Castle in Causeway Coast and Glens District

Ballycastle is a small market town and seaside resort on the Antrim coast of Northern Ireland, its beach and harbour providing the principal visitor focus in a town that serves as the main gateway for the Rathlin Island ferry and as the central settlement of the Causeway Coast and Glens area. The beach at Ballycastle stretches for approximately one kilometre along the bay below the town, a mix of sand and shingle that is sheltered from the prevailing Atlantic swell by the headlands on either side and overlooks the distinctive flat-topped outline of Rathlin Island two kilometres offshore. The town and beach have a character that is distinctly different from the more heavily developed resorts of the Antrim coast further south. Ballycastle retains the feel of a working Irish market town with a functioning harbour, a weekly market and a local economy that extends beyond tourism alone. The Ould Lammas Fair, held annually in late August since at least the seventeenth century, is one of the oldest fairs in Ireland and draws visitors from across Northern Ireland and beyond, combining a traditional horse and cattle fair with amusements, traders and the distinctive dulse and yellowman confectionery for which Ballycastle is particularly known. The harbour below the town is the departure point for the Rathlin Island ferry, which makes the twenty-minute crossing to one of Northern Ireland's most rewarding day trip destinations several times daily in summer. Rathlin is a small, shaped island with a permanent farming and fishing community, dramatic seabird cliffs at its western end, and the cave beneath the lighthouse where Robert the Bruce is traditionally said to have sheltered and drawn inspiration from the famous spider. The puffin colony at the West Light is one of the largest and most accessible in Ireland. The surrounding Causeway Coast and Glens Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty provides extensive walking and coastal scenery, with the Fair Head cliffs immediately east of Ballycastle offering some of the most dramatic headland scenery on the north Antrim coast.

Dungiven Castle in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, is a nineteenth-century Gothic house incorporating the ruins of an Augustinian priory founded in the twelfth century by the O'Cahan family, who are commemorated by one of the finest medieval tomb monuments in Ireland within the priory ruins. The site has a long ecclesiastical history as the location of Dungiven Priory, founded in the twelfth century by the O'Cahan family who were lords of this part of Derry. The early seventeenth-century bastion fortification added to the priory site reflects the plantation era's military requirements. The priory ruin with its decorated O'Cahan tomb is the most significant heritage element of the site and can be visited freely. The surrounding Sperrins landscape provides outstanding walking and cycling country in one of the most scenic upland areas of Northern Ireland.

Kinbane Castle is a dramatically situated ruined sixteenth-century tower house on Kenbane Head on the North Antrim coast, its white limestone walls rising from the narrow headland that gives the castle its name, kenbane meaning white headland in Irish. The castle was built by Colla MacDonnell, brother of the Scots-Irish lord Sorley Boy MacDonnell, one of the most significant figures in the turbulent history of sixteenth-century Ulster. The castle was twice attacked and damaged by the English Crown during the wars against the MacDonnells, and was eventually abandoned. The headland position above the Atlantic provides outstanding views along the North Antrim coast and is accessible from a steep path descending from the clifftop car park. The surrounding coastal landscape, including the Giant's Causeway and Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge nearby, is one of the most celebrated in Ireland.

Dunseverick Castle is the dramatically situated ruins of one of the oldest castles in Ireland, perched on a narrow sea stack on the North Antrim coast between the Giant's Causeway and Ballintoy, its fragmentary walls rising from sheer basalt cliffs above the Atlantic. The site was fortified from at least the early medieval period, with Dunseverick mentioned in the ancient Ulster annals and associated with the legendary figures of early Irish history. The present masonry represents the latest phase of occupation, with the castle destroyed by Cromwellian forces in 1653. The coastal path that passes the castle is part of the Causeway Coast Way, one of the most spectacular coastal walking routes in Ireland, with the Giant's Causeway UNESCO World Heritage Site a short distance to the west.