A History of Dunluce

1 (Reconstruction of Dunluce, as it may have looked circa 1620) A History of Dunluce by Hon, Hector McDonnell Castle Kenbane Councillor, Council of Finlaggan INTRODUCTION Dunluce castle is one of the most dramatic and romantic ruins in Ireland, with cliffs isolating the crag on which it stands from the mainland on all sides. It must therefore have been an ideal site for a defensive position from the earliest times, but as its entire top surface was intensively cleared, flattened and built over during the 16th and 17th centuries that the only surviving object from earlier times is a souterrain, a subterranean tunnel used for hiding both goods and people at many Irish sites during the 9th and 10th centuries. After the Normans arrived circa 1200 the land around Dunluce was developed as one of a string of manors which they established along the north Antrim coast, and by the early 16th century a family called MacQuillan held Dunluce as their chief fortress. They controlled a large part of north county Antrim until in the 1550s they were ousted by a Scottish clan, the MacDonnells, who had already established their control over the Glens of Antrim some time before. It was under the MacDonnells, led by their wonderfully named leader, Sorley Boy MacDonnell, (Sorley the Fair Haired) that Dunluce achieved prominence, and became an important centre of resistance to English expansion into Ulster. The MacDonnells were 2 particularly significant in this struggle because they brought in large numbers of Highland fighting men for any Irish chieftains who needed them, and Dunluce was one of the strongest fortresses held by a native family anywhere in Ireland. It was besieged several times, both by the English and the O’Neills, who were equally jealous of the MacDonnells’ power. Later still, in 1589, the survivors of an Armada wreck, the Girona, were given shelter here, and guns from it were later brought to the castle and mounted there for its defence. The two round towers probably date from the MacQuillans’ time, while the gatehouse, ‘Buttery’ and loggia were probably built in the late 1580s, when Sorley Boy came to terms with the English. All the other buildings date from the early seventeenth century when Sorley Boy’s son and grandson, both called Randal, were in charge. They tried to turn the castle into an appropriate house for a noble family with a large estate, and therefore built ranges of domestic buildings on the mainland and inside the castle itself. A little town was also developed just outside its walls. The display of wealth and grandeur increased after the second earl of Antrim married one of the richest women in England, the widowed Duchess of Buckingham, in 1635, and brought her to Dunluce in 1638 with many of their London fineries and furniture. However the grand days of Dunluce did not last long. The MacDonnells were Catholics, and were involved both in the Irish rebellion of 1641 and the subsequent period of civil war in the 1640s. As a result they had to leave Dunluce, its village was burnt and in the 1650s the lands around Dunluce were divided amongst various Cromwellian settlers. They then stripped and dismantled the castle so that when second earl was given his lands back in the 1660s by Charles II, it was almost as ruinous as it is today. THE PLACE NAME The place name ‘Dunluce’ is something of a puzzle. ‘Dun’, the first element of the name, comes from the Irish word Dún, which means a fort, but the second half of the name appears in many guises, with older Irish language texts giving the name either as Dún Lios or Dún Libhsi. Lios is a word for a fort or court, which would make the name an unnecessary reduplication, while the possible meaning of Libhsi is unclear. It has been suggested that it might be an old proper name, but if so, then it seems to be that of an otherwise unrecorded figure. The nearest match to it is an obscure female Irish saint called Lumsech who had no known associations with north Antrim. A 1307 survey of the local parishes calls Dunluce ‘Dunkelisp’, a text of 1609 refers to its church as ‘de Sancto Cuthberto Dunlups,’ another of 1615, calls Dunluce Dunlippis, and a fourth, of 1645, has ‘Dunliffsia’. These do all lean towards ‘Dún Libhsi’, whose ‘bh’ would often have been pronounced like a ‘v’, but this gets us no nearer to knowing what it means. Is it perhaps one of the handful of proper names of the region which seem to be survivals from a pre- Celtic language? And is it merely a coincidence that ‘luce’ also appears in the place name ‘Glenluce’ in Southwestern Scotland? We just do not know.1 1 Reeves, Ecclesiastical Antiquities, pp. 74-7, & 283; Rev. J. O’Laverty, The Diocese of Down and Connor, Du_ blin 1887, vol. IV pp. 273-286 3 EARLY DUNLUCE Viking times and Norman Conquests As already said, Dunluce’s