Overview
Killough’s dead-straight main street points at the sea because a landlord willed it that way. In 1740 Michael Ward of Castle Ward had a 13 km road driven from his estate to the coast and set about building a harbour at the end of it, briefly rebranding the place Port St Anne – a name that never stuck. The village that grew up around the quays sits on the Irish Sea five miles southeast of Downpatrick, and it’s kept the shape he gave it: a conservation area of Georgian shopfronts under an avenue of sycamores.
The Irish is Cill Locha, ‘church of the loch’. Killough doesn’t ask for much of your attention – but give it an afternoon and the reward is the harbour, the lighthouse, and a coast road with almost nobody on it.
If you do one thing here, drive the couple of miles out to St John’s Point.
A working harbour
The townland turns up in the Down Survey of the 1650s as Kiltaghlins, held by Thomas Cromwell, Viscount Lecale – a descendant of Henry VIII’s minister of the same name, not the man himself.
By the early 1800s Killough was shipping corn and coal, with 22 local yawls landing white fish. When the trade outgrew the first quays, the first Lord Bangor brought in the engineer Alexander Nimmo to rebuild them between 1821 and 1824. The £17,000 job produced the long Killough pier and the shorter Coney Island pier that still curve the harbour today. Grain merchants raised tall Georgian houses along Castle Street, and the sycamore avenue that shades the street was planted in 1850.
There’s a harder memory here too. In September 1981 an off-duty police officer, Sandy Stewart, was shot dead by the IRA in the Ann Boal Inn; a discreet plaque marks the spot.
St John’s Point Lighthouse
Out on the headland southeast of the village stands the tallest onshore lighthouse in Ireland, 40 metres of it. George Halpin Senior designed it and it was first lit in 1844. It started life white; the bold black-and-yellow daymark stripes that make it unmistakable were added in the 1950s.
The tower is automated now, and not generally open to look around – but the former keepers’ cottages have been turned into self-catering accommodation, which is the one way to actually stay out on the point. The drive or walk to the headland is the draw either way: the tower, the rocks, and the open sea.
A short walk from the lighthouse brings you to the ruins of a 10th- or 11th-century church, with a holy well and a bullaun stone – a hollowed basin stone – near the entrance. It’s a quiet, weathered spot, older than everything else on this stretch of the Lecale coast.
Around the village
The harbour rewards a slow wander. Nimmo’s quays and the old stone bridges make a sheltered curve that still holds fishing boats and holiday craft, and grey seals sometimes rest near the pier ends on a calm day. Castle Street, under its 1850 sycamores, is the heart of the place – Georgian frontages, a café or two, best in autumn when the canopy turns.
Look for the almshouses on Rossglass Road, designed by Charles Lanyon – the architect behind much of Victorian Belfast – and endowed by the philanthropist Charles Sheils.
Killough sits on the Mourne Coastal route, largely flat and easy, linking north toward Ardglass and south toward Dundrum Bay. The quiet lanes make good, low-traffic cycling.
Film and culture
The unspoilt streets have pulled in filmmakers. Killough was the main location for The Shore, Terry George’s short film about a man coming home to Northern Ireland, which won the Academy Award for best live-action short. Scenes from George’s Whole Lotta Sole and Kari Skogland’s Fifty Dead Men Walking were shot here too, and the village appeared more recently in Pixie.
It gave Van Morrison a line in Coney Island, and inspired the politician Maurice Hayes’s memoir Sweet Killough, Let Go Your Anchor. Locals of note include the explorer Henry Russell, the priest and scholar Charles William Russell, the artist Jim Manley, and footballer Paul George.
Practical information
- Getting there: Killough is on the A25, five miles southeast of Downpatrick. It’s really a place you reach by car – the branch railway through the village closed in 1950 – so Downpatrick is the nearest town for onward bus connections.
- Parking: free on-street parking along Castle Street and by the harbour. It fills on summer weekends, so aim to arrive before midday.
- Accommodation: the lighthouse keepers’ cottages let for self-catering stays; B&Bs and guesthouses are dotted through Killough and nearby Ardglass.
- Accessibility: the harbour quays and main street are paved and level. The lighthouse tower isn’t open, but the headland paths are flat and easy.
- Nearby: Tyrella Beach, four miles south, is a Blue Flag sandy stretch on Dundrum Bay. Downpatrick, five miles north, has the St Patrick Centre, Down County Museum and the Downpatrick & County Down Railway.
For the best of it, time a visit for a still evening and drive out to St John’s Point as the light drops – the striped tower and the water do the rest.