2007:19 - Ballyreagh Castle, Ballyreagh, Antrim

The Centre for Maritime Archaeology at the University of Ulster carried out -a research excavation at the site of Ballyreagh Castle on the Causeway coast in conjunction with Dr John Raven of Historic Scotland. The site is located on a projecting promontory, c. 1.5 miles west of the town of Portrush. Little remained of the site prior to excavation aside from what appeared to be the foundations of the front wall of the castle with a possible entrance feature. A possible ditch, over 1.5m deep in places, was also present but much eroded. This site was still standing in the early part of the 19th century but has been subject to large-scale erosion and is now largely destroyed.
Prior to the excavation it had been thought that a square tower fortification had existed at this site. It can now be shown through excavation and a re-examination of the documentary evidence that in fact this fortification consisted of a single wall erected across the headland. There was no indication of a tower or other structural element. The wall had three surviving gun loops in the 19th century, indicating a 16th- or early 17th-century date. The wall had a centrally placed gateway approached across a natural causeway with drainage features or ruts on either side. A deep rock-cut ditch was present outside, over 3m deep at its extremes. This had been extensively disturbed to the north-east and was used as a single event dump of early 20th-century material which was subsequently levelled in the 1950s during road construction activity. There was no evidence of internal activity aside from two probable post-holes on the inside of the wall, probably associated with construction activity, and a number of shallow pits which contained no cultural material or charcoal, aside from natural flint fragments, and what may be natural features. A small section of cobbling/ metalled surface survived in the north-west section of the trench. Later brick fragments were contained within this but were not set into the feature.