Overview
Ardglass has more medieval tower houses than any other town in Ireland – four of them – packed into a fishing village of about 1,760 people. That density is the legacy of the 15th century, when this small, deep natural inlet on the Lecale peninsula made Ardglass the busiest port in Ulster and grain, wool, linen and hides went out under the protection of fortified stone towers.
The working harbour never left. Trawlers still land herring, prawns and whitefish, the fish factories still run, and the streets around Castle Place, Quay Street and Kildare Street keep the early-19th-century pattern that earned the village a Conservation Area designation in 1996. If you only have an hour, walk the harbour: the four castles, the bathing house and the piers are all within a few minutes of each other, and that loop is the whole point of the place.
The tower houses
The four survivors are Jordan’s Castle, King’s Castle, Cowd Castle and Margaret’s Castle. Only one is worth planning around.
Jordan’s Castle is the keeper – a four-storey tower between Kildare and Quay Streets that held out through a long siege around 1601. The antiquarian Francis Joseph Bigger bought and restored it in the early 1900s, renamed it Castle Shane as a showpiece of the Celtic Revival, and left it to the State as an ancient monument on his death in 1926. In the grounds sits a cannon recovered from a French ship that was carrying weapons to the United Irishmen.
King’s Castle is the large ruin on the hill above the village. The other two, Cowd Castle and Margaret’s Castle, are smaller fragments tucked into the streets near the harbour – worth a glance as you pass rather than a detour in their own right.
There are at least eight archaeological sites inside the village, one of them the grave of a warrior-leader built into an artificial mound around 3,000–2,500 BC, so the four castles are only the visible top of a much older settlement.
The harbour and the bathing house
Ardglass Harbour is one of the few on this coast you can enter at any state of the tide, which is why it has worked for so long. The North and South Piers shelter the fishing fleet, and Phennick Cove Marina, opened in 1996, has berthing for 83 boats.
Much of what you see dates from a 19th-century revival, after the old trading privileges had drifted to Belfast and Newry. William Ogilvie bought the estate and rebuilt the harbour and piers in the early 1800s; the lighthouse that went up afterwards was swept into the sea in a storm on 27 November 1838. Captain Bernard Hughes (1790–1866), harbour master from 1845 to 1858, pushed Ardglass as a ‘Harbour of Refuge’ and patented a way of fitting sea-wall stones without mortar, so the wall could flex and settle under the waves.
The hexagonal bathing house on the front is the village’s oddest building – Ogilvie put it up around 1830 as a ladies’ changing room, screening Victorian bathers before they took to the sea, when Ardglass marketed itself as a spa offering hot and cold vapour baths.
Walks and the churches above the town
Ardglass is a stop on the Lecale Way, the 78 km coastal trail from Downpatrick to Newcastle, and the village stretch is flat and easy. Two short climbs are the ones to make.
Ardtole Church, a 15th-century ruin dedicated to St Nicholas, stands on a rise north-east of the harbour with a clear line across the Irish Sea to the Isle of Man. It was abandoned after a Christmas-night massacre of the congregation, the kind of story that has followed the place for centuries. St Mary’s Church holds something genuinely rare: the only pre-Reformation stone statue of the Madonna and Child in Ireland, carved around 1300 and restored in 1908, set in the gable beneath the steeple.
Isabella’s Tower is a 19th-century folly built by Aubrey de Vere Beauclerk as a seaside gazebo for his daughter while she recovered from tuberculosis. The climb is steep and short, and the view back over the village pays for it.
One local footnote: Thomas Hunter, who founded Hunter College in New York – the first free teachers’ college in the United States – was born in Ardglass in 1831.
Golf
Ardglass Golf Club plays from a clubhouse dated to about 1405, which the club reckons makes it the oldest in the world. The course is an 18-hole links hugging the cliff edge: the Irish Sea is in view from every tee and green, comes into play on eight holes, and on a clear day you can see across to the Isle of Man. It runs to 6,268 yards off a par of 70.
It sits in serious company – under two hours from Dublin, less than an hour from Belfast, and 30 minutes from Royal County Down at Newcastle – and golfers who arrive expecting a filler round between the big two tend to leave talking about the opening holes instead. Visitors must pre-book, and there are restrictions on Saturday and Sunday.
For everyone else, the clubhouse bar does chowder and fish and chips with the same sea view the players get, no tee time required.
Getting there and practical information
- Location: Ardglass, County Down, on the B1 about 6 miles south-east of Downpatrick.
- By car: roughly 50 minutes from Belfast (about 34 miles). The A2 gives the scenic run along the Lecale coast before turning inland at Downpatrick.
- By bus: Ulsterbus links Ardglass to Belfast and Downpatrick; timetables vary seasonally, so check before travelling.
- Parking: free roadside parking near the harbour and along Castle Place, plus a small pay-and-display opposite the golf clubhouse. Motorhomes can use the secure compound at the marina (six bays, with services).
- Facilities: a handful of cafés, a historic pub on Kildare Street, a convenience store and public toilets by the harbour.
Start at the bathing house, follow the front past the castles to Jordan’s, and finish with chowder at the golf club before the tide turns.