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County Antrim · Ulster

Ballycastle

Baile an Chaistil

'town of the castle'; Joyce notes the Antrim name is correct, 'for it was so called, not from a cashel, but from a castle'

👥 5,628 (census 2021) 🏔 County Antrim Source: Wikipedia ↗
The story

A seaside town on the north-east tip of Ireland, with Fair Head and Knocklayde above its bay and the ferry to Rathlin at its harbour. Its Ould Lammas Fair, once a lamb sale, draws upwards of sixty thousand people at the end of August. Marconi's employees made the first commercial wireless telegraph transmission from here to Rathlin.

County Antrim through the ages →
The history of Ballycastle

The town's story starts at Port Brittas, the old name for the bay, from where it has been suggested Fergus Mór mac Eirc sailed to found a colony in Argyll. From the late 14th century the area was at the heart of MacDonnell territory, a claim based on the marriage of John Mór MacDonald and Margery Byset in 1399, and in the 16th century Sorley Boy MacDonnell established the clan in the Glens and the Route. Settlements at Dunaneeny Castle, Bonamargy Friary (founded 1485) and the castle by the Diamond merged into the town, which took its name from that castle; it fell into ruin after Scottish and Cromwellian troops seized it.

Around 1786 Hugh Boyd got leave to build a harbour and pier and set up coal shafts, potteries and a glass factory, and the town flourished; Boyd's Church in the Diamond was completed in 1756. During the Troubles a loyalist car bomb outside the Catholic church injured 50 people in 1973, an IRA bomb at the Marine Hotel in 1979 fatally injured a guest, and an RUC officer was killed by a booby trap in 1991.

Drawn from the History section of the Wikipedia article on Ballycastle ↗, rewritten here and adding nothing it does not say; licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

Castles and monuments within 15 km

Straight-line distances from the town centre, from each site's documented coordinates.

Worth seeing nearby
  • Dunluce Castle · MacDonnell stronghold on a sea-stack; in 1639 the kitchen fell into the sea, cooks and all. The lost town beside it was only found in 2011.
  • Sruth na Maoile — the Sea of Moyle · The wild strait to Scotland where the swan-children of Lir endured their cruellest 300 years, frozen to the rocks in winter storms.
  • The Giant's Causeway · Built by Fionn to cross to Scotland and fight the giant Benandonner — who fled back and tore up the road when Fionn's wife showed him 'the baby' (Fionn in a bonnet).

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.

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