[1] Established by Alexander MacDonnell, Dunaneeny held a commanding position overlooking Port Brittas (Ballycastle Bay) in which galleys brought over from Kintyre and the Isles would shelter.

According to letters written by the Earl of Essex to Queen Elizabeth I's secretary and spymaster Francis Walsingham, it was from the cliffs at Dunaneeny Castle on the Irish mainland that Sorley Boy MacDonnell helplessly watched the Rathlin Island massacre.

[6] Sorley Boy MacDonnell later died at the castle in 1590, with tradition telling stories of a funeral procession carrying the chieftain from Dunaneeny, through the town to his final resting place at Bonamargy Friary.

[7] Shortly after 1600, Sorley Boy's son Randall MacDonnell rebuilt parts of the castle along with substantial structures inside the walls that were built in the fashionable English timber-frame technique of the period.

The remains of the castle is located on the cliffs overlooking Ballycastle Bay, behind a caravan park, on an almost triangular headland enclosed by a deep rock-cut ditch.