Dunluce Castle

I don’t know how many times I have visited Dunluce Castle, situated on the cliffs near Portballintrae in County Antrim. We first went there in 1995, when my children were little more than babies; my boy even then was fascinated by history and castles, so I guess we visited a couple of times on that first trip. We have returned to County Antrim almost every year since, and visited the castle at least once on each visit. On one occasion my son had wandered off and met up with a couple of American ladies who were wondering about the history of the old place. Nothing daunted my son began to tell them about Dunluce, and then conducted them on a tour. He was amazed when they gave him some money at the end, he tried to refuse because he had loved telling the story of Dunluce, but they insisted and he hurried back to us delighted with the unexpected pocket-money.

The castle is built on rocks jutting out into the sea, the basalt outcrop making an ideally defensive place for a castle with a bridge from the mainland to the fortification. I’m not sure when a fortification was first built on this site, certainly by the thirteenth century there was some sort of castle there. In 1565 Sorley Boy McDonnell captured the castle from the McQuillan family and his son Randal transformed the castle by building a beautiful and elegant manor house inside the castle walls.

In 1588 there was a ferocious storm off the northern Irish coast, raging seas and roaring winds drove a Spanish galleas, a type of galley of Turkish design  onto the rocks at Lacada Point just near Dunluce. There had been more than 1,300 men on board when the tragedy happened, as part of the Armada the Girona was heading for safety in Scotland when the catastrophe happened. Only nine men are known to have survived, only 250 bodies were found…

A dramatic event in 1639 literally shook the castle, as during a violent and terrible storm, the kitchen, along with servants and seven cooks, tumbled into the sea. In the ruined castle you can stand by a fence and look down at the tumbled stones of the kitchen and imagine how horrific it must have been, and how very frightening for those in the castle at the time. The battles and wars of the seventeenth century eventually saw the castle being abandoned in the 1690’s.

It is an amazing place even now when it is just a ruin; if ever you have the opportunity to visit, do so, and you won’t be disappointed! As well as the ruins (try and find the scratched outline of an old boat near the entrance) and the remains of the kitchen building at the bottom of the cliffs, there are spectacular views east and west, and caves beneath the castle which have more than a few legends and stories attached to them!