Terrace, Shane's Castle Park, Antrim, Co Antrim

Terrace, Battery and Cannons, Shane's Castle Park, Co. Antrim

This is a remarkable early 19th-century structure in the castle style, designed by the prominent London architect John Nash and built for Lord O'Neill between approximately 1812 and 1816. It forms the most spectacular element of a group of additions to Shane's Castle, presenting a great castellated terrace and battery mounted with cannons, set within a well-wooded demesne overlooking Lough Neagh.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION

The structure is a long, masonry-built battery and deep vaulted terrace, enclosed on three sides by a parapet with embrasures for 21 cannons. The main front faces south. It is built of regularly coursed basalt, which inclines from ground level at an angle of approximately 80 degrees up to a sandstone cordon beneath the parapet. Above the cordon the masonry is more finely worked basalt, with sandstone dressings throughout.

At the right-hand end of the south front stands a circular tower with a semi-circular arched sally-port and a narrow rectangular slit opening at the base on the east side, and a further narrow rectangular slit opening facing to the rear. The tower projects well above terrace level to a projecting crenellated parapet carried on mock machicolations. A small central turret rises from the centre of the tower, similarly crenellated and set on mock machicolations, and surmounted by a tall flagpole. Each face of the turret has a narrow Gothic arched opening.

At the left-hand end of the south front is a diagonally placed square bastion, with its three faces rising above terrace level to projecting battlements carried on mock machicolations. The front face of this bastion contains a semi-circular arched opening at terrace level, fitted with a cannon, together with a small rectangular opening at ground level in the battered base and a narrow rectangular slit opening at a higher level in the left-hand wall of the base.

Each of the shorter sides of the battery and terrace — facing approximately east and west — contains one segmental arched opening set high up in the base near the south end, currently closed with loose iron bars, and a triangular bastion at the north end. Both triangular end bastions rise above terrace level to projecting crenellations on mock machicolations. The bastion terminating the west wall has a semi-circular arched opening in the parapet facing inland and a narrow rectangular opening at ground level in the base facing toward the water. The corresponding east bastion has blank faces.

On the terrace itself, the inner faces of the parapets are of similar walling to the exterior. The square and angled bastions are open, with walling similar to the exterior except that the crenellations here are flush, without machicolations. The circular tower has twin semi-circular arched openings at terrace level, with alternating red brick and sandstone block reveals. The inner walls of the tower are of basalt rubble, with stone spiral steps descending to the sally-port. Modern open-tread timber stairs spiral up around the central turret to a wooden boarded floor that serves as a viewing platform at parapet level. The main south-front area of the terrace is surfaced in coarse crushed-stone gravel, while the rear return areas at each end are grassed and bordered by gravel along the perimeter parapet. At each embrasure around the entire perimeter stands an 18th-century iron 12-pounder naval cannon, supported on an upright leg formed from what appears to be a hollow stoneware coping tile set on end.

VAULTED BASEMENT

The terrace is supported entirely on an extensive system of brick arched vaults, mainly segmental in form but with some semi-circular examples. Beneath the main terrace along the south front runs a double row of 26 barrel vaults, separated by a long groin-vaulted corridor extending from the western to the eastern side of the battery, with segmental arched openings in the end and side walls. Beneath the northern portion of each side return of the main south terrace are batteries of tunnel vaults running east to west — three at the west end and four at the east end — with arched openings facing into open courtyards.

The courtyard elevations are as follows: in the east courtyard, basalt rubble walling facing west contains four segmental arched open doorways with sandstone ashlar voussoirs and sandstone block dressings to the jambs, with a short return facing north containing one similar doorway; in the west courtyard, similar walling facing east contains three such doorways, the walling rising above basement storey height to serve as boundary walling abutting the Camellia House. Almost the entire area of the basement vaulting is in darkness except in the immediate vicinity of the courtyard arched openings, the two openings at each end of the long corridor, and the low opening in the diagonal bastion — all of which are deep within the structure and thus difficult of access. The double row of vaults beneath the main south-front terrace is reached by four routes: open doorways in each of the two end courtyards on the north side; the circular vaulted basement lobby at the south end of the old castle; and a passage off the transverse corridor to the south of the tall pillared and vaulted kitchen, which forms part of the rear return of the early 19th-century castle-style additions to Shane's Castle.

SETTING

The building stands in a very rural position within the Shane's Castle demesne, close to the shore of Lough Neagh. Originally the lough water came up to and around the base of the building on three sides, so that the terrace effectively projected into the lough. Successive lowering of the water level since the mid-19th century has caused the shoreline to recede, leaving a flat grassed area in front of the terrace. To the rear stand the ruins of the old Shane's Castle, while on part of the terrace itself stand the unfinished remains of later additions to the castle, including the conservatory known as the Camellia House — the only completed portion of that scheme.

HISTORY

The terrace was built for Lord O'Neill at approximately 1812 to 1816, apparently to designs by John Nash of London, who had previously been consulted by Lord O'Neill around 1802 to 1803, at the time Nash was working on Killymoon Castle in County Tyrone. The terrace formed part of a broader scheme of additions to Shane's Castle that also included a conservatory on the terrace — which was completed — and a suite of rooms intended to give a southern aspect to the old castle, which was left unfinished after a fire destroyed the old castle in 1816. Early undated and unsigned perspective drawings, attributed to the Nash office, survive for a larger scheme of additions than was ultimately adopted; these show an extensive embattled terrace of similar but not identical design to what was finally built, with a longer front and more embrasures than the eventual cannon count.

The extensive vaults beneath the terrace have always been unoccupied and appear to have been constructed purely to support it. The openings in each short side wall of the terrace were apparently intended for taking in coals or other goods delivered by boat while the terrace stood within the lough.

The cannons have stood on the terrace since at least the 1830s and may have been placed there from the outset, since their number corresponds to the number of embrasures. They came from a British man-of-war that sank in Lough Foyle. The Earl O'Neill obtained permission to move them to Shane's Castle on the condition that he did so at his own expense. In 1848, at the time of Smith O'Brien's rebellion, the Government requested the loan of the cannons, which Lord O'Neill agreed to on condition that the Government undertook the removal. The Government declined to bear that expense, and as a result the cannons were spiked and have remained in that spiked condition ever since.

The building stands within the area of an ancient monument (reference ANT49:29).