Antrim Heritage Trails

From one of Ireland's best-preserved round towers to the ruined castle of the Clotworthys, walk the streets of Northern Ireland's county town of Antrim through fifteen centuries of history.

From Colonel Boyd's Georgian chapel on the Diamond, down to the harbour where Marconi's men once wired news of ships to Rathlin, and on to the MacDonnell friary at Bonamargy — a short walk through Ballycastle's fair, castle, industry and clan history.

From a Norman motte hidden in a war memorial park to the Georgian churches and Victorian Town Hall of Market Square, this short walk traces Ballyclare's growth from a river crossing to the market town famous for its 270-year-old May Fair.

A short stroll around a Jacobean plantation castle on the Antrim Coast Road — from its famous Ghost Room and Victorian coastguard terrace to the harbour bridge, village fountain and the volcanic headland just beyond.

Loop the county town's compact conservation core, from the last of the 'Seven Towers' and the county's only 12-bell church peal to the neoclassical Town Hall-turned-arts-centre and the Adair family's 45-acre gift to the town.

A short loop through Ballymoney's market-town core, from a ruined 1637 tower and the gallows of the 1798 Rebellion to the Georgian and Victorian churches, court house and town hall that grew up around them.

Wander the Main Street of one of Northern Ireland's most-decorated 'tidy villages' — a vanished O'Neill castle, two Presbyterian churches, a thatched inn, a Victorian pump, a 1765 parish church, and the family home of a Field Marshal and an Irish Citizen Army founder.

From a medieval settlement and the world's oldest licensed whiskey distillery to a Victorian market square and a statue unveiled by the Queen — six real, sourced stops around the village that guards the road to the Giant's Causeway.

A short loop around a limestone-harbour village the Marchioness of Londonderry built from scratch in the 1850s — a white stone bridge, a quarry office turned museum, and a coaching inn once owned by Winston Churchill.

Walk the walled heart of Co. Antrim's historic county town — from the Norman castle where a king once landed, past a hidden medieval tower house and a surviving town gate, to a Georgian town hall and a harbour pier named for that royal landing.

From an Early Christian ringfort to a 1915 railway viaduct, a short loop through Crumlin's Main Street churches, memorials and river crossing traces thirteen centuries of a village built on a bend in the Camlin river.

Follow the River Main through a 19th-century linen village, from Main Street's churches and mill to the thatched cottage in Dreen where an American president's roots began.

Walk the Regency-era streets Francis Turnly laid out around his red-sandstone Curfew Tower — from the River Dall bridge and a Scheduled medieval castle site to the village's parish churches and its old Mill Street mill.

Walk the streets of one of Ulster's oldest chartered villages, from the McDonnell Earls' castle gate to a limestone harbour on the Antrim Coast Road.

A walk through the deep and recent past of a Belfast commuter suburb — from early medieval raths and a lost 'Henry's Town' church buried in the townland names, through the Victorian crossroads village and its interwar school and mid-century church, to Mossley Mill, the former linen mill that now serves as Newtownabbey's civic heart.

From a ruined harbour tower house that watched Edward Bruce land in 1315, through Larne's Victorian civic core, out to the Chaine Memorial's round tower and the harbour front where the 1914 gun-running and the 1953 Princess Victoria disaster both unfolded.

From a medieval castle site above the harbour to a Tudor-style railway station turned nightclub and the championship links of Royal Portrush — seven real, sourced stops around the seaside resort the railway built.

Follow the River Main through Randalstown, from a Grade A meeting house scarred by the 1798 Rebellion to a rebuilt market house, a river bridge under a Victorian viaduct, and the in-town gateway to the Shane's Castle estate.

From a Plantation-era castle remodelled by Robert Adam to the church that gave the village its name, this short loop along the Antrim Road ties together eight centuries of Templepatrick history in a single walkable stretch.

From a Scheduled tower-house and an Early Christian crannog to the bridge where a United Irish rebel was hanged and a Georgian market street, this short loop traces Toome's long life as the guarded crossing where the Bann leaves Lough Neagh.

From a MacDonnell castle ruin and a hedge-school cave in the village to the iron-ore railway's White Arch and the waterfalls at the head of the glen, this trail traces Waterfoot's coast-road and Glenariff's valley heritage together.

From the excursion station that turned a fishing hamlet into a Victorian resort, past a scheduled medieval tower-house ruin and a Victorian coastguard terrace, down to Ker's old limestone harbour, and out along the Blackhead Path to an Edwardian lighthouse — six real, sourced stops around a small seaside town shaped by the railway.