placenamesGiant's Causeway
Clochán an Aifir
The Causeway Hotel records the growth of nineteenth-century tourism above the famous basalt shore.
The name
These Irish name elements are associated with this record in the Logainm glossary.
An element’s translation is a clue, rather than a complete explanation of the name. Its form and meaning depend on local history and the full Irish name.
Recorded forms
- Clochán an Aifir · Irish · main form
- Giant's Causeway · English · main form
Place & story
A hotel above the stones
The Causeway Hotel’s history dates its foundation stone to 1836 and the main building to 1841. Elizabeth Henry oversaw the initial construction but died before its completion. The Traill brothers acquired the hotel in 1887 and built a tram station in its grounds; the hotel also employed guides to take visitors to the stones. [2]
The basalt shore
Below the visitor area, roughly 40,000 basalt columns form the Giant’s Causeway. UNESCO identifies the coastal exposures as an important record of volcanic activity around 60 million years ago: successive lava flows and intervening weathered layers helped geologists reconstruct the region’s volcanic history. The site entered the World Heritage List in 1986. [3]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Antrim
- Barony
- Cary
- Civil parish
- Billy
- Within
- Ardihannon
- Coordinates
- 55.24285, -6.50625 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 118031 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Giant's Causeway. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- History — The Causeway Hotel · The Causeway Hotel
- Giant’s Causeway and Causeway Coast · UNESCO World Heritage Centre
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2021-05-26. How this page was prepared.