Terry Alexander recently visited the Antrim coast of Ireland, and I asked if he would visit Kenbane Castle if he got the chance.  Well, he came through with flying colors and has the pictures to prove it.  Here are a few of them, along with his note to me explaining his adventure. Please write to Terry and tell him how much we appreciate his efforts: Terry.Alexander at Gencorp.com 

Vance,
Attached are ten views of the Kenbane Castle [I only included a few here. vbm]. The one picture of a headland towering above the sea is FairHead, it forms the southern boundry of Ballycastle Bay and the town of Ballycastle, approximately 3 miles south of Kenbane. The Antrim coastline here faces nearly due north towards Raithlin Island, about three miles off shore and beyond that to the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland, its mountains clearly visible perhaps 15 miles beyond island. The ferry from Ballycastle to Campbelltown in Kintyre was no longer running, but the locals were hoping it might be in service again by late summer or next year. I noticed a lot of commercial signs in Ballycastle and nearby towns with the name MacAlister or similar derivations.

The castle has not changed much since the painting was made in the late 1800′s. The story you sent me was pretty complete. As usual, the locals had nearly no historical knowledge of the place and no written literature that I could find.

There is a sign along the main coast road to Kenbane Castle and a parking lot about a mile down a small country road. The area is maintained by the Northern Ireland government as a historical site. Unfortunately access to the trail leading to the castle was closed by a landslide and no one was permitted in. Undaunted and not to be denied after traveling all the way from California, I jumped the fence, (discovering to my dismay the pretty green bushes on the other side were nettles – nasty stuff) and made my way down the 300 foot cliff to the castle.

The story stated that after the English destroyed the place in 1555, Coll Macdonnell rebuilt it and lived there until he died and his younger brother Sorley Boy (Buy) acquired it and gave it to the MacAlisters. After exploring the site thoroughly, my conclusion is it was probably not used for anything except purely defensive purposes. Its very small, probably no more than a couple hundred feet square. It could not have have been occupied by very many men nor stored much in the way of water and food for very many people. I imagine it was a place to seek refuge if the local communities and farms were attacked.

The castle lies at the base of a 300 foot cliff, accessed only by climbing down a very narrow and steep trail wide enough for only one person to traverse at a time. Near the bottom of the cliff, the land spreads out to the west in a shallow grassy bowl with a small protected cove along the shore. With the difficulty I had in climbing back up the cliff, I can’t imagine anyone making the castle a home unless regular access was by boat. There would have been no place for agriculture and only limited grazing for animals. From the appearance of the rock the castle stood on, I doubt if a fresh water well existed, so drinking water must have been captured from rain.

South of the rock is another cove that abuts a sheer cliff wall well over a hundred feet high. It is not protected and the seas are rougher on this side. An old abandoned stone home of a salmon fisherman lies just over a stoney outcropping on this side of the peninsula.

The castle sits on a small chalk and basalt point of land that is at most 200 hundred feet wide and perhaps 400 feet long. It starts out low, about 30 feet above the sea at the shore and rises outward to sheer cliffs on all sides that are perhaps 100 feet above the sea. There is a gorge about 15 feet deep that separates the rock from the mainland. Access might have been by a bridge over the gorge. I would imagine that in its day the gorge was filled with seawater, but today is so full of stones (perhaps from the walls of the castle) that it is dry even at high tide. A steep wall of rock rises 30 feet above the shoreline and the castle gate and walls stand about 30 vertical feet above the rock base. It would be an imposing threat to anyone attempting to storm this stronghold. The rock and castle stand far enough back from the edge of the towering cliffs that it was probably safe from catapults or other castle destroying equipment.

The tall stone gatehouse is a structure approximately 15 feet square and would have been at least two levels plus a parapet. The entrance gate itself is gone, but low rock walls still extend out to both sides from the gatehouse, taking advantage of the stone outcroppings along the top of the fortress. No evidence of structures remain within the grounds of the castle. From inside the castle, the defenders would have felt secure from any attack – but not from a prolonged siege. Their only hope if under siege would have been an escape by sea or to be rescued by friendly forces from the cliffs above.

The climb back up the cliff was exhausting, but the solitude and views to the sea and the towering cliffs made the rest stops very enjoyable. I was able to make my escape from the trespass undetected and continued my journey along the cliffs of Antrim.

Well, there are a number of reasons this forum will be a great benefit to our members.  First and foremost, we have been woefully negligent in getting the hard copy Fortiters to you on a consistent basis.  There is a complete issue ready for layout and print, but with one thing and another, and another, and another, etc..  One of the problems with the hard copy version is gathering all the material for the 12 pages which is coming in from various members.  With Fortiter Online, we will “print” a new issue with just a couple of articles as they come in, thus providing members with more regular, and more timely, information.  My goal is to do an issue every month or two.  Second, the material will be of more use to the members.  You can see the pictures in color, download anything you like to your hard drive, and print all you want.  Third, it will be much cheaper than mailing a larger hard copy to the members.  You can’t get much cheaper than free!  The Scot in us all.

We will not be completely doing away with the print version.  The Fortiter will now be converted into a larger, annual magazine format.  The new layout and design we have been using for the last few issues has been extremely popular (thanks Rocky!), but is a lot of work and, I think, better suited to a larger issue.  Instead of the 12 pages we have been publishing, we will try for something larger.  It will be comprised of a best of the Fortiter Online articles, plus some new material better suited for print.  Clan Donald does this (on a much larger scale, having 20,000 members), and I think it works well.  Also, we do have our “internet challenged” members which should not be left out.

This site, of course, is a work in progress and I want to work on the “look” of the page and am just getting into this design stuff.  I am not sure Homestead will be the host indefinitely, but it was an easy place to start.  I also hope to register a clan name, rather than my personal one (which I originally used to make a hiking photo album!).  We hope to have a Fortiter Online homepage, with all the issues linked off of it and a basic description of the Clan MacAlister Society for any who stumble in from searches or other paths.  That will allow you to bookmark the one page, then click on the latest issue.  Of course, we will also have a link to the great Clan MacAlister Homepage.  We will provide e-mail notification to all on our Clan e-mail list, which will have a link to the direct page as well.  Please send me any suggestions and, especially, send me any material you think would make a good article for Fortiter Online!