2000:0003 - DUNINENY CASTLE, Ballycastle, Antrim

The cliff-top site is set on a blunt promontory c. 1km from both the centre and the harbour of Ballycastle. It was excavated in a joint project connected to conservation of standing masonry by Queen’s University of Belfast and the Environment and Heritage Service, DoE (NI). Before excavation, masonry walling was visible behind a deep ditch cutting off the promontory; the masonry contained a gate opening, marked by a draw-bar hole, and was assumed to be the gate tower of a castle attributable to the MacDonnells during the late medieval period. Excavation was concentrated in two areas: around the gate structure and across the ditch, and across the lines of two buildings whose wall foundations were visible through the turf of the interior.

The excavation of the interior buildings revealed evidence of two periods of occupation. Slight traces of timber construction (post-holes etc.) with a hearth containing molten lead were dug into the natural surface of clay; they were dated to the 16th century or later by the discovery of a musket ball in one of the post-holes. A layer of clay was laid over these remains, on which were constructed two buildings, with other features, stratigraphically contemporary. The buildings were both built of rather thin, mortared stone walls, probably not seriously load-bearing. One building was c. 6m square internally; the plan of the other was not determined, but it was more than 6m long and 3m wide. Inside and outside of both were the remains of wattle-and-daub walls that had burned down and that probably formed the main structures; both had two entrances. Between the two buildings was a drystone wall. West of this was a cobbled path leading past one of the entrances to the western building. East of it were two large, open-air hearths. A fragment of a clay pipe stem below the floor, and Staffordshire-type slipware sherds above it, dated the western building to the 17th century.

The entrance structure was found to be a curious one. There was a cobbled gate passage between two parts, asymmetrical in plan. The western half was shown to have only a front wall and one along the passage: there was neither a back wall nor an outer side one. The structure cannot therefore have been a tower, nor did it have rooms, although it was a gate. There was no trace of a curtain-wall behind the line of the ditch, either attached to the gate structure or in a cutting across the line of the ‘defences’. It was not unfinished, for the gate structure was trench-built and there was no sign of rear or side trenches, while the structure survived to a height of c. 4m; the cobbling of the gate passage also belies an unfinished scheme. A clay pipe stem in the context earlier than the gate structure and the bowl of a clay pipe at the base of the ditch show that the gate was built and the ditch was at least deepened during the 17th century. Behind the gate structure and behind the line of the ditch were large stones, possibly the remains of the bank of an earlier (prehistoric?—there was no souterrain ware from the site) promontory fort.

Very few artefacts were recovered from anywhere on the site. The fragmentary bones found were of poor cuts of meat, and the bones had been cut up for stew. The conclusion at present must be that there was an initial promontory fort, reoccupied by a small garrison during the later 16th-century conflicts between the MacDonnells, the O’Neills, the MacQuillans and the English in the area. This was followed by the building of a remarkable site in the early 17th century. This had a gate structure, which was a façade and which was unconnected to any curtain-wall; a carefully designed path led to timber-frame buildings, which appear to have been little used, and certainly not for lordly residence. This was, however, named as the centre of an estate and depicted as a castle on contemporary maps. The answer to the puzzle may lie in the structure of the lands of Randal MacDonnell, first earl of Antrim. Dunineny may have been constructed to serve purely as an administrative centre for the barony of Cary and the markets of Dunineny and Ballycastle, which he was developing.

Belfast BT7 1NN