Cushendun, Bun Abhann Duinne, Co. Antrim

Bun Abhann Duinne · Co. Antrim

A Welshman built a Cornish village in an Irish glen for a Penzance wife.

Cushendun is a hundred and fifteen people in a village designed for a different country. In 1912 Ronald McNeill - later Lord Cushendun, the Conservative MP and Glenmona House owner - hired the Welsh architect Clough Williams-Ellis to lay out the place in the style of a Cornish fishing village. Williams-Ellis would later go on to build Portmeirion in north Wales, the small Italianate village where The Prisoner was filmed. Cushendun was an earlier and quieter rehearsal. The point of the Cornish look was a tribute to McNeill's wife Maud Bolitho, who came from Penzance and was homesick. The whitewashed terraces, the slate, the slightly-too-formal square - none of it is local. All of it has been here long enough now that it is.

The National Trust took on most of the village in 1954 and has had it since. That is the reason it still looks the way it looks: no shopfronts shouting, no extensions in the wrong materials, no holiday-let conversions with the wrong windows. Glenmona House sits behind it. The Maud Cottages, the five-house terrace built in 1926 after Maud's death, are at one end. There is a square. There is a bridge. There is a beach. There is a pub. That is most of the working list.

What people come for now, mostly, is the caves. Red sandstone sea caves at the south end of the beach, formed over four hundred million years, used in the second season of Game of Thrones for the scene where Melisandre gives birth to the shadow assassin. The caves came back in season eight for Jaime and Euron Greyjoy. The village has lived with it. The cave is still a cave. Walk to it before the coaches arrive - it is five minutes from the bridge - and it does what caves do.

Population

115 (2021 census)

Founded

Village rebuilt 1912

Coords

55.1247° N, 6.0467° W

01 / 08

At a glance.

Three things every local will eventually mention. Read these and you've already understood more than most day-trippers do.

01 The village

Designed by the man who built Portmeirion.

Sir Clough Williams-Ellis laid out the whitewashed terraces in 1912 for Lord Cushendun, to please his Cornish wife Maud. The National Trust has owned most of the village since 1954.

Stories & lore → 02 Glendun

One of the nine Glens of Antrim.

The River Dun comes out of the hills behind, runs under the Glendun Viaduct, and meets the sea at the harbour. Charles Lanyon designed the viaduct in the 1840s.

Walks & outings → 03 The caves

Where Melisandre had the shadow baby.

Red sandstone sea caves at the southern end of the beach, 400 million years old, used for the Stormlands in Game of Thrones Season 2. Five minutes' walk from the bridge.

Walks & outings →

02 / 08

The pubs.

None of these are themed Irish pubs, because they don't need to be. A few that earn the trip:

Mary McBride's

Old, low-ceilinged, music at weekends

Village pub

First licensed in the 1860s and once listed as one of the smallest bars in Ireland. The upstairs is a seafood bistro called The Little Black Door, opened 2015. One of the ten carved Game of Thrones doors hangs inside - the storm of 2016 took down trees from the Dark Hedges, and HBO had them turned into commemorative doors and parcelled out around Northern Ireland. McBride's got one.

03 / 08

Where to sleep.

Place	Type	Local note
The Villa Farmhouse	B&B	Tudor-style house up on Torr Road above the village. Ten minutes' walk to the beach, fifteen to the square. View across to the Mull of Kintyre on a clear day. Stained glass and open fires inside.

04 / 08

Stories & lore.

The reason to come back. The things every local will eventually tell you about, usually after the second pint.

Williams-Ellis, 1912

The Welshman's Cornish village

Ronald McNeill bought into Glenmona House in 1910 and hired Clough Williams-Ellis two years later to redesign the village around the harbour. Williams-Ellis was thirty and not yet famous. He built whitewashed terraces, a square, a row of low slate-roofed houses, all in a deliberately Cornish idiom - tall chimneys, lime render, asymmetric gables - to please McNeill's wife Maud Bolitho, who was from Penzance and missed home. He came back in 1926, after Maud died, and added the Maud Cottages at the east end of the village in her memory. By then he was working out the ideas that would become Portmeirion in Wales fifteen years later. Cushendun was the prototype, and almost nobody outside the Glens knows it.

