Kilwaughter ( Irish: ''Cill Uachtair'') is a small

village A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...

County Antrim County Antrim (named after the town of Antrim, County Antrim, Antrim, ) is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, located within the historic Provinces of Ireland, province of Ulster. Adjoined to the north-east shore of Lough Neagh, the c ...

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ; ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, part of the United Kingdom in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It has been #Descriptions, variously described as a country, province or region. Northern Ireland shares Repub ...

, near the town of

Larne Larne (, , the name of a Gaelic Ireland, Gaelic territory)Larne/Latharna
Placenames Database of Ireland. is a to ...

. It is in an electoral ward situated within the

Mid and East Antrim Borough Council Mid and East Antrim Borough Council is a local authority that was established on 1 April 2015. It replaced Ballymena Borough Council, Carrickfergus Borough Council and Larne Borough Council. History On 2 December 2021, the councils chief exec ...

area. Kilwaughter is a rural village or

hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play. Set in Denmark, the play (the ...

. The village is in a

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

of the same name. Kilwaughter is the home of Kilwaughter Castle, built by John Nash between 1803 and 1807, for the Agnew family. Located on the site of an older 17th-century tower, the castle is situated in the hills, about 3 miles southwest of Larne. Seized by the government during WWII, Kilwaughter Castle was used to house soldiers in the 1940s. These soldiers were members of the American 644th Tank Destroyer Battalion and based here during preparations for the

D-Day Landings The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during the Second World War. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as ...

. The castle remained uninhabited from that time and fell into disrepair - with collapsed floors and a collapsed roof. It is privately owned and not open to the public. As of 2017, a charitable trust was reportedly being formed to "stop further deterioration of the castle". In addition to the still imposing castle, the landscape around Kilwaughter now finds itself marked by industry with a number of quarries operating in the local area.

References

Villages in County Antrim Civil parishes of County Antrim {{Antrim-geo-stub

See also

References