Lesser Spotted Ireland: Apocalyptic beauty around an Antrim lighthouse

The clouds over Blackhead darken quickly. The wind picks up and rattles the timber-framed sash windows on the cliff-edge cottage. Sheets of rain threaten to shatter the glass, and the spray coming off the waves from Belfast Lough adds to the sense of isolated menace in the lighthouse keeper’s home.

It is brilliant.

There is a lot of weather in Ireland, much of it atrocious, and when it comes to giving out about it, we are rarely found wanting. But bad weather can take on a strange sort of charm when it’s as apocalyptic and as elemental as this, when it effectively traps you in a sprawling whitewashed cottage on the edge of a cliff with small children and nothing to keep you entertained other than charades, Scrabble and marathon games of hide-and-seek.

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Exploring Islandmagee peninsula

There is no television in the Blackhead lighthouse keeper’s cottage, one of the jewels in the Irish Landmark Trust’s sparkling crown. Phone coverage is patchy to non- existent. In the normal run of events, no TV or phone would go down like a rat soufflé in our house, but for one weekend only, this digital detox is an unexpected delight.

So is the cottage, a place for mysteries to unfold and adventures to begin, particularly if one of the travelling party is an eight-year-old immersed in the world of the Famous Five. There is even an underground tunnel leading directly to the lighthouse, whose job it still is to keep boats off the lava- and ice-hewn cliffs that run in dramatically jagged fashion along the lesser-travelled northeast coast of Antrim.

The rooms are not lavishly appointed; the rugs are thin, verging on threadbare. Still, this is a perfect retreat in an almost perfect location.

Good old books

The mismatched 100-year-old shelves scattered throughout the building are lined with books given to generations of lonesome lighthouse families by the Carnegie Trust, which ran a book donation programme for isolated lighthouse keepers. Their presence lends the place a fascinating timelessness. There's Mrs Beeton's Cold Sweets, Biggles Flies Again, and Popu lar Family Tales by "Mrs Henry Wood".

While that seems odd to 21st century readers, Mrs Wood – or Ellen Price, to give the woman her birth name – did not, by any stretch, play second fiddle to her husband. She was, in fact, an indomitable and wildly successful author in the 19th century. She was a "conservative and Christian" writer and magazine editor whose fame exceeded that of Dickens (well, in Australia) and who was once namechecked as "wonderful" by Leo Tolstoy in a letter to his brother.

Blackhead Lighthouse, which is a little over 100 years old, stands tall at the entrance to Islandmagee peninsula, which is nine miles long and two miles wide. Nowadays Islandmagee is frequently overlooked by tourists and travel writers. But there was a time, before low-cost air travel opened up the world, when it was wildly popular among Northern Ireland Protestants looking for a beach holiday.

The beach on the bay

The weather eases slightly so we do that eternally Irish summer holiday thing and “go for a drive”. We motor up the worryingly named Slaughterford Road and down the peninsula toward Brown’s Bay, where we find a small, deserted beach that would probably be lovely if the sun was shining. It’s not though, though, so we are driven indoors again.

Before Islandmagee became known for its beaches, it was famous for its “witches”. In 1710, a woman called Mary Dunbar arrived on the peninsula to keep the Hattridge family company after a relative passed away in mysterious circumstances.

After Dunbar arrived, there were reports of apparitions and volleys of stones being hurled at Mrs Hattridge from unseen hands. A spectral boy appeared in the house carrying a sword. Then he flew over a hedge. Dunbar began having fits and visions.

The men of the peninsula, including the local Presbyterian clergy, decided she was bewitched, obviously. After one of her fits had come and gone, Dunbar identified seven women who had come to her bedside and tormented her while she was in her bewitched state. The good men of Islandmagee realised the seven must be witches, and they were tried in nearby Carrickfergus in March 1711. A jury of their (male) peers found them guilty.

The women were jailed for 12 months but made multiple appearances in the public pillory, where they could best be mocked by locals.

