Glenarm Castle, Glenarm, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, is the ancestral home of the Earl of Antrim. There has been a castle at Glenarm since the 13th century, where it resides at the heart of one of Northern Ireland's oldest estates. It was owned by John Bisset who acquired lands between Larne and Ballycastle from Hugh de Lacy, the Earl of Ulster…
Glenarm Castle, Glenarm, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, is the ancestral home of the Earl of Antrim. There has been a castle at Glenarm since the 13th century, where it resides at the heart of one of Northern Ireland's oldest estates. It was owned by John Bisset who acquired lands between Larne and Ballycastle from Hugh de Lacy, the Earl of Ulster. Bisset made Glenarm his capital, and by 1260 there was a castle, which stood at the centre of the present village, with a kitchen garden, an orchard and a mill, as well as woods and meadows. The old village courthouse still incorporates some of its walls, indeed an immured skeleton was discovered there in the 1970s. In 1495 Con O'Donnell of Tirconnell marched on ‘MacEoin of the Glens’, ‘for he had been told that MacEoin had the finest wife, steed and hound in his neighbourhood. O'Donnell had sent messengers for the steed but was refused it so he made no delay, but surmounting the difficulties of every passage he arrived at night at MacEoin's house without giving any warning of his designs. He captured MacEoin and made himself master of his wife his steed and his hound'. The last MacEoin Bisset was killed fighting the O'Donnells in 1522. Their lands were then seized by the MacDonnells, their former partners, who occupied the Bisset's castle until they built the new one.
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