Glenarm Castle
Glenarm Castle is located in Antrim County, in Glenarm, Northern Ireland. A castle has sat on this site since the 13th century, but Sir Randal MacDonnell, 1st Earl of Antrim, built the current castle in 1636. In 1642, an invading Scots army set fire to the castle and it remained a ruin until the 5th Earl moved back to Glenarm and reconstructed the castle. The entrance hall is a two-story cube with vaulted ceilings, decorated with baroque plasterwork. In 1929, fire damaged the castle again, and the gothic windows were replaced with rectangular ones, while the baroque hall lost its plasterwork. The Countess Angela Sykes was a professional sculptor and began to sculpt the gods of nine planets, but when her husband was killed in WWII she couldn’t finish the work, she did however paint some of the castle rooms with family and classical mythologies. The castle is still the ancestral home of the Earl’s of Antrim and owned by Randal, Viscount Dunluce, son of the 14th Earl of Antrim who lives there with his wife and children. The castle is occasionally open to the public. The castle’s Walled Garden is open to the public from May to September. The Highland games and the Dalriada Festival are also held on Glenarm Castle grounds. The castle has a Tea Room and Castle Shop.
