Dunluce Castle

by Nina Ficur Feenan

Title

Dunluce Castle

Artist

Nina Ficur Feenan

Medium

Photograph

Description

Dunluce Castle on the North Antrim coast of Ireland. Again this is one of Ireland's many castle's and one of many tourist attractions on the North coast.
The early Christians and the Vikings were drawn to this romantic place and an early Irish fort once stood here. For its crowning glory, however, the crag had to await the coming of those master-builders, the Normans. They had a habit of consolidating their victories by building castles, and they knew a good site when they saw one.

The battling MacDonnells ruled all this north-eastern corner of Ulster in the, late 16th century. Steeped in myth and legend and inhabited by giants, ghosts and banshees wailing through the sea mist, it has the most dramatic coastline in the British Isles, a veritable textbook illustrating the geological story of the earth. The ancient rocks stick out as brightly coloured cliffs along the edge of the plateau. There are red sandstones, white chalk, black basalt and blue clavs.

Richard de Burgh, Earl of Ulster, first built this castle at Dunluce. It often came under siege. In 1584 Sorley Boy MacDonnell captured it from the English when one of his men, employed in the castle, hauled his comrades up the cliff in a basket.

Sorley Boy came into some money in 1588 when the Spanish Armada treasure ship Girona was wrecked by storm off the Giant's Causeway. He used it to modernise the castle but he must have skimped on the kitchen, since in 1639 it fell into the sea and carried away the cooks and all their pots. Today the pretty blue flower of Dunluce' clusters round the castle's ruined shell and drifts of seapinks are the only sentinels.

Uploaded

November 22nd, 2012

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