Town in County Down, Northern Ireland
Holywood
A town with a permanent maypole, a hotel that was once a bishop's palace, and the home town of a barman's son who became a golfing great.
Key information
- County
- County Down
- Nation
- Northern Ireland
- Known for
- The permanent Maypole, Rory McIlroy, the Ulster Folk Museum and Ulster Transport Museum
- Famous people
- Rory McIlroy, Jamie Dornan
About Holywood
The town that keeps its maypole up all year
Most places haul a maypole out for a day in spring and then put it away. Holywood leaves its maypole standing at the top of the High Street all year round, a rarity that has become the town's emblem. It gives Holywood a village-green feel in a place that is really a busy commuter town. Locals use it as a meeting point and a landmark, and giving directions here usually starts or ends with the Maypole. The tradition ties into the town's well-kept sense of being its own place, even though Belfast is a few minutes away along the lough shore.
A holy wood and a medieval priory
The name is the story. Holywood means exactly what it says: a holy wood, linked to the religious settlement that grew up on this stretch of shore in the Middle Ages. The town's medieval priory began as an Augustinian foundation and became a Franciscan friary in 1492. Its ruins still sit in the town beside the later church, one of the oldest reminders of how long people have lived on this edge of Belfast Lough. For centuries Holywood remained a small coastal place of fishing and farming, with a sheltered shoreline and the hills rising behind it.
How the railway turned a village into a suburb
The great change came in 1848, when the Belfast and County Down Railway opened its line from Belfast to Holywood. Suddenly Victorian merchants and businessmen could live by the sea and be at their desks in the city within minutes. Big villas went up along the shore and across the slopes at Cultra and Craigavad. The Royal North of Ireland Yacht Club, founded in 1899 at Cultra, is a legacy of that prosperous, boat-minded era. One of the grandest houses was built in 1876 as a private residence. Culloden House became a bishop's palace in 1898, and today it is the Culloden Hotel, with lawns running down towards the lough and the hills behind.
The barman's son who broke the course record
Rory McIlroy grew up in Holywood and learned golf at Holywood Golf Club, where his father worked behind the bar. At sixteen, in 2005, he shot a course-record 61 on the Dunluce Links at Royal Portrush Golf Club. That round was an early sign of what was coming. McIlroy went on to win major championships, including the 2011 US Open, the 2012 and 2014 US PGA Championships and the 2014 Open, and the Masters in 2025. The town has plenty of other famous faces. Actor Jamie Dornan, known for The Fall and Belfast, was born here as well.
Where Ulster's past is kept
Just along the shore at Cultra sit the Ulster Folk Museum and the Ulster Transport Museum. Together they are one of Northern Ireland's best-known family days out. The folk museum is an open-air site where houses, churches and farms from across Ulster have been moved and rebuilt, so you can walk from a thatched cottage to a village street. The transport museum covers trains, trams and cars, and is a big draw for anyone who likes a locomotive. Between the museums, the shoreline paths and the nearby hills, Holywood punches above its weight for a town this size.
Seafront, High Street and a good lunch
Holywood's High Street is lined with independent shops, cafés and restaurants, and the town has a name across Northern Ireland as a place for a leisurely lunch. Many people come out from Belfast just for that. The seafront and the coastal path along Belfast Lough give the town its relaxed holiday air. On clear days you can watch ships and sailing boats head in and out of the lough. Behind it all, the Holywood Hills provide the green backdrop, with walks that look back over the water to the cranes of the Belfast shipyards.