Carrickfergus Castle

Carrickfergus — from the Irish Carraig Fhergus, the "cairn of Fergus" — was built in 1177 by John de Courcy as his headquarters after he conquered eastern Ulster, and from it he ruled as a petty king until 1204, when he was ousted by another Norman adventurer, Hugh de Lacy. De Courcy's first work was the inner ward, a small bailey at the end of the promontory with a high polygonal curtain wall, an east gate and several buildings including the great hall. The site did much of the defending for him: a rocky promontory almost surrounded by sea, commanding Carrickfergus Bay — later Belfast Lough — and the land approaches to the walled town that grew beneath it.

In 1210 King John laid siege to Carrickfergus and took what was then Ulster's premier strategic garrison, after which constables were appointed to command the castle and the country around it. In 1217 the new constable, De Serlane, was assigned one hundred pounds to build a curtain wall protecting the approach along the rock and the eastern approaches over the sand exposed at low tide. The gatehouse grew formidable in stages: its ribbed vault, murder hole and massive portcullis at either end were begun by Hugh de Lacy, who died in 1248 before their completion around 1250, the work finished under King Henry III.

Lord Edmund Savage of the Ards served as Seneschal of Ulster and Constable of the castle in the late 14th century under Richard II. After the Earldom of Ulster collapsed in 1333, Carrickfergus remained the Crown's principal residential and administrative centre in the north of Ireland.

In the early stages of the Nine Years War of 1595–1603, when English influence in the north grew tenuous, crown forces were supplied through the town's port, and in 1597 the surrounding country saw the Battle of Carrickfergus. That year the garrison governor Sir John Chichester was killed near Ballycarry; Sir Arthur Chichester, governor from 1599, was created Baron Chichester in 1613, and the post later ran through the Earls of Donegall. Externally splayed gunports and cannon embrasures were cut in the 16th and 17th centuries to fit the castle for artillery, though it was still attacked and captured on many occasions.

Marshal Schomberg besieged and took the castle in the week-long Siege of Carrickfergus in 1689, and it was here that his king, William III, first set foot in Ireland on 14 June 1690. In 1760, after fierce fighting in the town, the castle was surrendered to French invaders under François Thurot, who looted castle and town and sailed away — only to be caught by the Royal Navy.

In 1778 a small but notable action of the American War of Independence began at Carrickfergus, when John Paul Jones — his crew reluctant to close with the castle — lured a Royal Navy vessel from its moorings into the North Channel and won an hour-long battle. In 1797 the castle, which had already housed prisoners of war, became a prison, and it was heavily defended during the Napoleonic Wars; six guns on the east battery remain of the twenty-two mounted in 1811. It then served a century as a magazine and armoury, was a garrison and ordnance store in the First World War and an air-raid shelter in the Second.

The castle had been garrisoned continuously for some 750 years when, in 1928, the British Army transferred it to the new Government of Northern Ireland for preservation as an ancient monument, and many post-Norman and Victorian additions were stripped away to restore its Norman appearance. It is maintained by the Department for Communities and remains one of the best preserved medieval structures in Northern Ireland. On his wedding day, 29 April 2011, Prince William was created Baron Carrickfergus, reviving a title extinct since Victorian times — now purely ceremonial, with no official connection to the castle.