Rampart and Bastion, Castle Street/Market Square, Antrim, Co Antrim

Rampart and Bastion, Castle Street/Market Square, Antrim

A range of blackstone rampart walling with an angled bastion, built around 1600, represents the surviving portion of a late 16th to early 17th century artillery fort. This fort was of considerable significance during the Elizabethan and Jacobean Plantation of Ulster and was originally constructed by Hugh Clotworthy, possibly as early as 1596 but certainly by 1603.

The rampart walling runs approximately north-east to south-west with its main front facing south-east. The main face is constructed of blackstone rubble with a moulded corbel course supporting a crenellated parapet of smooth cement-rendered stonework. Behind the parapet runs a wall walk. At the southern end, the rampart walling including corbel course and parapet returns forward to abut a later gatehouse of 1818. At the northern end, a projecting angled bastion of different quality rubble stonework abuts the main walling. The bastion has plain walling without a corbel course, topped by modern metal railings.

The bastion walling returns to the north-east and then to the north-west, where it steps up to form a battered face with three vertical recesses at the top resembling filled-in crenellations. At the base of these recesses is a row of small openings that appear to be musket loops, with a similar row positioned higher on the wall. The bastion walling returns at the rear to the south-west with similarly plain rubble construction and a battered top, featuring a segmental brick arched opening. A buttress to the right leads to a flight of granite steps with modern metal railings ascending to a platform at wall-walk level.

The inner side of the north-west and north-east faces of the bastion comprises a base or plinth of basalt rubble with brick facing above in the same plane. Deep recessed openings have brick flat arches or segmental arches. The rear face of the rampart walling at wall-walk level is of exposed rubble with a concrete path and ramped grassy banks containing plantings to the rear.

The fort originally possessed at least two bastions. The surviving bastion to the north remains substantially intact. The southern bastion was later impinged upon by the so-called 'barbican' gatehouse of 1818. The structure appears to have been maintained as a defensive facility throughout the 17th century and was reportedly used during the 'Battle of Antrim' in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, when rebels were fired upon from it.

Probably in the 18th century, the fort was adapted as an ornamental and productive feature of the gardens belonging to Antrim Castle, forming part of the celebrated 'terrace gardens'. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs of the 1830s described these as "a beautiful range of flower beds extending along 3 sides of a square 110 by 108 yards" enclosed by a high wall. By 1860, the gardens were described as having been "formed out of the two ancient bastions: one is square, and the other oblong; both are elevated to a height of about twenty feet above the level of the park, and are reached by wide granite steps."

Later 18th and 19th century additions were incorporated as the structure adapted its role from military to ornamental use. In 1972, the creation of a new road through the original centre of the complex destroyed the main portion of the terrace gardens, obliterating the low brick cross walls that subdivided the raised area into four separate gardens and leaving the present bastion and walling isolated from the main castle grounds. The original physical context and setting quality have been significantly eroded over the years by these later developments.

A section of walling running south from the 'barbican' gatehouse to terminate in a small angular turret near the river appears on the Ordnance Survey map of 1832; its precise date is uncertain, though it may date from the period of the 'barbican' gatehouse construction in 1818.

The rampart and bastion were restored in 1999 and protected as a scheduled monument in June 2005 (ANT050:183). The structure stands at the western end of Market Square within the built-up area of town. It is adjoined at the southern end by the 'barbican' gatehouse. At the northern end, adjoining walls of 19th century basalt rubble with crenellations, a square pier, and a four-centred arched doorway dressed in blue engineering brick lead into a small open courtyard paved with concrete bricks and laid out with rectangular flower beds. Low basalt plinth walling runs along the north-east side, while the north-west side comprises basalt rubble walling terminating in a modern basalt pier and containing a two-centred red brick arched doorway alongside a granite coupled window, now missing its mullion. These appear to be part of a garden attached to now-demolished 19th century estate cottages. A grassed strip incorporating flower beds flanks the main front of the rampart walling and bastion with a modern memorial slab. To the rear lies a grassed area with a modern by-pass road.

Despite the considerable erosion of its original context and setting quality, enough of the structure survives in recognisable form to indicate something of the original extent and character of the fort, making it an important feature of Antrim's historical topography and a relic of the founding days of the modern town.