Glens of Antrim

The Antrim Coast Road in Northern Ireland was designed by Sir Charles Lanyon in 1834. Lanyon was the county architect famous for building Queen's University in Belfast and other imposing Victorian buildings, For almost the entire length of the road, tall cliffs extend virtually to the edge of the Irish Sea and North Channel, making the undertaking a most impressive one.In many places the builders used a raised beach which extends along the coast in N.E. Ireland.

Here the road leads into Glenarrif Glen and the linear stretch of the village of Waterfoot can just be seen along the waters edge. Lurigethan is the hill stretching out into Red Bay. At the top is a very well preserved Iron Age Promontory Fort as in many of the mountain peaks around this part of the Irish coast. Stretching down from base of the near vertical basalt cliffs are ladder farms. After enclosure of common land farmed using rundale from the mid 18th Century, field boundaries and discrete farms were created. In this case, farms were aligned from the top of the hill to the bottom, usually one field wide. This ensured that everyone had a mixture of land types both for reasons of equity and also to suit the mixed farming which was, at that time, practiced.