Ardglass

Ardglass () is a coastal fishing village, townland (of 321 acres) and civil parish in County Down, Northern Ireland, in the historic barony of Lecale Lower. It is still a relatively important fishing harbour. It is situated on the B1 Ardglass to Downpatrick road, about 6 miles (11 kilometres) to the south east of Downpatrick, in the Lecale peninsula on the Irish Sea. It had a population of 1,668 in the 2001 Census, and is located within the Newry, Mourne and Down area.

The village is a commuter centre for workers in Downpatrick and Belfast, a seaside resort and a local service centre providing housing and a variety of shops and services largely concentrated in Castle Place, Quay Street, Kildare Street and Bath Street. A Conservation area was designated in Ardglass in 1996, focused on its early 19th century street pattern. The village has eight archaeological sites within the area and another two nearby. There are a number of listed properties located on Castle Place, Kildare Street and The Crescent. St Nicholas's Church, King's Castle, Ardglass Castle, Isabella Tower, the disused railway station, the North Pier and the inner Dock are also listed.

History

Ardglass grew from a place of little note in the 13th century to a modestly prosperous port in the 15th century. It was an important town and port in the Middle Ages, but no harbour works seem to have been constructed until after 1812. Then William Ogilvie, who had acquired the Ardglass estate, had a harbour built. Further extensions to the pier and a lighthouse were made, but on 27 November 1838 a great storm undermined the lighthouse which fell into the sea along with the end of the pier. The harbour master between 1845 and 1858 was Captain Bernard Hughes (1790-1866), M.N., who was also private secretary to the local squireen, Aubrey de Vere Beauclerk, (a grandson of William Ogilvie), and master of the Erasmus Smith school in Ardglass. When the S.S. Great Britain was run aground in Dundrum Bay in 1846 due to a navigational error, Hughes was involved in her salvage. This led him to champion Ardglass as a "Harbour of Refuge" for vessels off the northeast coast of Ireland in times of distress. He carried on a tireless campaign in the local press and with the Admiralty to achieve his goal, but was ultimately unsuccessful. He invented and patented the keystone method of constructing sea walls in 1849-51 which involved stones being set together without the use of mortar to allow them to expand when being pounded by wave action. Captain Bernard Hughes's sons included John Waring Maxwell Hughes (1816-1906), for whom see passim, and his grandsons; Commander William Thomas Hughes (1880-1978), staff captain of the RMS Mauretania, and Vice-Commodore Johnstone Hughes (1866-1931) of Messrs Elder Dempster, who was born in Ardglass. His great-grandsons included, Major General William Dillon Hughes, (1900-1998), head of the Royal Army Medical Corps, who was born in Ardglass, and Air Marshal Sir Andrew Mc Kee (1903-1985), former head of Transport Command.

Work on the pier was completed by 1885 and it remains in use to this day.

Ardglass contains more medieval tower houses than any other town in Ireland, a total of four, reflecting its importance as Ulster's busiest port in the 15th century. It also has probably the most extensive network of warehouses from the period surviving in Ireland. These were important in the substantial grain export trade of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Fortifications survive in the town from the fifteenth century, including Jordan's Castle, the most imposing of a ring of towers built around the harbour to secure the then important Anglo-Norman trading port, King's Castle and Cowd Castle. A map of 1634 shows three buildings: ''Greate ward'', ''Little ward'' and ''Ardglas,'' the latter referring to the 'green height' known as The Ward.

Nearby are the ruins of the 15th-century Ardtole Church. Francis Joseph Bigger, the Irish nationalist, and sometime Belfast solicitor, purchased Jordan's Castle at Ardglass in the 1890s. He restored the castle, naming it Castle Sean, a model of the Celtic Revival and made it a meeting place for its more prominent people, such as Alice Stopford Green, finally bequeathing it to the state.

Account of Ardglass in 1833

The ''Dublin Penny Journal'' of 30 March 1833 describes Ardglass as follows:

Economy

Ardglass has been a fishing port for more than two thousand years and developed as such due to its location on the east coast of Lecale and its sitting by a natural inlet. It has one of the few harbours which is accessible at all states of the tide and today has two fishing piers, the North Pier and South Pier, a number of fish processing factories and a marina. While the port is not as busy now as in its heyday, 150 years ago, up to £5 million passes through the fish trade here every year. The port specialises in herrings, prawns, and whitefish.

Places of interest

*Ardglass Marina, sometimes also known as Phennick Cove, has a capacity for about 80 craft and a deep water basin open 24 hours daily all year. Strangford Lough lies six miles to the north.
*Ardglass Golf Club