souterrain is the only certain remnant we have of early medieval occupation. Souterrains are quite common, on Irish sites, during the 9th or 10th centuries, and indeed a number of artifacts from this period were found in the Dunluce example. They were constructed as low passages, opening into roomier storage areas, and usually had several twists and turns in them, mainly to confuse intruders. The one at Dunluce is relatively simple, possibly because it was hollowed out of rock, rather than by the usual method of constructing them in a trench with dry stone walls and a roof of slabs in the earth. The building of souterrains was a response to the constant warfare of the early medieval period. They are found elsewhere, both in other parts of the British Isles and also in France, but there are numerous examples in Ireland, and particularly in North Ulster. It was said that the standard price demanded by the professionals who built them was either five cows or three women! Important possessions and people could be hidden in them if a site were attacked; having covered over the souterrains’ entrances the able- bodied could set fire to their houses and make their escape, hoping that the souterrains would not be found. They therefore had ventilation shafts, and at Dunluce there is one going through to the cliff face. The Norman conquest of substantial areas of eastern Ulster took place in the late 12th century, and was largely the work of one man, John de Courcy. The Norman historian, Giraldus Cambrensis, called him “fair-haired and tall, with bony limbs and sinewy limbs. His frame was lanky and he had a very strong physique, immense bodily strength and an extraordinarily strong temperament.” With only twenty-two knights, albeit very well equipped, and three hundred footmen de Courcy had to fight hard to establish himself against a determined native Irish opposition. De Courcy’s conquest was mainly in county Down, and southern county Antrim, but also extended along the north Antrim coastline. Henry II recognised de Courcy’s conquests as the Earldom of Ulster, and he built two major stone castles from which to administer his lands, Carrickfergus and Dundrum, while his north Antrim territories were controlled from a large motte-and-bailey fort near Coleraine called Mount Sandel. Dunluce, at this stage, would probably have consisted of little more than the native Irish promontory stronghold, plus whatever rural communities sheltered in its vicinity. There were in fact many of these promontory strongholds on the Antrim coast, relying for their defence on coastal cliffs, with ditches and ramparts protecting the inland side, and they mainly acted as retreats of last resort for the local population.2 2 F.X.Martin, John Lord of Ireland in A New History of Ireland, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1987, vol. II pp 132-6; Giraldus Cambrensis, The Conquest of Ireland, ed. A. Scott & F. X. Martin, Dublin 1978 4 Dunluce appears in the first surviving set of accounts of the Norman earldom, written in 1259, as one of its north Antrim manors, alongside Coleraine, Portrush, “Portkaman” and “Stanton” (both near Bushmills), and Dunseverick. These manors, with their lands, made a fairly continuous belt of Norman settlements along the coast, and at least three of them, Dunluce, Dunseverick and Portrush were pre-existing promontory forts. Dunluce was initially the most profitable of them, bringing in over thirteen pounds a year in rents, as compared to eleven from Coleraine, and ten from Portrush (the other manors produced less). However, this must be put in perspective, for the earldom’s major sources of revenue were the mills (bringing in more than eighty-four pounds a year) and the fisheries on the Bann, worth over twenty pounds a year in rents. ________________________________________________________________________ Dunseverick The Normans established their manorial system throughout the areas of Ireland that they conquered, as the focal points of agricultural communities, and initially these local innovations created an upsurge of rural prosperity. We do not know if the Normans ever made any use of the actual promontory fort, as the new manor of Dunluce, with its village and surrounding fields, must have been set up at a little distance inland. The ruined parish church, which is sited just to the south of the main road, near a little river, probably indicates where this settlement was. It is dedicated to the north English Saint Cuthbert, and “Dunkelisp” is listed in a valuation of the local diocese’s parishes in 1307 indicating it was then in use. However, it must have suffered badly over the following centuries, for the ecclesiastical visitation of 1622 described the church of Dunluce as ruinous.

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