Overview
The Rollo Gillespie Monument is a 55-foot Grecian column standing in the middle of Comber Square, and reputedly the only public Masonic monument in Ireland. It honours Sir Robert Rollo Gillespie, a soldier born on this very square, and it has anchored the centre of Comber since 1845. A statue of Gillespie, posed for by a relative, crowns the column, with the names of his battles running down the sides.
It is an outdoor site in a working town square, open at any hour and free to visit. Realistically it is a ten-minute stop rather than a destination in itself, but if you give it those ten minutes – reading the tablets and picking out the Masonic detail – it tells you a fair amount about both the man and 19th-century Comber.
The man and the monument
Sir Robert Rollo Gillespie was born in Comber Square in 1766, in a house since demolished, and baptised at the neighbouring St Mary’s Parish Church. He left for England at ten, joined the army in 1783, and spent a career in near-constant action, from the West Indies to India, Java and Nepal. He was killed in 1814 leading an attack on the fortress of Kalunga during the Anglo-Nepalese War. His reputed last words, quoted ever since, were ‘One more shot for the honour of Down’. His Indian campaigns later inspired Sir Henry Newbolt’s poem ‘Gillespie’.
Comber moved quickly to commemorate its native son. A design competition was won by John Johnston – recorded in some sources as of Belfast, in others as of Armagh – and the work was overseen by John Fraser, the first county surveyor for Down. The foundation stone was laid on St John’s Day, 24 June 1844, with a sealed bottle buried beneath it holding newspapers, coins, an 1844 almanac and the names of the subscribers. Exactly a year later, on 24 June 1845, the finished column was unveiled before a reported 30,000 people.
The Masonic connection ran deep. Fifty lodges attended the unveiling, in what is believed to be the largest Masonic gathering in Irish history, and the square and compasses are worked into the base. In 2026/27 Ards and North Down Council has allocated £90,000 from rates for restoration works, following £15,000 spent on an earlier phase – so you may find scaffolding or repairs underway.
What to see
The reward is at the base. Four tablets are set into it: the west tablet gives Gillespie’s birth, career, death and the ‘honour of Down’ line; the east tablet commemorates his grandson, Major-General Robert Rollo Gillespie, who died in 1890. Look low on the stonework for the Masonic square and compasses. The best light for reading them, and for photographing the column against the sky, is early morning or late afternoon, when the low sun throws the vertical lines into relief and St Mary’s Parish Church sits behind it.
Practical information
There are no facilities at the monument itself – no toilets or café – so use the shops and pubs of Comber before or after. Street parking is available around the square and nearby roads, though it fills on market days, so allow a little extra time.
Comber is an easy reach by car or bus from Belfast, Bangor and Newry, and the monument makes a natural start to a wander round the town. From the square you can walk to the Comber Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church a couple of minutes away, or drive the short distance to Scrabo Country Park, where Scrabo Tower gives sweeping views over Strangford Lough. Walkers and cyclists can pick up the Comber Greenway, a traffic-free trail along a former railway line towards Belfast.