Ould Lammas Fair Drew 100,000 Around a Building Site

The 2025 Ould Lammas Fair drew in excess of 100,000 visitors, the council said, while Fairhill Street sat closed and Quay Road was a building site.

Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council called it a record across four days from Saturday 23 August to Tuesday 26 August 2025. Shops and cafes reported more trade. The layout that hosted them was a construction fence and a hotel wrapped in shipping containers.

A Building Site on Quay Road

The council’s own preview did not dress the hole in the ground as a finished hall. It said the new Ballycastle Leisure Centre on Quay Road meant a brand-new layout, with the seafront taking attractions that used to sit on the old leisure pitch.

Councillor Cara McShane said the rides had been moved onto private land by the seafront. DUP councillor Bill Kennedy, for The Glens, called the works “a bit disruptive” and said the land off Quay Road was a building site that would still be one when the fair came round again.

GRAHAM started on 27 February 2025. Council-backed announcements put the project at £16.4 million, jointly funded by the borough and the UK government, with a 25 metre, four-lane pool, a gym, a studio and outdoor ground. First public dates pointed to November 2026. By August 2026 the contractor was working toward April 2027.

THE TWO CHOKE POINTS IN 2025

At the seafront the Naturally North Coast and Glens artisan market ran all four days from 11am to 5pm, with around 60 small businesses selling craft, art and food. A Street Food Village, new for 2025, ran on Saturday evening from 7pm to 10pm and on Sunday from 7pm to 9pm.

Horse Traders Worked Around a Hotel in Containers

Fairhill Street, where the horse dealing is supposed to live, had been shut to traffic since October 2024. Declan Wright, owner of the former Antrim Arms Hotel through Maplemanor Properties for more than 20 years, received a dangerous structure notice on 7 October 2024 after masonry came off the listed building at the corner of Castle Street and Fairhill Street.

The council stood shipping containers outside the hotel to keep pedestrians clear of falling debris. McShane said the weekend had “been not without challenge, given the closure of Fairhill Street, where traditionally the horse trading would have taken place,” and that the council had opened a pedestrian path. “But it’s business as usual and we need to ensure best foot forward,” she said.

On 6 August 2025, 17 days before the fair opened, the council refused Wright’s application to demolish the grade B1 building, which dates from the 1760s and has been listed since 1981. After the weekend the council still said the horse-trading area had returned to Fairhill Street, with farrier displays and pony rides, while the animal petting farm ran on Clare Street.

THE ANTRIM ARMS CLOCK

1. 7 October 2024: Wright receives a dangerous structure notice; Fairhill Street is closed to traffic.
2. 6 August 2025: Council refuses listed-building demolition after Historic Environment Division advice.
3. 23-26 August 2025: Fair runs with containers at the hotel and a pedestrian route past the closed street.
4. April 2026: Fire tears through the empty hotel; more than 40 firefighters attend and police treat the blaze as deliberate.
5. 8 July 2026: The building is substantially demolished overnight.
6. 9 July 2026: Council officers inspect the site and open an investigation into whether the work was legal.
7. 22-25 August 2026: The next fair lists horse trading on Fairhill Street from 10am to 6pm.

A local trader, McVeigh, later said deliveries had to “do a mile tour right round the place” and that the closure was “hitting our footfall.” Sinn Féin MLA Philip McGuigan said a £2 million public-realm scheme for the Diamond, due by March 2027, had been halted while the hotel sat unresolved. The council said the building’s future remained a significant factor in progressing that scheme.

What the 100,000 Figure Left Out

On 28 August 2025 the council reported crowds in excess of 100,000 and called Saturday a record opening day. That is a four-day council figure, not a turnstile count, and it sits beside a smaller picture from the street itself.

Brian McLister, a shopowner with 45 years in the local chamber of commerce and its president for two, stood on Quay Road during the 2025 weekend and talked in tens of thousands, not in a four-day total.

I’d say it’s as big as ever, if not bigger. Looking up the Quay Road, it’s heads, the whole way up. That’s half a mile of solid people.

