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Publications | Down Survey | 1997 Issue Contents Downpatrick:
historic Irish town Early in the summer of 1997 the Royal Irish Academy published a study of Downpatrick. It is one of a series featuring historic Irish towns and forming part of a larger project sponsored by the International Commission for the History of Towns. So far studies of 240 European towns have been published: Downpatrick is number 8 in the series relating to Ireland, following after Kildare, Carnckfergus, Bandon, Kells, Mullingar, Athlone and Maynooth. Authors for each town are commissioned by an Editorial Board and work to a common format: an essay tracing the topographical history of the town from the earliest times to the mid-nineteenth century is followed by a gazetteer which includes all known references to streets, religious and administrative buildings, defensive features, manufacturing and retail premises and services, schools, hospitals, places of entertainment, transport and utilities and major residences. It also provides data on population and housing, the government of the town, and the names by which it has been known throughout its history: in Downpatrick from the earliest Dun Lethglaise to Dunum in the late twelfth century, and Downpatrick from the mid-seventeenth century to the present. The list is exhaustive, involving detailed research on all known primary sources. Anthony Wilson was responsible for this part of the work on Downpatrick, and it formed the basis for his own book on the history of the town, St Patrick's Town, published in 1995.
The Irish Historic Towns Atlas project is primarily concerned with tracing the evolution of a town's topography, the development of its pattern of streets, houses and public buildings, the influence of hill slopes, river valley and marshland on its urban plan. Writing topographical history differs from conventional history only in its emphasis: place takes precedence over the individual in tracing a town's history, though prominent public figures may have considerable influence on development. Maps are a primary source in this type of work, and Downpatrick is fortunate in having several surveys of the town and manor undertaken for its landowners in the early eighteenth century. Documents for earlier periods unfortunately are scarce, but archaeology provides an additional source of information, largely as a result of excavations undertaken for the archaeological survey of County Down during the 1950s and 1960s. Physical geography has a key role in shaping the growth of any town, and in tracing its origins one has to imagine the natural environment as it appeared to the first settlers. In Downpatrick the role of the sea was all important, although its significance is hard to ' imagine today in what is essentially an inland town. Barrages erected across the Quoile river have excluded the tidal flow from Strangford Lough, land drainage has reduced the once extensive marshes, and cattle now graze on meadows which used to he beneath the sea. But until the mid eighteenth century tidal waters extended from St Patrick's Avenue to Ballydugan and Hollymount, and from the shoreline at New Bridge Street northwards to Inch. The earliest settlement for which there is evidence within the present town was at the entrance to the Meadowlands estate,1 and the Bronze Age people who lived here would have found ample food in the fish and wildfowl of their inland sea, and sheltered waterways which led to the broader reaches of Strangford Lough and to the Irish Sea beyond. Alternative sites for settlement were available on the islands, like Hog Island or that now known as the Mound of Down, with its splendid earthworks. The promontory whose western end is formed by the Cathedral Hill must have been especially attractive, naturally defended by the sea on three sides, its steep slopes well drained and connected to the mainland by a narrow causeway near the present Town Hall. On the Cathedral Hill was built a monastery of the early Christian Church. Its site was of special importance through its traditional association with St Patrick. Later the Anglo-Normans were to build their town on the high land which runs east from the Cathedral. Its main axis followed the line of the present English Street with gardens and building plots running downslope to the inlet now occupied by Market Street, where shallow draft vessels could have been drawn up on the shore. At the foot of English Street, where it joins Irish and Scotch Streets at the Town Hall Corner, was the one dry-land crossing place to the mainland and here the Anglo-Normans built their famous wall "from sea to sea". Outside the wall, a straggle of suburban houses climbed the neighbouring hill: along Scotch Street which branched into the road to Saul, and Irish Street, the more important of the two since this was the way south, the main road to Dundrum, Newry and Dublin. Here on the summit of Irish Street, Downpatrick's one resident landowner, Thomas Cromwell, built his town-house in the early seventeenth century, with its fine garden and splendid views across the inland sea towards Hollymount and the Mournes in the