Tucked into the Antrim glens, the restored mock-Tudor barbican of Glenarm Castle is no ordinary self-catering weekend getaway, writes Hugh Linehan.
We are accustomed, when looking at maps, to thinking of land as contiguous, and water as a barrier. Hence the notion of Ireland as a single, distinct unit, separated from its near neighbours by the cold, grey waves of the Irish Sea.
Driving north from Belfast, past the grim, forbidding port of Larne, one comes on to the spectacular coast road towards the Glens of Antrim, and such simplistic notions are quickly cast aside. Scotland is only 20 miles away. Even on an overcast day in early spring, the Mull of Kintyre is clearly visible, rising high above the water. But between here and Ballycastle, the coastal villages of Glenarm, Carnlough, Waterfoot, Cushendall and Cushendun, and their respective glens running inland to the wilds of the moors behind, are separated by the splendid headlands which define this coastline - Blackcave Head, Ballygally Head, Park Head and Garron Point.
Not until the 1830s, when William Bald and Charles Lanyon engineered the present coast road, was it brought round the foot of these intervening headlands. Until this happened the glens, surrounded as they are by the upland flow-bogs of the Antrim Plateau, were not only cut off from each other, but also isolated from the outside world. Thus, instead of looking south and to the rest of Ireland, the Glens of Antrim looked north and to Cantire for whatever necessaries they were unable to produce themselves. The natural ethnic links with Scotland were further strengthened by the rugged facts of local geography.
We soon arrive in Glenarm, the southernmost of the glens, and one of the most intimate. The village of Glenarm - narrow streets of white-limed houses winding up the side of the narrow, heavily wooded valley - is on one bank of the river. On the other stand the forbidding walls of Glenarm Castle, seat of the Earls of Antrim. Set into those walls, looming over the huddled houses of the village, is our destination, the castle's barbican, or gateway. A crenellated mock-Tudor fantasy with battlements, look-out tower and flagpole, this isn't your ordinary old self-catering weekend pad. As we drive across the bridge, the splendidly Hammer Horror-ish gates swing silently open to admit us.
A SPIRAL STAIRCASE leads up two storeys to a comfortably furnished, well-equipped kitchen/livingroom. On the floor below are our sleeping quarters, equipped with a suitably seigneurial four-poster bed.
The barbican has been restored by the Irish Landmark Trust, which takes on endangered or neglected properties of historical and architectural value. The trust aims to promote a wider public appreciation of built Irish heritage by giving the restored properties a useful and viable function as self-catering holiday accommodation, thus securing their long-term future.
There has been a castle at Glenarm since the days of John Bisset, who was expelled from Scotland in 1242 for murdering a rival during a tournament. Bisset promised to do penance by making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but took a much shorter trip instead, acquiring lands between Lame and Ballycastle from Hugh de Lacy, the Earl of Ulster. Bisset made Glenarm his capital, and by 1260 there was a castle with a kitchen garden, an orchard and a mill, as well as woods and meadows. As a result, Glenarm claims to be the oldest town in Ulster.The castle stood at the centre of the present village, and the old courthouse incorporates some of its walls.
In 1495 Con O'Donnell of Tirconnell marched on MacEoin of the Glens (as the Bisset chieftain was called), "for he had been told that MacEoin had the finest wife, steed and hound in his neighbourhood. O'Donnell had sent messengers for the steed but was refused it . . . so he made no delay, but surmounting the difficulties of every passage he arrived at night at MacEoin's house without giving any warning of his designs. He captured MacEoin and made himself master of his wife, his steed and his hound".
Around 1500, a Franciscan friary was founded on the site where the Church of Ireland now stands. Shane O'Neill's body, minus his head, which was displayed on a spike at Dublin Castle, is said to have been laid to rest here in 1567 after he was killed at Cushendun by the MacDonnells.
Clearly, life in the glens in the 15th and 16th centuries was not for the fainthearted. The last MacEoin Bisset was killed fighting the O'Donnells in 1522. Their lands were seized by their former partners, the MacDonnells, who occupied the Bisset castle until they built the new one in 1636. This is the same square building we see today, although no architectural details remain, apart from a coat of arms now incorporated into the walls of the barbican.
