Hillsborough
The historic village of HILLSBOROUGH, just a mile off the main A1 road and twelve miles southwest of Belfast, merits a quick detour. Its main street has a chintzy, Middle English ambience, reinforced by a sprinkling of tearooms and antique shops. You get the best of Hillsborough by following a route that starts from the war memorial (where regular Ulsterbus services from Newry and Belfast stop) and heads up the magnificent approach to the eighteenth-century Gothic parish church. Bear right here for the main entrance to Hillsborough’s elegant but ruined fort, constructed by Colonel Arthur Hill (after whom the village is named) in 1650 and remodelled in the eighteenth century as a venue for family feasts and entertainment. Beyond this, a deciduous forest opens up, curving around a lake stocked with brown and rainbow trout. Footpaths meander through the trees in all directions – a circuit of the lake takes around an hour.
The Ulster Folk and Transport Museum
One of the most fascinating museums in the North is the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum. The main site is an open-air museum village where about thirty typical buildings from all over the North, some dating from the eighteenth century, have been taken from their original sites and rebuilt complete with authentic furnishings, including an entire street from Dromore and Belfast terraces. Conceptually, you can walk from one part of Northern Ireland to another, amid appropriate scenes. Traditional farms have also been created and assorted livestock roam between the buildings. The starting point is a gallery on Ulster’s social history and an introduction to the buildings themselves. From here you walk around the grounds, visiting the various buildings, including a small village street with church and rectory, two schools, various typical farm dwellings, a forge and other buildings used in light manufacture. Each of these is “inhabited” by a member of staff, garbed in period costume and informative about the building and its origins. Such historical realism is impressive, though sometimes a little disquieting: the Kilmore Church graveyard contains real tombstones donated by family members.
On the far side of the main road, across a bridge, are the transport galleries, where the exhibits include every conceivable form of transport, from horse-drawn carts to lifeboats and a vertical take-off plane, but especially veteran cars, motorcycles and trams. You’ll also meet Old Maeve, the largest locomotive ever built in Ireland, and a DeLorean sports car from the infamously defunct factory, while the Titanic exhibit documents the origins and fate of the Belfast-constructed liner. “The Flight Experience” examines the history of aviation through films, models and interactive displays. Outside the galleries there’s a miniature railway that runs on summer Saturdays, and back in the main section there’s a decent restaurant, located in the Education Centre. The museum also regularly stages temporary exhibitions and occasional cultural events.
Strangford Lough
Ancient annals record that Strangford Lough was formed around 1650 BC by the sea sweeping in over the lands of Brena. This created a beautiful, calm inlet, the archipelago-like pieces of land along its inner arm fringed with brown and yellow bladderwrack and tangleweed, and tenanted by a rich gathering of bird life during the warmer months and vast flocks of geese and waders in the winter. It’s an attractive haven for small boats and yachts, and several picturesque halts for the land-bound make the road along the lough’s western shore the most interesting route leading south from Belfast.
Portaferry
PORTAFERRY, at the mouth of Strangford Lough, is the home of the Exploris aquarium, which has a touch-tank for the brave to stroke a stingray, and an open-sea tank where you can view the odd roaming shark and basking seals. However, the town’s main attraction is the marvellous sunset looking across the “Narrows” to Strangford, a view enhanced by a ten-minute climb to the stump of the old windmill just behind the town.
The Lecale region
Jutting into the southern reach of Strangford Lough, the Lecale Peninsula is above all St Patrick country. Ireland’s patron saint was a Roman Briton, first carried off as a youth from somewhere near Carlisle in northern England by Irish raiders. He spent six years in slavery in Ireland before escaping home again and, at the age of 30, decided to return to Ireland as a bishop, to spread Christianity. Christianity had already reached Ireland a while earlier, probably through traders and other slaves, and, indeed, St Patrick was not in fact the first bishop of Ireland, but he remains easily the most famous. He arrived in Ireland this second time, according to his biographer Muirchú (also his erstwhile captor, converted), on the shores of the Lecale region, and his first Irish sermon was preached at Saul in 432. Today the region commemorates the association with sites at Struell Wells and Saul, as well as at Downpatrick.
The Lecale Way is an almost forty-mile waymarked walking tour of the peninsula starting in Raholp and running to Strangford and thence around the coast to Clough and onwards to Newcastle (maps available from the Downpatrick tourist office). If you’ve had enough of St Patrick and his seeming connection with nearly every landmark, alternative ways of exploring the peninsula are the nature rambles and horse rides available at the Quoile Countryside Centre just outside Downpatrick.
