On a dramatic promontory of the north Antrim coast, very close to the Giant's Causeway, the remains of Dunseverick Castle stand facing the Atlantic. A Gaelic-Scottish stronghold held by the O'Cahans then the MacDonnells, this castle came through the Tudor period before being ruined in the wars that prolonged the Plantation.
A Gaelic-Scottish stronghold
Dunseverick is a promontory castle, occupying a natural defensive site on the ocean-battered cliffs. It was held by the Gaelic clan of the O'Cahans, then passed to the MacDonnells from 1560 — thus falling within the sphere of influence of this powerful Scottish clan of the Glens of Antrim. Like neighbouring Dunluce and Kinbane, Dunseverick was part of the network of Gaelic-Scottish strongholds of the north coast, that region where Scotland and Ireland touched and where the MacDonnells reigned on the margins of the Tudor Crown.
Ruined by the wars
Dunseverick came through the Tudor period as a Gaelic stronghold, but was caught up by the wars that followed the Plantation. In 1642, during the Irish Confederate Wars — a direct prolongation of the tensions of the colonisation —, the troops of the Scottish general Robert Munro (at the head of a Covenanter army) devastated Dunseverick. Then, in the 1650s, the Cromwellians 'slighted' it (deliberately dismantled it), and it was never refortified. Only the remains of the gatelodge survive today, standing on their spectacular promontory. Dunseverick illustrates the fate of the Gaelic strongholds caught in the spiral of the seventeenth-century conflicts. To see: the remains of the gatelodge, the dramatic promontory over the Atlantic, the nearness of the Giant's Causeway.
Did you know?
Dunseverick is one of the oldest named places in Ireland: it appears in the Gaelic annals and legends well before the Tudor era, as the end of one of the great roads of ancient Ireland. Situated a few hundred metres from the Giant's Causeway — that geological marvel of basalt columns — the castle thus unites Irish mythology, spectacular geology and the history of the clans, in a single promontory facing the ocean.
Notes
Dunseverick Castle lies in the townland of Feigh, near the Giant's Causeway, County Antrim; remains (National Trust) freely accessible. Hours to check.
Quiz
- Which clans held Dunseverick?
- The O'Cahans then the MacDonnells
- The Tudors
- The Maguires
- Who devastated the castle in 1642?
- The troops of Robert Munro
- The Spanish Armada
- The Vikings
- What lies near Dunseverick?
- The Giant's Causeway
- Hadrian's Wall
- Stonehenge