Overview
The Nautilus Centre stands over Kilkeel harbour, which lands more fish than anywhere else in Northern Ireland, and it’s free to go in. It’s less a single attraction than a hub: under one roof are the Mourne Maritime Visitor Centre, the Kilkeel Visitor Information Centre, the Tracing Your Mourne Roots exhibition and the Mourne Seafood Cookery School. If you’ve an hour, the maritime centre is the part to prioritise.
Inside the Mourne Maritime Visitor Centre
The maritime centre is the heart of the building and tells the story of local fishing through touch-screen displays. The bit children make for is a reconstructed wheelhouse, where they can take the skipper’s wheel. On display is the Anna, a herring skiff from the days when Kilkeel’s tall ships carried granite and grain to ports across Britain and Ireland. Kilkeel harbour itself grew from the mid-18th century, exporting potatoes, granite and grain and importing coal and supplies.
The Families at Sea exhibition is the one that gives the place its texture: the fishing and maritime histories of more than twenty local families, set out with over a hundred photographs. Read a few and the working harbour outside the window stops being scenery.
Tracing Your Mourne Roots
A separate exhibition, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, traces Kilkeel and the wider Mourne area from 1800 to the present day. It’s a useful stop if you have family roots here, or just want the background before heading up into the mountains.
The memorial
Outside the centre stands a memorial to those lost at sea, with a memorial book you can look through inside the maritime centre. It’s a plain reminder of what the fleet in the harbour below still does for a living.
Practical information
- Opening hours: Monday to Friday, 9am–1pm and 1.30pm–5pm, closed for lunch, year-round.
- Admission: Free.
- Parking: the Nautilus Centre car park is secure and costs £1 per day.
- Accessibility: lift and stair access to the upper floor.
- Contact: 028 4176 2525. Address: Rooney Road, Kilkeel, BT34 4AX.
Getting there: Kilkeel sits on the A2 coast road at the foot of the Mourne Mountains, a short drive from Newry, Newcastle and Downpatrick, and served by Ulsterbus coastal services. For a woodland day out afterwards, Kilbroney Park near Rostrevor is a short drive west.
Kilkeel is a working fishing port first and a tourist town second. Time a visit to watch the boats come in, and buy fish fresh off them at the harbour.