St Patrick

St Patrick’s is located on Ballymullock Road, near Cairncastle, and looks down onto the scenic Ballygally bay. A place of antiquity, St Patrick’s was the site of a medieval church appearing in the papal taxation of 1306 as Karkastell.

By the early 1600s, the old medieval church was in a state of disrepair, and a temporary building was being used until a new church could be constructed. By 1657 a new church had been built at Cairncastle, but by 1679, it was described as ‘ruinosa’, or run down, and in 1768 it was ‘in bad repair’. However, some lengths of its foundation wall are still visible in the graveyard, with a section of the north wall surviving to a height of about 3 metres. The nave and tower of the new church of St Patrick’s were completed in 1815. The clergy vestry was added in 1861, followed by the chancel with its encaustic pavements, organ and choir stalls in 1891.

The east window was designed by the famed Mayer Company in Munich and is of exceptional quality. Also of note are the two south windows in the chancel, each depicting local landmarks. The St Patrick’s window shows the church’s patron saint tending sheep on Slemish mountain. The south window in the nave commemorates Captain John Park, a former ship’s master on the P&O Larne-Fleetwood ferry.

The churchyard has probably been used as a place of internment since the medieval period. One of its most interesting features is an old Spanish chestnut tree, said to stand on the spot where a Spanish sailor from the Armada was buried in the 16th century. The local legend tells that the sailor’s ship was wrecked off the coast of Northern Ireland. The sailor’s body washed up on the shores of Ballygally Bay in 1588, where locals gave him a Christian burial. At the time, Spanish sailors carried chestnuts to ward off scurvy on their long voyages, and it is believed that one of these seeds grew into the tree. Sadly the tree fell in 2020, but a significant piece of the stump remains.