placenamesCarncastle
Carn an Chaistil
Carncastle, also written Cairncastle, brings together nineteenth-century churches and a well-recorded legend about a chestnut tree in the parish graveyard.
The name
These Irish name elements are associated with this record in the Logainm glossary.
An element’s translation is a clue, rather than a complete explanation of the name. Its form and meaning depend on local history and the full Irish name.
Recorded forms
- Carn an Chaistil · Irish · main form
- Carncastle · English · main form
Place & story
Saint Patrick’s and its anniversary
Saint Patrick’s Church of Ireland was built in 1815. Its bicentenary in 2015 included a visit by pupils from Cairncastle Primary School, who explored the church and graveyard. The diocesan account identifies a stained-glass window showing Saint Patrick tending sheep on Slemish. The anniversary connected the school with a building that had already served several generations of the surrounding community. [2]
Meeting houses in the survey memoir
Lieutenant Thomas Hore’s Ordnance Survey memoir of March 1833 describes two Presbyterian meeting houses near the junction of the old and new Larne–Glenarm roads. The recently built orthodox meeting house dated from 1832, cost £600 and had a gallery, with room for about 350 people. A larger Unitarian meeting house nearby bore a sundial dated 1779. These details record the village district’s distinct Presbyterian traditions and the scale of their places of worship. [3]
The Armada chestnut
Local tradition associated a sweet chestnut in Saint Patrick’s graveyard with a drowned sailor from the Spanish Armada. In the version recorded by Connor Diocese, his body washed ashore at Ballygally and was buried at the church; a chestnut in his pocket then sprouted into the tree. This is a burial legend, rather than a proven account of the tree’s origin. The diocese reported that the tree fell on 25 June 2020, when there was no wind; a tree surgeon diagnosed root disease. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Antrim
- Barony
- Glenarm Upper
- Civil parish
- Carncastle
- Coordinates
- 54.89212, -5.88012 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1165634 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Carncastle. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Pupils delve into history at St Patrick’s, Cairncastle, 23 March 2015 · Church of Ireland Diocese of Connor
- Ordnance Survey Memoirs for the parishes of Carncastle and Killyglen · Lieutenant Thomas Hore / Glens of Antrim Historical Society
- Historic tree uprooted in Cairncastle graveyard, 29 June 2020 · Church of Ireland Diocese of Connor
- Saint Patrick’s Church, Carncastle, in 2007 illustration: based on a St Patrick's parish church, Cairncastle by Albert Bridge. AI-assisted watercolour and ink adaptation; cream paper margins added, incidental clutter omitted and fine details simplified. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2026-09-19. How this page was prepared.