June 1798
The Battle of Ballynahinch
The rebels of County Down rose on 9 June 1798 and gathered, four thousand strong, at Ednavady Hill on the edge of Sir John Rawdon's Montalto estate. They elected Henry Munro of Lisburn — a Presbyterian linen draper, no soldier — as their general. On the night of 12 June, General George Nugent's loyalist force dislodged a rebel outpost on Windmill Hill above the town and set up there. The fighting ran through the night and the morning of the 13th. The rebels broke. Three to four hundred were killed. The town was burned. Munro was captured at a farmhouse two days later and hanged in front of his own house in Lisburn on the 16th.
And the broken memorial
Betsy Gray
Elizabeth Gray of Gransha rode with the rebels at Ballynahinch — by tradition, on a white horse, with a green flag, alongside her brother George and her sweetheart William Boal. All three were killed at Ballycreen as they tried to escape, and buried where they fell. The grave became a quiet pilgrimage site through the 19th century. In 1896 a proper memorial stone was paid for by James Gray of London, a grandnephew. On a Sunday in June 1898 — the eve of the rebellion's centenary — a crowd of local unionists, inflamed that a Catholic and Home Rule committee was organising the commemoration, smashed the memorial to pieces. The grave at Ballycreen has been unmarked ever since.
The estate that watched it happen
Montalto
Sir George Rawdon bought the townland in 1657 after the previous owner, Patrick McCartan, lost it for joining the 1641 Rebellion. His great-grandson the 1st Earl of Moira built the Georgian house in the 1760s. By 1798 the Earl was off in Britain and his Montalto woods were full of United Irishmen. The Rawdons sold up in 1802 to David Ker, who spotted the rising fashion for medicinal spa wells and developed the springs two miles outside town. The estate is privately owned still, but it opened the gates as a paid visitor attraction in 2018 — the trails, the walled garden, the Lost Garden glasshouse remains. The History Trail goes over the ground the rebels camped on.
Foundation stone laid by the masonic lodge
The 1795 Market House
The Market House in the centre of town was commissioned by John Rawdon, 1st Earl of Moira, as a covered market — arcaded ground floor for the corn and flax dealers, assembly room above for the polite end of town. The foundation stone was laid by the local masonic lodge on 2 July 1792. The building was finished in 1795. By the end of that decade the market was grossing around £300 a week and the town was prospering. Three years after that, Munro and his rebels camped a kilometre down the road.