Brian McLister, shopowner and chamber president, during the 2025 fair

McShane said trading and concession licences had risen overall. McLister said the Antrim Arms road closure and the leisure-centre works had not had any real impact on the event as he saw it. Those two claims can both be true in a town that still filled, and still made one street take a mile-long delivery loop.

Saturday’s heavy horse show and parade went through town at 1pm, with a vintage vehicle and tractor run at 3pm. Fireworks went up over the marina at 9.30pm, with Jason Hughes and Neil McClelland on the seafront. Sunday’s Diamond concert ran from 7pm, Clada first, then Wolfhound at 8.30pm. Hugo Duncan broadcast live from the seafront on Monday from 1.30pm to 3pm. Quiet-time sessions ran from 11am to 12 noon. Tuesday brought rain after lunch, and stalls still traded into the evening.

Mayor Oliver McMullan, who presented heavy-horse awards on Saturday, called the fair a tremendous success with huge crowds across all four days, and thanked the events, estates and cleansing crews who put it up and took it down.

The Song Still Names Dulse and Yellowman

The layout moved. The two things people still ask for by name did not. John Henry MacAuley’s 1920s song still sends visitors looking for dulse and yellowman, and stallholders still sell both on the same streets the horses use.

WHAT THE FAIR STILL SELLS BY NAME

• Yellowman: A hard honeycomb sweet boiled from sugar, syrup, vinegar and soda, made in bulk each August by a handful of Antrim families.
• Dulse: Purple-red seaweed, dried until it chews like a salty chip, gathered on the north coast and sold in bags beside the toffee.
• Heavy horses: The Saturday show and parade that opens the four days before the dealing days on Monday and Tuesday.
• Horse trading: The old core of the fair, staged on Fairhill Street when the street can take it.

John Devlin, whose family sold fruit and yellowman, has said his grandfather Joe Devlin named the sweet and brought it to the fair in the early 1900s, and that from early August it was seven days a week with no summer holiday. The song’s chorus still does the marketing: “Did you treat your Mary Ann to some Dulse and Yellow Man? At the ould Lammas Fair in Ballycastle-O.”

Four Centuries of Moving the Fair

The 2025 squeeze was a new map, not a new habit. Local history ties the gathering to public games ordered in 1571 by Sorley Boy MacDonnell for the coming of age of his nephew Gillaspick MacDonnell, and to sheep markets around Dunaneeny Castle. The Irish name Dún an Aonaigh means fort of the assembly, or fort of the fair.

In 1606 Randall MacDonnell secured a charter for six fairs a year at Dunaneeny, one of them on the last Tuesday in August, which is still where the dealing days sit. When the MacDonnells moved their centre of gravity and the old castle declined, the fair settled on the Diamond and along Castle Street, Ann Street and Quay Road, which is why a pool on Quay Road now shoves the amusements toward the sea.

Hugh A. Boyd’s notes on older Ballycastle fairs record buyers from across the channel and, in one 1928 write-up, a two-day event that had lasted a week seventy years before. The same notes remember Islay boats at older fairs bringing 300 to 450 people and about 100 tons of dried fish until those luggers stopped. The 2025 fair did what those earlier versions did. It kept the date and moved the stalls.

When Did Horse Trading Return to Fairhill Street?

Horse trading was listed on Fairhill Street from 10am to 6pm on Monday 24 and Tuesday 25 August 2026, after the Antrim Arms was reduced to rubble overnight on 8 July 2026. Official 2026 visitor notes also put portable toilets on Fairhill Street, which is how a closed road becomes an event lane again.

Machinery went in around midnight on 8 July. By morning a coaching inn that had also been a brewery, a bank and a hotel was substantially gone. SAVE Britain’s Heritage and Ulster Architectural Heritage had objected, with more than 80 public objections, when demolition was refused in 2025. Conservation engineer Jon Avent, writing for UAH days before the overnight works, said temporary stabilisation and phased repair should be fully explored before any irreversible loss of historic fabric.

