Ballycastle Golf Club

Ballycastle Golf Club was founded in 1890 by 26 enthusiasts led by Naval Commander Alfred Malcolm Causton, on land provided free for twenty years by Miss Kathleen Boyd of the local manor estate — the kind of founding deal that shaped early golf in Ireland. One year later, in November 1891, Ballycastle was one of just nine clubs that founded the Golfing Union of Ireland at a meeting in Belfast. The others were Royal Belfast and seven others including clubs from Killymoon, Dungannon, Portsalon, and North West — a founding moment for Irish golf, and Ballycastle was in the room.

The course is divided into three distinct personalities. The opening holes run through parkland along the Margy and Carey rivers, with the late-15th-century ruins of Bonamargy Friary — the only surviving Franciscan foundation in the north of Ireland — visible just across the road and serving as an out-of-bounds marker for the opening holes. The middle section moves onto links ground with gorse between fairways and rising terrain. Then the back nine climbs the clifftop, runs along the edge above the Antrim coast, and drops back down — the most dramatic stretch, with Rathlin Island visible across the water, Fair Head's 200-metre dolerite columns to the east, and on a clear day the Mull of Kintyre on the Scottish horizon.

Ballycastle town holds Ireland's oldest fair: the Ould Lammas Fair, with a charter dating to 1606, traditionally selling yellowman (honeycomb toffee) and dulse (dried seaweed). It is also the departure point for Rathlin Island ferry crossings — the island where Robert the Bruce is said to have watched the spider.