Dunluce Castle

Dunluce Castle seems to grow straight out of the rock. It stands on a basalt headland on the north coast of County Antrim, with sheer drops to the sea on several sides, joined to the mainland only by a bridge over a deep cleft. From the clifftop road the ruin reads as a single jagged profile — gables, chimneys and window frames against the Atlantic — and it has become one of the defining images of the Causeway Coast. Beneath the headland the sea has cut a cave that runs right under the castle, known as the Mermaid's Cave.

The first castle was built in the thirteenth century by Richard de Burgh, the Earl of Ulster. By the early 1500s it was held by the McQuillans, and in 1584 it was seized by Sorley Boy MacDonnell, whose clan made it their chief seat in Antrim and remodelled it in a Scottish manner. One fine detail ties it to wider history: when the Girona, a galleass of the Spanish Armada, was wrecked on the rocks nearby, cannons from the ship were mounted in the castle's gatehouse. Over the following decades the castle was softened into a residence, and the tall gables and chimneys that dominate the ruin today speak of household life as much as of defence.

Local tradition tells that one stormy night in 1639 the kitchen collapsed into the sea during a banquet, taking the servants with it; the story is repeated everywhere, but the kitchens can still be identified among the ruins, so it is best taken as legend. The castle was abandoned after the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Excavations from 2011 on the land beside it uncovered the remains of a planned town laid out around 1608, with streets on a grid and houses that were advanced for their time, some with indoor toilets; most of it is still unexcavated. The castle is cared for by Northern Ireland's Department for Communities, and it served as Pyke, seat of House Greyjoy, in Game of Thrones.

Getting there

The castle lies on the A2 coast road, about 4 km from Portrush and about 6 km from Bushmills; the nearest larger town is Coleraine, about 10 km away. The closest airport by straight line, Islay (ILY), is across the sea in Scotland; the practical airports are City of Derry Airport (LDY) and Belfast International (BFS). Trains from Belfast run to Coleraine; from Portrush local buses along the coast road stop at the castle, and in summer the Causeway Rambler (402) links Coleraine, Portrush, Dunluce, Bushmills and the Giant's Causeway.