The MacDonnells

Ballycastle was once known as Sorley Boy MacDonnell’s town — and the man himself is the clan’s most significant figure in this part of Antrim. Sorley Boy (Somhairle Buí, roughly “yellow-haired Charles”) was born around 1505 at Dunaneeny Castle, near Ballycastle, the youngest of six sons of Alexander MacDonnell, lord of Islay and Kintyre in Scotland and of the Glens of Antrim.

He was captured by the English in 1550 and held in Dublin Castle for a year before being exchanged. By 1552 he was fighting to drive English forces from Carrickfergus, reportedly declaring — in the English of the time — that “Inglische men had no ryght to Yrland.” Over the following decades he fought the English crown, Shane O’Neill, and rival Irish lords to secure the MacDonnells’ hold on this coast, eventually gaining formal grant of much of the Route — the land between the Bush and Bann rivers, including Dunseverick, Loughguile, and Ballymoney — along with the constableship of Dunluce Castle, which he’d captured by force in 1584.

His hardest year was 1575: with English forces bearing down on the mainland, he’d sent the women, children, and elderly of his clan to shelter on Rathlin Island — where, on 26 July, English troops under Francis Drake and John Norris massacred more than 600 of them. Sorley Boy watched from the mainland, unable to reach the island in time.

He died at Dunaneeny Castle in early 1590, aged around 85, and was buried in the older vault at Bonamargy Friary — the same friary where several other MacDonnell chiefs and later Earls of Antrim would also be laid to rest.