Mazetown or Maze (possibly , otherwise known as ''an Mhaigh'' meaning "the plain") is a small village in
County Down
County Down () is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the traditional thirty-two counties of Ireland. It covers an area of and has a population of 531,665. It borders County Antrim to the ...
, Northern Ireland. It was named after the townland of Maze. The village and townland sit on the southern bank of the
River Lagan
The River Lagan (; Ulster Scots: ''Lagan Wattèr'') is a major river in Northern Ireland which runs 53.5 miles (86 km) from the Slieve Croob mountain in County Down to Belfast where it enters Belfast Lough, an inlet of the Irish Sea. The ...
Maze
A maze is a path or collection of paths, typically from an entrance to a goal. The word is used to refer both to branching tour puzzles through which the solver must find a route, and to simpler non-branching ("unicursal") patterns that lea ...
Long Kesh
Long may refer to:
Measurement
* Long, characteristic of something of great duration
* Long, characteristic of something of great length
* Longitude (abbreviation: long.), a geographic coordinate
* Longa (music), note value in early music mens ...
. The prison was the main internment centre in Northern Ireland for suspected terrorists during the 1970s and was the focus of the
1981 Irish Hunger Strike
The 1981 Irish hunger strike was the culmination of a five-year protest during the Troubles by Irish republicanism, Irish republican prisoners in Northern Ireland. The protest began as the blanket protest in 1976, when the British government ...
. It closed in 2000. The site is to be redeveloped and there are plans to provide a new national stadium for Northern Ireland (which would be unpopular with som and an equestrian facility. Proposals to retain some of the former prison buildings have also provoked controvers