Dunseverick Castle is a promontory fort on a steep-sided basalt stack on the Causeway coast of County Antrim, recorded in the Irish Annals as Dun Sobhairce and first fortified by the chieftain Sobhairce around the 5th century. It became a royal site of the Dal Riada, the seafaring kingdom that linked Antrim and western Scotland, was raided by Vikings in 871 and 924, passed to the Earls of Ulster, the O'Cahans and the MacDonnells, and was destroyed by Cromwellian troops in the 1650s. Saint Patrick is said to have baptised Olcan here. Only a small masonry tower survives, repaired after a 1978 rock fall, so reviewers are candid that the castle is tiny and the landscape is the point. Regulars park in the free car park by the road and start the cliff path west to the Giant's Causeway here; it runs close to unfenced edges, so keep children and dogs near.
