County Down
An Dún
- IrishAn Dún
- ProvinceUlster
- County townDownpatrick, by tradition
- Local governmentNo county council since 1973. The county lies in five districts: Newry, Mourne and Down; Ards and North Down; Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon; Lisburn and Castlereagh; Belfast
- Area2,491 km²
- Population553,261 (2021)
- Highest pointSlieve Donard, 849 m
Ballynahinch
In June 1798 the United Irishmen of Down rose under Henry Monro, a Lisburn man. He took Ballynahinch without a fight and set his men on the high ground round the town.
On the twelfth of June General Nugent came against him with about two thousand men. That night Monro would not attack in the dark. He would fight them like men, he said, in the first rays of tomorrow's sun. About seven hundred of his men left before morning.
On the thirteenth his pikemen got as far as the centre of the town. Then a bugle sounded the retreat. His men took it for more crown troops coming, and broke.
Monro was hanged opposite his own door in Lisburn on the eighteenth of June. Tell my country I deserved better of her, he said.
Cormac Óg
Millisle farm
In May 1939 three men of the Belfast Refugee Aid Committee leased a derelict farm of about seventy acres near Millisle. There was a stone farmhouse, Ballyrolly House, and not much else.
The children came from the Belfast hostel that summer. The first night the tents leaked. The second night they slept in a whitewashed cowshed.
It was run as a cooperative farm on the kibbutz pattern. Up to eighty people lived there at a time, and well over three hundred passed through between 1938 and May 1948, when it closed. Ballyrolly House was still standing in 2001.
Cormac Óg
Thomas Andrews
Born at Ardara, Comber, in 1873, into a family of flax spinners. He learned to sail on Strangford Lough.
At sixteen he started an apprenticeship at Harland and Wolff. His uncle was the chairman. By 1907 Andrews was managing director, but he never held a share in the firm.
In April 1912 he sailed on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. When she struck the iceberg he inspected the damage. He knew better than anyone that she would sink. He helped the crew and was last seen throwing deckchairs overboard.
Cormac Óg
Read further
Northern Ireland took the Kindertransport at the Millisle farm. Éire took almost none.