Downpatrick
DOWNPATRICK, 23 miles south of Belfast, is a pleasant enough place of little more than ten thousand people, and its compact size and the proximity of some rich and well-preserved historical sites make for an easy and worthwhile day’s visit. The Hill of Down, at the north of the town, was once a rise of great strategic worth, fought over long before the arrival of St Patrick made it famous. A Celtic fort of mammoth proportions was built here and was called first Arús Cealtchair, then later Dún Cealtchair. Celtchar was one of the Red Branch Knights, a friend of the then King of Ulster, Conor MacNessa, and, according to the Book of the Dun Cow, “an angry terrific hideous man with a long nose, huge ears, apple eyes, and coarse dark-grey hair”. The Dún part of the fort’s name went on to become the name of the county, as well as the town.
By the time the Norman knight John de Courcy made his mark here in the late twelfth century, a settlement was well established. Pushing north out of Leinster, and defeating Rory MacDonlevy, King of Ulster, de Courcy dispossessed the Augustinian canons who occupied the Hill of Down to establish his own Benedictine abbey. He flaunted as much pomp as he could to mark the occasion, and one of his festive tricks was to import what were supposedly the disinterred bodies of St Brigid and St Columba to join St Patrick, who was (allegedly) buried here. One of the earliest accounts of Patrick’s life asserts that he’s buried in a church near the sea; and since a later account admits that “where his bones are, no man knows”, Downpatrick’s claim seems as good as any.
On the trail of St Patrick
About four miles west of Inch Abbey (take the B2 to Annacloy and then the first turning on the left), Loughinisland is probably the most worthwhile of all the sites in the area associated with St Patrick, and indeed one of the most idyllic spots in County Down. It comprises a reed-fringed lake contained by ten or so little drumlin hills, one of which forms an island in the lake. Here, across a short causeway, are the ruins of three small churches, set next door to each other. The smallest one, MacCartan’s Chapel (1636), has an entrance door no taller than four or five feet. The larger northern church was used by both Catholics and Protestants until they quarrelled on a wet Sunday around 1720 over which camp should remain outside during the service. The Protestants left and built their church at Seaforde instead.
The next St Patrick landmark is at Saul, a couple of miles northeast of Downpatrick off the Strangford road. St Patrick is said to have landed nearby, sailing up the tiny River Slaney, and it was here that he first preached, immediately converting Dichu, the lord of this territory. Dichu gave Patrick a barn as his first base and the saint frequently returned here to rest from his travelling missions – legend has it that he died here in 461. Today a memorial chapel and round tower in the Celtic Revival style, built of pristine silver-grey granite in 1932 to commemorate the 1500th anniversary of the saint’s arrival, is open to visitors (9am–5pm daily). Two cross-carved stones from between the eighth and twelfth centuries still stand in the graveyard, though there’s not a trace of the medieval monastery built here by St Malachy in the twelfth century.
A short distance further south, between Saul and Raholp, St Patrick’s Shrine sits atop Slieve Patrick, a tract of hillside much like a slalom ski-slope, with the Stations of the Cross marking a pathway up. This huge Mourne-granite statue, clad at the base with bronze panels depicting Patrick’s life, was erected in the same year as Saul church. The summit is no more than a twenty-minute climb and offers a commanding view of the county, a vista of the endless little bumps of this drumlin-filled territory.
At Raholp is the ruined church of St Tassach, named after the bishop from whom the dying Patrick received the sacrament. Patrick gave Raholp to Tassach as a reward for crafting a case for Christ’s crozier, the Bachall Isú, one of Ireland’s chief relics until its destruction in 1538. The ruins here were mainly restored in 1915 from the rubble that lay around, but their material is thought to date from the eleventh century. If you’re eager for the complete St Patrick experience, it’s a mile from the car park of the Slaney Inn (which serves superb bar meals) in Raholp to the spot on the lough shore where he is believed to have first landed: head towards Strangford, then left down Myra Road; cross the main Strangford road and turn left at the first fork; at the bottom of the hill, take the track on the right to the shore.
The easiest way to find the last St Patrick site, Struell Wells, is to return to Downpatrick. Take the Ardglass road southeast, turn left just past the hospital, then right down a narrow track into a secluded rock-faced valley and you’ll come to the wells. The waters here, believed to be the wells referred to in early accounts of Patrick’s mission, have been attributed with healing powers for centuries. In 1744 Walter Harris described the scene: “Vast throngs of rich and poor resort on Midsummer Eve and the Friday before Lammas, some in the hopes of obtaining health, and others to perform penance.” The site contains a couple of wells, one for drinking and another known as the eye well whose waters are supposed to have curative powers, and men’s and women’s bathhouses. Mass is still said here on midsummer night, and people bring containers to carry the water home with them.
The Lecale Way
The Lecale Way is an almost forty-mile waymarked walking tour of the peninsula starting in Raholp and running to Strangford and thence around the coast to Clough and onwards to Newcastle (maps available from the Downpatrick tourist office). If you’ve had enough of St Patrick and his seeming connection with nearly every landmark, alternative ways of exploring the peninsula are the nature rambles and horse rides available at the Quoile Countryside Centre just outside Downpatrick.