distance. Downpatrick ceased to be a seaside town in 1745 when the then landowner, Edward Southwell, erected the first tidal barrage across the Quoile, near the bridge on the old Belfast road. In 1957 a further barrage was build further downstream at Hare Island, and this now controls all but the most severe of winter floods; only the names Quoile Quay and Steamboat Quay survive as memories of the seafaring past when Downpatrick was once a port with an extensive trade across the Irish Sea. But the sea's influence is still apparent in the pattern of streets and buildings: the oldest are to be found in English, Irish and Scotch Streets, on the hills which rose steeply above the waters of the inland sea. Newer buildings are located on Church and Market Streets laid out on reclaimed land in 1838 and 1845 respectively. Even the traffic congestion which occurs at the Town Hall Corner where the five principal main streets converge is a daily reminder that this was the one dry land connection between the oldest part of the town in English Street, and the main roads to Belfast and Dublin, which were its landward connection with the outside world. Landscape and the features of the natural environment give clues to the origin and development of towns, but documents provide the written evidence. Downpatrick lacks the municipal and estate records available for many towns in Ireland, but much material was collected by Edward Parkinson and his son Richard who published their work in The City Of Down, one of the earlier books on Ulster local history, which was produced in 1927. I first read this work as an undergraduate and was fascinated by the account of the personalities and events which had shaped the town's history. It is easy to find fault with this book from the perspective of the 1990s, but Edward Parkinson was a genuine pioneer, self-taught and a born scholar who tracked down the few available primary documents and wrote a readable and succinct account of the growth of the town from the twelfth to the nineteenth centuries. Richard gathered additional material which unfortunately was not published, but he was generous with his knowledge and helpful to me when I came to work in Downpatrick in the 1950s. Undoubtedly the most significant local collection available at that time was the estate maps and documents held in the Dunleath Estate office, under the care of the agent, the late Robert (Bertie) Brown. Bertie took a keen interest in this collection, and was generous with his time and knowledge to me as a student. Of special interest were the pre-Ordnance Survey maps of the Manor of Down, the earliest dating to 1710, and of the town. A map of 1729 had already been published by Parkinson in the City of Down, but Anthony Wilson tracked down a similar map in the British Museum. He calls it the Wills map, dated almost certainly to 1708 and contemporary with a rental and survey of the town made for the Southwell family by James Maguire. These maps and rentals are among the earliest surveys available for any Irish town and are invaluable both for reconstructing the history of Downpatrick in the eighteenth century and for developing ideas about its growth and development during the medieval period. Unfortunately neither the Cromwell nor Southwell families, landowners of Downpatrick during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, left correspondence or family documents which could cast light on its development during these centuries, but for the early nineteenth century there exist the incomparable diaries of Aynsworth Pilson to which I was introduced by the late Jack Magee. Pilson is to Downpatrick what Samuel Pepys was to London: a man with a keen eye for detail and a nose for gossip, a vivid chronicler of the events of his time and of the people whose foibles and predelictions he presented with some glee; not surprisingly his son Conway founded the local newspaper, the Downpatrick Recorder. Frank Maxwell of the Lecale Historical Society and Patricia Bardon at Down County Museum have prepared transcriptions of the diaries which are available for the history of the town and district at the time the first Ordnance Survey map was published, and when the surveyors themselves were preparing their own memoirs. This was also the period to which Jack Magee devoted most of his scholarly work, especially on schools and education, and the parliamentary elections on which he was a noted expert. Jack's wide knowledge of the district and his understanding of nineteenth century life were a particular help in writing this section of the Atlas text, and it was a great sadness that he did not live to see the finished work. Information sources become much more plentiful in the nineteenth century: the population census, valuation books, records of the poor law union and other official documents and the registers of individual churches and parishes. Trade directories provide information on the business community, for the development of retail shopping, banks, transport, hotels and parks and professional services. Margaret Hayes, then a schoolgirl working on a local history project, used illustrations for a short paper on the development of one of Downpatrick's