Carrickfergus

Castle, Harbour and Rodgers Quay

Carrickfergus Castle stands on a rock that pushes out into Belfast Lough, and it has been there since John de Courcy built it in 1177 as the headquarters of his conquest of eastern Ulster. The promontory was once three-quarters surrounded by water; later land reclamation cut that to about a third, but the castle still reads as something that belongs to the sea more than to the town behind it. Inside there is a restored banqueting hall, medieval-life exhibits and a line of cannons, adult entry around six pounds. It is one of the best-preserved Norman castles in Ireland.

Below it the harbour still shelters small boats, the bottle-neck harbour Louis MacNeice named, with the modern marina and Rodgers Quay running on alongside. Rodgers Quay is where you eat. Windrose is a marina-side bistro; Springsteen's Diner does American food; Kamakura is Japanese; Josh Macs and Papa Brown's are grills; Mayur and Little India cover the Indian end. The Rodgers Quay Shopping Centre has a Sainsbury's, which is the main place to stock up near the water.

High Street Hospitality and Loughshore Walks

In the old town the pubs sit on and around the High Street. The Central Bar is the Wetherspoon. Ownie's Bar is a traditional bar over at Joymount. The Dobbins Inn Hotel is a town-centre inn with a bar and rooms — one of the oldest hospitality buildings in Carrickfergus, a double around ninety pounds, and local lore attaches a resident ghost to it.

For walking, the Loughshore path runs level along the waterfront past marina, harbour and castle, the lough on one side the whole way. Inland the ground rises toward the Knockagh escarpment, and Slieve True, at about 312 metres, gives you the higher option above the town.

Arriving in the Medieval Capital

Trains from Carrickfergus station reach Belfast in about thirty-five minutes, roughly every half hour, and carry on toward Larne. The Ulsterbus 563 runs hourly from Belfast, and the A2 Shore Road brings you in by car, eleven miles out. Parking at the Harbour Car Park is free.

The town was Ulster's medieval capital. King John took the castle in 1210. William of Orange landed here on 14 June 1690 ahead of the Williamite campaign, still marked each year as Landing Day with around forty marching bands. In 1760 French forces under François Thurot briefly held the town; in 1778 John Paul Jones fought an hour-long engagement with HMS Drake just offshore; and in 1711 the place hosted Ireland's last witchcraft trial. Segments of the medieval town wall survive.

Boneybefore and St Nicholas'

Just outside town at Boneybefore, a thatched farmhouse from the 1750s survives as the Andrew Jackson Cottage — the parents of the seventh US president emigrated from here to South Carolina — and the same site remembers the 1st Battalion of the US Rangers, activated in Carrickfergus in 1942.

St Nicholas' Church, founded in the early thirteenth century by Hugh de Lacy, anchors the town centre near the Town Hall. In 1907 John MacNeice became its rector, and his son, the poet Louis MacNeice, grew up here between the ages of two and ten.

The Song of Carrickfergus

And there is the song. "I wish I was in Carrickfergus," it begins — a folk ballad translated from Munster Irish, and about the strongest thing the town's name carries, sung by a great many people who have never seen the lough.