Arches at 'The Rockery', Shane's Castle Park, Antrim, Co Antrim

These stone arches are garden features built in a rustic Gothic manner, dating from the mid-19th century. Though they imitate the picturesque movement in garden design typical of the late 18th to early 19th century, they represent a late manifestation of that style.

Three rustic stone Gothic arches stand within a rockery garden laid out with informal paths lined by low stone walls, surrounding an informal pond. The setting is close to the shore of Lough Neagh within the Shane's Castle demesne. The garden occupies a former quarry and is bounded on its north side by a precipice-like bank of rock, some portions of it vertically fissured with polygonal stacks similar to those of the Giant's Causeway. The arches are reached by pathways to east and west, and by a steep flight of stone steps to the north.

Built by the O'Neill family of Shane's Castle as garden features, the arches have no precisely documented construction date but appear to date from the 1860s, probably shortly after the new Shane's Castle was built following extraction of its stone from the quarry at this site. Evidence from Ordnance Survey maps of 1829 and 1832 shows the ground at the garden location was under water at that time. Contemporary references from the 1830s describe the columnar basalt masses on the north side of the garden as descending into Lough Neagh and disappearing beneath water, with no mention of a garden. The 1858 Ordnance Survey map shows the shoreline had receded due to lowering of the lough level, but the present rockery ground appears featureless. Later maps show the rockery garden fully laid out with paths and a pond.

An 1880s description noted: "The Rockery is a particularly interesting spot, and is an excellent illustration of the way in which effort and taste may transform inert desolation into living beauty. This Rockery was originally a quarry, from which the stone was hewn for the building of the new castle, and probably, also, for that used in the erection of a portion, at least, of the old one. It is of considerable extent, and is ingeniously laid out, there being small flower-plots, embankments, archways, rockeries in abundance, and a pond at one end." Evidence suggests there were originally more than the present three arches.