Down Heritage Trails

Walk the streets of Ulster's busiest medieval port, where four surviving tower houses, a fortified merchants' warehouse, a centuries-old parish church and a working fishing harbour all stand within a few minutes of each other.

Walk the market square and church-lined streets of Ballynahinch — a Georgian market town whose Square was bombarded during the 1798 Battle of Ballynahinch, and whose market house, churches, mill and shopfronts still trace the shape of that summer and the linen trade that built the town.

Walk the length of Banbridge's unique sunken main street, cut through solid rock in 1834 to spare coach horses the town's brutal hill, then climb on to Church Square where a Gothic monument and the family home it faces still honour Captain Francis Crozier — the Banbridge-born Arctic and Antarctic explorer lost with Franklin's expedition in 1848. Along the way, the old market house clock and the River Bann crossing that gave the town its name trace Banbridge's rise as the heart of Ireland's linen country.

From a 6th-century monastic school to a Victorian clock tower and a converted courthouse, this walk threads through Bangor's abbey quarter, Main Street and old harbour in under a mile.

Walk Castlewellan's two Annesley-built market squares, out through the historic Town Gate, and into the demesne to the Earl's granite castle and the walled garden where its famous arboretum began.

Circle the market square where a Napoleonic general is remembered in stone, then follow the streets that built Comber's fortune — an abbey turned parish church, two centuries-old Presbyterian meeting houses, a whiskey distillery, and the flax mill of the family behind RMS Titanic's designer.

A short loop around a market village built almost from scratch in the 1820s — a market house, two churches, a Victorian shop terrace and a country house turned Passionist retreat, all named for a holy well the village itself is named after.

Walk from a Norman motte crowned with a Regency gunpowder tower, through Georgian High Street, to one of Ireland's oldest pubs and the Rennie-built harbour that carried the mail to Scotland for two centuries.

Climb Cathedral Hill to St Patrick's traditional grave, then wander English and Irish Street past a Georgian gaol, courthouse and coaching inn before a short detour north to the ancient Mound of Down.

Follow the River Lagan through Dromore's compact centre, from one of Ulster's finest Norman mottes past a Plantation-era castle and 17th-century cathedral to the Victorian Market Square and a bishop's memorial park.

A short walk through a Cistercian ruin founded by a Norman queen, past a Victorian parish church and Georgian estate gates, down antique-shop-lined Main Street to where the village meets Strangford Lough. Barely a kilometre end to end, it links eight centuries of monastic, estate and maritime history on the Ards Peninsula.

Wander the Georgian streets of Royal Hillsborough, from its 17th-century fort and stolen Richhill gates to the official royal residence in Northern Ireland, a Gothic Revival parish church, a Quaker meeting house, and the towering Downshire Monument on the hill above the village.

From a 7th-century priory and Norman motte to Ireland's last dancing maypole, this short loop of Holywood's High Street packs thirteen centuries of history into a few hundred metres.

From a Neolithic tomb and a medieval church site that gave the town its name, through Georgian streets of banks, churches and a coaching-era hotel, down to the working harbour that makes Kilkeel Northern Ireland's busiest fishing port.

Wander the fairy-tale streets beneath Killyleagh Castle's turrets, past the birthplace town of Sir Hans Sloane and two historic churches, down to the harbour where Strangford Lough meets the village.

From a Main Street pub with a royal legend to the school garden that remembers the Kindertransport children of the refugee farm, then out to Ireland's only surviving working windmill.

From the grand Victorian railway hotel beneath Slieve Donard to the Earl Annesley's promenade, church and seawater baths — a short seafront loop where the Mournes really do sweep down to the sea.

From a ruined Dominican priory and a Plantation-era bawn to a Georgian market house and two 19th-century churches, trace nearly eight centuries of Newtownards history in one walkable loop around the town centre.

Loop through Portaferry's Georgian square and harbour lanes, from a 16th-century Savage tower house and a working ferry slipway crossed since 1611, up to an 1841 Greek Revival meeting house and a scheduled medieval graveyard.

Four historic churches, a Georgian coaching inn, a stone road bridge and the only Grade A monument in the village — a short loop through the resort village where Robert Ross, who burned the White House, was born.

Walk the compact Main Street core of a village rebuilt after the United Irishmen routed a government column here in 1798, from its Georgian churches to the ambush site in the hedgerows above the town.

Walk the harbour village at the mouth of Strangford Lough, from a restored Presbyterian meeting house up past a 16th-century tower house and the ancient ferry crossing to a lord's private quay at Old Court.

Circle Warrenpoint's Georgian-and-Victorian town centre — from the old Town Hall and three very different church congregations around The Square, out to a 1802 windmill, the Edwardian park bandstand, and the historic dock that once made Warrenpoint one of Ireland's busiest ports.