The easternmost spot on the island
Burr Point
The most easterly point of Ireland sits two kilometres south of Ballyhalbert harbour at longitude 5.43° west. It is marked by a steel sculpture of the letter E by artist Ned Jackson Smyth — small, dark, set on the rocks at the tideline. There is no visitor centre and no fee. The access road is for residents only, so park at the harbour and walk down. The point itself is a bench, the sculpture, and the Irish Sea. Burial Island sits a few hundred metres offshore and gets thick with nesting terns from spring through summer. Local legend has it the island holds a Viking burial chamber full of gold. Archaeologists are not so sure.
The Polish squadrons
RAF Ballyhalbert
RAF Ballyhalbert opened on the 28th of June 1941 on flat farmland south of the village — three tarmac runways, two Bellman hangars, and twelve Blister hangars. Its job was to defend Belfast and the eastern half of Northern Ireland from the air. From July 1943 to April 1944, the station was home to two Polish fighter squadrons in succession: No. 315 'City of Deblin' from July to November 1943, then No. 303 'Kosciuszko – City of Warsaw' from November through to the following April. The work was largely convoy patrols and operational training; the Polish pilots called it a quiet posting. On the 14th of August 1943, General Kazimierz Sosnkowski — Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces — flew in to watch a flying display and pin Cross of Virtuti Militari medals on Squadron Leader Sawicz, Flying Officer Blok, Squadron Leader Popławski and Flying Officer Malczewski. The airfield closed at the end of the war. The caravan park took the site in the decades after.
How the village got its name
The Talbots
Ballyhalbert is Baile Thalbóid in Irish — Talbot's townland. The Talbot family came from Herefordshire and were granted land here during the reign of Henry II in the 12th century. The settlement was originally recorded as Talbotyston in 1333. By 1605 the name had been Gaelicised to Ballitalbot, and by 1617 it had taken its modern English form as Ballihalbert. The Normans threw up a motte nearby as a defensive earthwork — still visible in the landscape — to hold the bay against anyone coming in off the Irish Sea.
May 1917
UC65 in the bay
In May 1917, midway through the First World War, the German U-boat UC65 worked its way up the east coast of the Ards. In the space of a single sortie, the submarine captured four vessels in Ballyhalbert Bay and sank all four. The bay is shallow and exposed, and the Coastguard station on the hill — established in 1863 — had a clear line of sight to it. None of it was enough to stop the boat.
Mid-17th century to the harbour
The fishing village that was
Ballyhalbert was a fishing settlement by the mid-1600s. The 1836 Ordnance Survey memoir lists the inhabitants as mostly fishermen, with four spirit dealers, four grocers and a single smith making up the rest of the trades. The population was 322 in 1831. It is more than three times that now, but the fishing has largely gone — the working fleet is two villages south at Portavogie. The harbour at Ballyhalbert dries at low water and fills again on the next tide; in summer the kids jump off the wall.