The barracks were constructed between 1717 and 1723 as part of a campaign by the British government to subdue the local population which had risen up in arms in the Jacobite Rising of 1715, and which would do so again in 1745.

The barracks were designed by Andrews Jelfe and John Lambertus Romer of the Board of Ordnance,[1] or possibly their predecessor James Smith, and built by Sir Patrick Strachan.

The barracks (and indeed the broch) are now in ruins, a state which they appear to have entered shortly after the withdrawal of troops in 1797.

[5] Major William Caulfeild engineered the military road from Fort Augustus to Bernera Barracks in 1755 but Thomas Telford’s commissioners remade it in the 1820s.

It initially headed west through Inchnacardoch Forest climbing to a height of over 1,280 feet (390 m) before dropping into Glen Moriston.