It’s amazing what you learn when it’s lashing and you’re cut off from technology and surrounded by old books.

The storm lifts suddenly and slivers of blue sky on the distant horizon swallow up the black clouds. It is time for a walk. The once famous and soon to be famous again Gobbins Cliff Walk starts here, but it has yet to open. So we go in the opposite direction. We take a vertiginous path down the cliff face to a seaside path leading to the town of Whitehead, some 2km away. The storm has abated but the waves are still angry and the spray soaks the path.

Through the spray, the rugged Antrim coast looms large. Some 60 million years ago, three great lava flows were laid down here, cooling the basaltic plateau of north Antrim. If you look closely you can still see different layers of lava left in the cliff face. The rolling hills and deep valleys beyond the cliffs are gifts from the last Ice Age, when massive glaciers scoured a landscape that became the Glens of Antrim.

Whitehead looks gorgeous from a distance. The buildings on the seafront are painted pastel shades of yellow, green and pink, which lend it a picture-postcard prettiness.

Up close, Union flags billow in the wind outside the Orange Hall and the Glasgow Rangers fan club headquarters across the road. The Troubles have passed, but such symbols are not a comforting sight for people with southern accents (particularly when they come with the name Pope attached).

Whitehead and Islandmagee have, after all, been staunchly Protestant for a long time. “When agents of the Irish Ordnance Survey arrived at the small peninsula of Islandmagee in 1840, to collect information for the memoirs that were to accompany the survey, they took the view that one of ‘the only remarkable events of which there is either local record or tradition as to their having occurred in this parish’ was ‘the alleged massacre of the Roman Catholics by a part of the Protestant garrison of Carrickfergus on the 8th of January 1641”.

That's according to an article on the peninsula in History Ireland magazine. What's more: "The collectors noted that Islandmagee was a woodless but fertile place, less than eight miles long and two miles wide, and overwhelmingly populated by Presbyterians."

For many years the Scots-Irish Presbyterians who farmed this land and fished off its coast were almost entirely cut off from nearby Belfast and Larne. Then, at the turn of the last century, Whitehead became a rail hub with essential links to the nearby urban centres. The area was suddenly more accessible to the well-heeled folk in Belfast, and it grew into a bolthole from the bustle of Belfast and became one of the North’s most popular getaways.

It has also become a mecca for trainspotters and is the home of the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland. Steam engines and rolling stock from bygone eras are on display, while the Portrush Flyer – an old steam engine and carriages – travels to and from the town.

Once you’ve looked at the trains you can follow the trail. The Whitehead Heritage and Wellbeing Trail takes you around 10 “key points of interest in the town”. There is the path that leads back to Blackhead, a bandstand, a promenade, Co Antrim yacht club , a coastguard station and an aerodrome. It is all very genteel.

Nearby is Carrickfergus Castle, originally built in 1177 by John de Courcy. It was in use as a working garrison until 1928 and has, at various times, been besieged by the Scots, Irish, English and French. It is one of the best-preserved medieval structures in Northern Ireland and houses historical and other displays, as well as cannons from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

And after Carrickfergus, the well-trodden trail along the north Antrim coast begins again. As brief and unexpected sojourns go, Islandmagee is spectacular in a gentle kind of way, whatever the weather.

• Monday, July 13th: Rosita Boland visits the Martello tower in Sutton

LET’S EXPLORE

Blackhead Lighthouse is part of the Great Lighthouses of Ireland tourism trails which launched in May. It is half an hour from Belfast and is on the Causeway Coastal Route. The Irish Landmark Trust also manages three restored lightkeepers’ houses, which are available to rent right beside the lighthouse. The site is just 10 minutes from Gobbins Path, a new cliff walk, which is due to open in Autumn.

• Lesser Spotted Ireland is supported by Tourism Northern Ireland. More information about things to see and do in Northern Ireland on discovernorthernireland.com, Callsave 1850-230230