County in Northern Ireland
County Down
County Down has a 22-mile wall across the Mourne summits, St Patrick's grave, a Narnia-flavoured coastline and a castle built half Gothic and half classical because a couple couldn't agree.
Key information
- County
- County Down
- Nation
- Northern Ireland
- Area
- About 2,500 square km
- Known for
- The Mourne Mountains, Strangford Lough, St Patrick's grave, Royal County Down Golf Club
- What locals are called
- Down people; the county's Gaelic footballers are the Mournemen
- Famous people
- Rory McIlroy, Thomas Andrews, Patrick Brontë
- Football clubs
- Ards, Bangor, Warrenpoint Town
About County Down
The wall that climbs fifteen mountains
The Mourne Wall is a dry-stone barrier about 22 miles long that marches up and over around 15 summits, including Slieve Donard's neighbours. It wasn't built to keep anyone out. It went up between 1904 and 1922 to mark off the catchment area for the Silent Valley reservoir, which supplies Belfast with water. The builders worked in all weathers on exposed granite slopes, and the result is one of the most photographed lines in Ireland. Slieve Donard, at 850 metres, is the highest point in Northern Ireland and rises almost straight from the sea at Newcastle. The Mournes were once smugglers' country too. The old Brandy Pad route carried contraband over the hills from the coast, and walkers still follow it today. Percy French's 1896 song made the range famous around the world with its line about the Mountains of Mourne sweeping down to the sea. C. S. Lewis, who spent happy holidays in County Down, later said the landscape fed his imagination, and Narnia fans like to hunt for it around Rostrevor.
Where St Patrick came ashore and stayed
Down's claim on Ireland's patron saint is strong. Tradition says Patrick landed near Saul, close to Downpatrick, and founded his first church in a barn there. A granite slab in the grounds of Down Cathedral in Downpatrick is marked as his grave, and the town fills up each St Patrick's Day. The county was a powerhouse of early Christianity. Bangor Abbey, founded by St Comgall around 558, grew into one of the great monastic schools of Europe, and its monk Columbanus set off from here to found monasteries on the Continent. On Mahee Island in Strangford Lough, the monastery at Nendrum had a tide mill. Excavations dated it to about 619, which makes it one of the earliest tide mills known anywhere.
A lough with its own tides and its own big ideas
Strangford Lough is the largest sea inlet in the British Isles, and the tide rushes through its narrow mouth at Portaferry with enormous force. A small ferry still shuttles across to the village of Strangford. Each autumn, tens of thousands of pale-bellied brent geese arrive from the eastern Canadian High Arctic, and many later spread out to other Irish sites for the winter. The shores are lined with grand houses. Castle Ward has a Gothic face on one side and a classical face on the other, because the 1760s owners, Lord and Lady Bangor, are said to have disagreed on style. Television fans know it as Winterfell in Game of Thrones. At Mount Stewart, the Londonderry family's garden, shaped by Edith, Lady Londonderry, is full of odd stone animals and warm-climate plants that shouldn't thrive in Ulster, but do.
Potatoes, prawns and perfect golf
Comber Earlies, the early new potatoes grown around Comber, have protected status for their thin skins and sweet flavour. They appear in late spring, and locals queue for them. The fishing ports of Portavogie and Kilkeel land prawns and other shellfish that end up on tables across the island. Strangford Lough mussels and soda bread go well with them. For golf, Royal County Down at Newcastle has the Mournes as its backdrop and is regularly ranked among the world's best courses. Rory McIlroy, from Holywood, grew up on the same north Down fairways and turned the county into a golfing byword.
Famous sons, and one big football first
Thomas Andrews, the shipbuilder who designed the Titanic, came from Comber. Patrick Brontë, father of Charlotte, Emily and Anne, was born in a farming family at Drumballyroney, near Rathfriland, and left for Cambridge before becoming a clergyman in Yorkshire. In sport, Down's Gaelic footballers made history in 1960, when they became the first team from Northern Ireland to win the Sam Maguire Cup. Cavan, also in Ulster, had first won it in 1933. Down won again in 1961, 1968, 1991 and 1994, in red and black. County Down hosted the Ards Tourist Trophy motor race from 1928 to 1936, on a triangular closed-road circuit linking Newtownards, Comber and Dundonald. The county also has Hillsborough Castle, a royal residence, and the Legananny Dolmen, a granite capstone balanced on three stones against the sky, which is one of the best-known prehistoric images in Ireland.