Stormlands, season 2

The caves and Melisandre

The red sandstone caves at the south end of Cushendun beach were formed over four hundred million years by sea erosion of Old Red Sandstone - the colour comes from the iron-rich deposits laid down in a hot dry climate when the rocks were forming. HBO scouted them in 2011 and used them in the second season of Game of Thrones for the Stormlands, the scene where Davos rows Melisandre to a cave under Storm's End and she gives birth to the shadow that kills Renly Baratheon. The caves came back in season eight for the Jaime-and-Euron fight on the beach. The walk in is five minutes from the bridge over the Dun; the caves themselves are short, dark, and wet underfoot. Bring a torch and proper shoes. Do not go at high tide.

Why it still looks like this

The National Trust holding

Most Northern Irish coastal villages have been remade by the holiday-cottage market over the last forty years - windows changed, signage shouting, extensions in the wrong materials. Cushendun has not, because the National Trust took ownership of most of the village in 1954, including the McNeill terraces, the square, and the parkland around Glenmona House. The village was designated a Conservation Area in 1980. The Trust runs Glenmona as a holiday let - a single house, sleeps twelve - and lets the rest of the cottages out long-term. The result is a village that looks intentional rather than accidental. The cost is that Cushendun is mostly empty in winter; many of the houses are second homes or Trust lets between guests.

05 / 08

Things to do outside.

Wear waterproofs. Bring a sandwich. Tell someone where you're going if it's the mountain.

Cushendun Caves loop Out from the square, over the bridge, down the beach, into the caves, back along the cliff path. The headline walk. Do it at low tide and bring a torch.

3.5 kmdistance

55 mintime

Glendun and the viaduct Up the A2 and onto Glendun Road, west into the glen. Charles Lanyon's three-arched sandstone viaduct over the Dun was built around 1839. Pull in below it for the photograph. The road carries on over the Antrim plateau to Ballymena.

Drive plus stopsdistance

Half a morningtime

Torr Head North out of the village along Torr Road - single-track, slow, no coaches. Park at the headland and walk up to the old coastguard station. Mull of Kintyre across the water on a clear day, twenty kilometres away.

10 km drive then 1 km walkdistance

1-2 hourstime

06 / 08

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

The Glens are green, the road is empty, the caves are uncrowded. Best time.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Game of Thrones coaches reach the caves by mid-morning. Be there by nine, or be there at six in the evening when they have gone.

◐ Mind yourself

Autumn

Sep-Oct

October light on the red sandstone is the photograph everyone wants. Pub steady, village quiet.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

Half the houses are shut up. McBride's runs reduced hours. Atlantic storms make the cave walk dangerous; check the tide.

◐ Mind yourself

07 / 08

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

If a local was sitting beside you, this is the bit where they'd lean in.

The middle of the day in summer

Game of Thrones coaches between eleven and three. The caves are small. Go early or go late.

Driving Torr Road in a camper or a coach

Single-track with passing places, climbs and drops, no shoulder. Hire a small car or take the A2 round.

Treating Cushendun as a day on its own

It is a village, a beach, a cave, a pub. An hour and a half, well spent. Pair it with Cushendall, Glenariff, Ballycastle, or the road north to the Causeway.

Looking for the McNeill story signposted

It is not. The Williams-Ellis-Portmeirion connection is real and verifiable but the village does not advertise it. Read it in advance and you will see the village; arrive cold and you will see whitewashed cottages.

Getting there.

By car

On the A2 Causeway Coastal Route, between Cushendall (8 km south) and Ballycastle (24 km north over the Torr Road, longer by the A2). Belfast is 90 km, about 1h 40m. Coach drivers usually take the inland route via Ballymena and over Glendun.

By bus

Translink Ulsterbus 150 runs Ballymena-Cushendall-Cushendun a few times a day. Sundays are thin. The Antrim Coaster (route 252) runs Belfast-Larne-Glens-Coleraine in summer and stops here.

By air

Belfast International (BFS) is 75 km, about 1h 20m. Belfast City (BHD) is 90 km, about 1h 40m.

Next on the tour

Co. Antrim

Ballycastle

Up the coast over Torr Head or round by the A2. The next real town - Rathlin ferry, the Ould Lammas Fair, a proper harbour.

Co. Antrim

Bushmills

An hour west on the Causeway Coast. The world's oldest licensed distillery and the gateway to the Giant's Causeway.

Co. Antrim

Belfast

Ninety kilometres south. The city the Glens turn their back on, with the Titanic Quarter and the Cathedral Quarter and a bus home.

Co. Antrim

Cushendall

Just five kilometres up the road, the capital of the Glens where three valleys come together.