Lydia Franklin, conservation officer at SAVE, said demolishing a listed building without the correct permission is illegal and that anyone responsible should be held to account. John Anderson, chair of UAH’s architecture committee, said nearly 300 years of history had been erased overnight. Wright said he had permission after the April fire left the building in a dangerous state. The council said no listed building consent had been granted for the works undertaken, and that it was assessing whether the demolition matched proposals the owner had submitted.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The date: The Antrim Arms was substantially demolished overnight on 8 July 2026.
• The listing: It was a grade B1 building from the 1760s, listed in 1981, at the junction of Castle Street and Fairhill Street.
• The fair effect: Fairhill Street had been closed to traffic since October 2024, and the 2026 programme put horses back on that street.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Consent: Whether the overnight demolition matched any agreed asbestos or partial-demolition works remains under council investigation.
• The £2 million scheme: No public date has been set for restarting the Diamond public-realm works once the site is settled.
• A 2026 headcount: Organisers described a fantastic turnout, especially on Sunday, and did not publish a figure to match 2025’s in excess of 100,000.

The 2026 fair ran from Saturday 22 to Tuesday 25 August, again with a heavy-horse parade, vintage vehicles, a 9.30pm Saturday fireworks show and dealing days on Monday and Tuesday. Trading hours were 8am to 9pm on Monday and 8am to 8.30pm on Tuesday. Mayor Dawn Huggins called it a special event that brings centuries of tradition together with a modern festival. A council spokeswoman said thousands came across all four days and that Sunday was strong. Photographs from Tuesday 25 August show a thinner street than the Monday crush, which is how this fair has always run: the crowd follows the weather and the dealing days, not the press release.

Organisers said the 2026 weekend also drew on the All-Ireland Fleadh held in Belfast earlier that August. They still had no published headcount by the time the stalls came down. Quay Road was still a building site. After 18 months on the ground, GRAHAM had moved into mechanical and electrical fit-out, with the play park under way and the pump track nearly done, aiming at April 2027.

Frequently Asked Questions

When Is the Ould Lammas Fair Held Each Year?

The dealing days are the last Monday and Tuesday of August, with a Saturday and Sunday of parades, markets and fireworks in front of them. That Tuesday lock comes from the 1606 charter, which set one of six Ballycastle fairs on the last Tuesday in August, a harvest date rather than 1 August Lammas. Lammas itself comes from Old English Hlaf Maesse, loaf mass, the blessing of first-fruit bread, and sits on the older Gaelic harvest feast of Lughnasadh.

What Are Yellowman and Dulse Made From?

Yellowman is honeycomb toffee boiled from brown sugar, golden syrup, butter, vinegar and bicarbonate of soda until it foams and sets hard. Dulse is a purple-red seaweed dried into chewy, salty pieces; Irish coastal monasteries were gathering it some 1,400 years ago. The two are sold together at the fair more than they are eaten as a plated pair, which is why the song names them in one line.

Which Families Made the Fair’s Yellowman?

Three related Ballymena-area families, the Devlins, the McKeowns and the Agnews, were the main makers for much of the last century, turning out the sweet by the ton in August while running greengrocers the rest of the year. John Devlin has said the families shared an ingredient the rest did not have. Later stalls have bought in yellowman from Newry and dulse from the County Down coast, so the bags on the street are no longer only a Ballycastle boil.

How Long Did the Fair Last in Earlier Centuries?

Boyd’s 1928 note said the fair then occupied two days, and that seventy years earlier it had lasted a week, with public houses open night and day. Other local accounts say the coming of the railway in 1880 cut a week-long gathering to four days, and that it shrank to two around 1910, before the modern weekend build-up stretched it back to four.

What Extra Kit Is Planned Inside the Quay Road Leisure Centre?

Beyond the 25 metre, four-lane pool and gym already named in the 2025 fair layout fight, the design includes a splash area with modest spa features, a bouldering wall, an outdoor pump track, an off-road walking trail, an accessible play park and a changing-places room. Hall Black Douglas designed it with solar panels and a solar carport in the brief. That was not open for the 2025 or 2026 fairs.

In August 2026 the horses were listed on Fairhill Street again, from 10am to 6pm. The leisure centre on Quay Road was still a building site, with the contractor working toward April 2027. The council had opened a demolition investigation in July.