do with chests or hills, but comes instead from Gaelic Seastal, which was understood to be a variant of the word caisteal (locally castal) meaning ‘castle’. It may however have really been a Pictish name in origin, from something like Seas-dul ‘bench haugh’, denoting a flat bit of land resembling a bench by the river.

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