These papers form the main archive of the Campbells of Craignish, as preserved by the late Robert R Campbell of the Board of Education, the head of a senior cadet branch of the family. They consist almost entirely of formal estate records, financial papers, rentals, and accounts, and give in general a good view of the running of a highland estate in the late 17th and 18th centuries. Particulalry interesting in this context are the account books of Donald Campbell of Barrichbean.

The Sunderland papers (Acc.6223/12-14) which came to the Craignish family though the marriage of James Campbell of Craignish to Jean Vyse Campbell, heiress of Sunderland, mostly concern the sequestration of the estate in 1780, and give many detials concerning the system of landholding in Islay in the 18th century.

A small selection of the Craignish papers was published by Herbert Campbell in the Miscellany of the Scottish History Society, vol. 4, pp.296-9.