In 1642 an invading Scots army burned the castle, and for the next 110 years the MacDonnells, now Earls of Antrim, lived elsewhere, leaving Glenarm a ruin. A visitor in 1740 said: "The walls seem to be entire, and for the most part sound. The out offices of the castle are fitted up to accommodate the Earl during the hunting season." In 1750, the fifth earl moved back to Glenarm.
Christopher Myers, an English engineer, was employed to transform the ruin into a Palladian mansion. Curved colonnades swept forwards on either side, ending in pavilions with pyramidal roofs. The seaward facing facade was topped by a turreted and crenellated pediment, giving it a modestly "Gothick" air. Houses, smithies and mills around the castle were demolished, and the village confined to the other side of the river.
This Palladian confection sounds quite agreeable, but it's not what we see from our window as dusk falls. In the 1820s, Anne Katherine MacDonnell, Countess of Antrim, wanted a fashionably romantic seat, and chose prominent Irish architect William Morrison, whose work can also be seen at Kilruderry in Co Wicklow, Ballyfin in Co Laois and the courthouses in Carlow and Tralee, to "Tudorbethanise" the castle with towers, crenellations and the barbican gate in which we now find ourselves.
AS FOR THE barbican, you could hardly find a more romantic setting than this quirky expression of early 19th-century architectural taste. Built of coursed rubble basalt with red ashlar sandstone dressings, the Grade A-listed building consists of a very high three-storey main block with a tall stair turret to the west and a lower, two-storey wing to the east. The turret staircase ultimately leads to the flat roof of the main block, with striking views of the village, the castle grounds and the surrounding countryside. The floor area of the four main rooms amounts to a mere 625sq ft, but the stone-slabbed floors, plastered walls and vaulted ceilings allow guests to indulge their own fantasies of medieval chivalry.
In 1929 the main body of Glenarm Castle was badly damaged by a blaze (started, it is said, by the housekeeper keeping a fire constantly going in her bedroom to warm a featherless parrot). The accident led to unsympathetic rebuilding, with the gothic windows replaced by rectangular ones and the baroque hall losing its plasterwork.
Angela Sykes, the next countess and a professional sculptor, planned to give the hall new vigour. Encouraged by her husband, the celebrated travel writer Robert Byron (The Road to Oxiana), she started sculpting the gods of the nine planets to act as new caryatids. However, Byron was killed in the second World War and Lady Antrim found she could not finish the work he had inspired. Instead she painted other rooms with interpretations of family and classical mythologies. Another fire in 1965 led to the demolition of the servants' wing, with the exception of the kitchen, the only room in continuous use since the seventeenth century.
All of which results in the castle as it is today, a bulky but not particularly pleasing lump of a building which fails to rise to the challenge of its beautiful setting. It's hard not to feel, sitting by our turf fire high in the barbican, that we have the betterdeal. The night is chilly and we are snug in our miniature fortress. The castle, by contrast, looks well-nigh impossible to heat.
The Antrim estate extends up the glen for about four miles on both sides of the river. Designated as an Area of Special Scientific Interest, it has adopted an environmentally friendly policy to ensure the safety of the area's natural resources. There is also a well-restored and beautifully presented walled garden.
BEYOND THE ESTATE, Glenarm Forest Park is an 800-acre nature preserve, once part of the castle demesne, but now in public ownership and maintained by the Ulster Wildlife Trust. Evidence suggests that the glen has been occupied since the late Stone Age, with at least one court cairn and several wedge tombs discovered. There are also a number of later raths and souterrains. From Glenarm, you can choose to make your way up the glen, through overhanging oak trees towards the open moorlands of the Antrim Plateau, or you can use it as your starting point for an exploration of one of the most spectacular and beautiful coastlines on this island, secure in the knowledge that when darkness falls you'll be returning to your very own small but perfectly proportioned castle.
For further information on the barbican and other Irish Landmark Trust properties, tel: 01-6704733 or see www.irishlandmark.com.