new streets, Market Street, laid out in 1846 and soon to become the town's main shopping centre. Margaret's paper published in the Lecale Miscellany2 anticipated by more than a decade her father's memories of his boyhood in Downpatrick in the 1940s, published under the title Black Pudding with Slim3 and itself a remarkable feat of reminiscence and memory which underlines the importance of oral history as a source for local studies. Archaeology does not always provide evidence which can be related directly to documentary sources, and this is certainly the case in Downpatrick where excavation often raised as many problems as it provided solutions. This was especially the case on the Mound of Down and on the Cathedral Hill, the former the site of a small excavation by H.C. Lawlor in the 1930s and latter by Bruce Proudfoot in the 1950s, and more recently by Nick Brannon. On the Mound of Down, Lawlor set out to test the hypothesis that the major earthwork which encircled the drumlin island with an elaborate bank and ditch, might be the site of a de Courcy motte and bailey, erected during the early stages of his military occupation.4 The excavations produced meagre finds, and no real evidence of major occupation, certainly nothing to match the scale of the fortifications. The alternative explanation, that the Mound was the residence of the pre-Norman chiefly family, was likewise unsubstantiated and for the present the history of this important site remains an enigma: it deserves further and more detailed excavation using modern techniques. The Cathedral Hill, legendary site of St Patrick's burial, and an associated monastery and important religious site in medieval times, likewise produced problems of interpretation. A low bank, most visible on the western side, partially encircles the Hill just below its flat summit. It was cut by an exploratory trench by Bruce Proudfoot in the mid 1950s.5 He discovered a deep ditch associated with the bank, and though pottery finds were few he concluded the Hill had been encircled in the Early Iron Age by a succession of complex defences. The Hill he believed, had been the focus of an important secular settlement at this time, subsequently attracting the attention of Patrick and laying the foundations for its religious significance in later centuries. Thirty-years later, government archaeologist Nick Brannon undertook a further excavation of the same bank lower down the Hill and a little to the south, prior to a proposed extension of the cathedral graveyard.6 Unlike Proudfoot he found many artefacts and several structures dated to the latter part of the first millennium and into the medieval period; but there was no evidence of prehistoric occupation, nor the elaborate defences of the Early Iron Age identified by Proudfoot. Both excavations confirm the secular and religious significance of the Cathedral Hill as a site of settlement, providing evidence in artefacts and structure which adds weight to the documentary record. Prehistoric occupation remains uncertain but it is suggested by the hoards of gold ornaments of Bronze Age date,7 discovered in 1954 and 1956 by the then cathedral verger, the late Arthur Pollock, while digging a grave in the Cathedral's new cemetery. Arthur already had experience of excavation, working with Bruce Proudfoot, and subsequently he developed his inherent skills of observation and interpretation, making several major discoveries including the Bronze Age settlement at Meadowlands, a medieval pottery kiln beside the Judge's Lodgings on the Mall,8 and the foundations of what was almost certainly the medieval town wall at the junction of Scotch and Church Streets.9 For over a decade, Arthur followed every building site and road works in Downpatrick, developing a knowledge of the archaeology of his town unequalled by the professional. Along with his near contemporary, the late Bob Davidson of Inch, he provided much information for the official archaeological survey of County Down, where his skill and dedication was readily acknowledged by the survey officers, Dudley Waterman and Pat Collins. Archaeology and documentary sources together
provide the essential information for writing urban history, together
with an understanding of the influence of changing environment upon
urban growth. Sources relating to Downpatrick were available though
not plentiful, but Anthony Wilson and I were fortunate with the
generous help we received from local people and institutions. Downpatrick
has a history as long as any in Ireland. Its origin and growth reflected
in the pattern of streets and buildings give it a unique landscape
and urban character. Conserving the heritage acknowledges the role
of history in shaping the built environment, and this new study
of Downpatrick provides the information on which to base new policies
for sensitive development Ronald H Buchanan: Professor Emeritus and former Director of the Institute of Irish Studies at Queen's University, Belfast; Chairman of the Northern Ireland region of the National Trust; member of the Museums and Galleries Commission and Chairman of Down County Museum's Advisory Group. References
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