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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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Cache is a small tab-lock box with geocaching sticker and covered in black tape. The cache is NOT located within Kilroot House, but within the graveyard. You can park close to the cache site. The house itself is out of bounds as it is dangerous but there is no need to enter the building at any time. There is no entrance to the house from the road but please ensure you read the warning signs and keep your children safe.
The following is taken from the excavation records for Kilroot House from the Queens University Belfast Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork.
"Kilroot House is an impressive three storey ruin, known erroneously as the Bishop’s House or Palace, it probably dates to the eighteenth century and was apparently occupied until the beginning of the nineteenth century. Kilroot House, and the remains of the bawn it was built within, are both located within an earlier ecclesiastical site at Kilroot, near Carrickfergus, County Antrim. In the area to the east of Kilroot House, and confined within the northeastern corner of the bawn, is a small graveyard whose use has continued until relatively recent times. Although no longer visible today, the ruins of the site’s medieval church were recorded during the nineteenth century within the small, modern graveyard. Kilroot House, the modern graveyard and part of the surrounding bawn were scheduled in
November 2000.
The southern retaining wall of the modern graveyard collapsed in November 2002. Carrickfergus Borough Council intended to replace the collapsed wall and the Environment and Heritage Service undertook to carry out any necessary archaeological mitigation in advance of this building work.
Study of a sixteenth century map of Belfast Lough, attributed to Robert Lythe, suggests that, probably by the 1570s, the Manor at Kilroot had, at least temporarily, passed out of the hands of the Bishop’s of Connor to persons unknown, and that a number of structures, in addition to the medieval parish church, had been built at the site. What these buildings were is difficult to evaluate, however, it is possible that the map illustrates a tower house attached to the remains of the church, associated with a number of other buildings and enclosed within a bawn. It is recorded that in 1578 John Dalway, who had come to Ulster as a cornet in Essex’s army, married a granddaughter of Hugh O’Neill and obtained a grant, from Shane McBryan O’Neill, of the lands of Kilroot and the adjoining parish of Templecorran. Following the death of McBryan, and the subsequent forfeiting of his estates to the Crown, Dalway obtained a grant from James I of such lands as he held in right of O’Neill. The 1611 Report of the Plantation Commissioners suggests that by the early seventeenth century the site had passed back into the hands of the Bishop of Down and Connor as they record that Robert Humston, who was Bishop of Down and Connor between 1601 and 1606, built a house at Kilroot".
From the Larne/Belfast Road take the Fort Road towards the Salt Mines. The cache is placed within the old graveyard which is accessed by steps from the side of road. There are gravestones dated from the mid 1700’s, some very sad ones from the 1800’s and some relatively recent ones. You can see across the Lough towards Bangor through the trees and if you visit towards dusk you will be rewarded with bats flying above, going to and from the old buildings, fantastic!!
Please leave nothing but footprints and take nothing but memories (and photos!!).
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Evpuneq Cnexre