Dunseverick Castle, County Antrim
About three miles east of the Giant's Causeway we came in sight of a detached and lofty rock, elevating its head near the centre of a small bay, and crowned with the ruins of the CASTLE OF DUNSEVERICK.
It is a lonely remnant of a structure, and though traces of the outworks are visible, the "keep" is the only part that is still erect, and this too, from its appearance, will soon be as prostrate as the rest. Immense masses of the rock have been hewn away, evidently for the purpose of rendering the castle as inaccessible as possible. An enormous basaltic rock, south of the entrance, also appears to have been cut of a pyramidal form, and flattened on the top, perhaps as a station for a warder, or for the purpose of placing upon it some engine of defence. That the insulated rock on which the castle is placed should, from its peculiar strength, have been selected by the early settlers in Ireland as a proper situation for one of their strongholds, is not to be wondered at; but of that original fortress M'Skimmin remarks, there are no remains. The present ruin, though of great strength, the Avails being eleven feet in thickness, is evidently of an age not anterior to the English invasion, and most probably erected by the M'Quillans, but the annals of the time are silent as to the period of its re-edification.
2-IV-5