Ballygally Castle: A Seventeenth-Century Residence and Hotel
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Irish
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page9 sections
History
Ballygally Castle is a Scottish-built castle in Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, overlooking Ballygally Bay near Larne. James Shaw of Scotland built it in 1625 after renting land from Randal MacDonnell, the Catholic Earl of Antrim, for £24 a year. Its Scottish Baronial architecture, with fortified-looking towers and steep roofs, reflects Shaw’s origins and gives the building its distinctive character.
Foundation and Conflict
During the Great Rebellion of 1641, a major uprising in Ireland that began the wider Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the Irish garrison at Glenarm attacked Ballygally Castle several times. The assaults failed. The castle was more heavily fortified then than it is today, allowing it to withstand the attacks.
The Shaw Family
In the late 1730s, the Shaw children were taught by David Manson, an innovative educator who later became master of a Belfast play school. One apartment in the castle became known for many years as the Manson Room. Around 1760, the squire Henry Shaw enlarged the building after marrying Miss Hamilton, whose two sisters also came to live there.
Ownership passed to William Shaw in 1799. Known as the last squire of Ballygally, he inherited a family whose wealth had been exhausted and sold the property within a few years for £15,400. The castle later changed hands several times and served for a period as a coastguard station, a government facility concerned with coastal monitoring, maritime safety, and smuggling.
Hotel Conversion and Heritage Status
Cyril Lord bought Ballygally Castle in the early 1950s and refurbished it as the hotel seen today, extending and reconstructing parts of the building. Hastings Hotels Group now owns and operates the property. The castle is used as a hotel and is described as the only seventeenth-century building in Northern Ireland still used as a residence.
Ballygally Castle is a Grade A listed building, while its bawn, an enclosed defensive courtyard around a castle or fortified residence, and walled garden are registered as Scheduled Historic Monuments. A tradition sometimes calls it Ireland’s oldest occupied building, although Castle Upton is somewhat older.
Ghost Traditions
The castle’s reputation for haunting centres on Lady Isobel Shaw, said to have been a former resident who knocks on bedroom doors before disappearing. Legend holds that her husband, Lord James Shaw, locked her in the castle and starved her, after which she died by falling from a window. Another figure is Madame Nixon, a nineteenth-century resident whose silk dress is reportedly heard rustling as she moves through the hotel.
In 2003, manager Olga Henry described becoming less skeptical about supernatural claims after working at the hotel. She recounted a guest’s report of an unseen child running and laughing in a tower room near the Ghost Room. In December that year, a locked table in a tower room was reportedly found disturbed, with napkins unfolded and food or other debris arranged around it. Mediums who stayed at the hotel also claimed that it contained more ghosts than guests at the time.
Remains
Ballygally Castle is a rectangular, four-storey building in the Scottish Baronial style. Its design combines high walls, a steep roof, dormer windows, cylindrical corner turrets with conical roofs, and additional corner towers. The walls are about 1.5 metres thick and contain loopholes for firearms, preserving elements of its defensive design.
Main Building
Four corner turrets define the main block, while a flanking tower stands on the northeast side. This tower contains the entrance and a stone spiral staircase. Above the main entrance leading to the tower is the Middle Scots inscription Godis Providens is my Inheritans, meaning “God’s providence is my inheritance.” Middle Scots was a historical form of the Scots language used in Scotland and parts of Ulster.
Bawn and Walled Garden
The castle was originally enclosed by a bawn with four corner turrets. In the 1840s, the side nearest the sea was removed to make room for a new coast road. The bawn and walled garden remain physically associated with the castle complex and form part of its protected historic setting.
Water Channel and Ghost Room
An open water channel runs through the outer hall. It was intended to provide water during a siege, linking a practical household feature with the castle’s defensive purpose. A small room in one of the corner towers is known as the Ghost Room. Its association with the castle’s ghost traditions has given it a distinctive place within the surviving building, and it is not used as a hotel bedroom.
