Baile na hInse · Co. Down
Mid-Down market town with a 1798 battlefield in its back garden.
Ballynahinch is a working market town in mid-Down, fifteen miles south of Belfast on the road to Newcastle. The Market House at the centre dates to 1795 - commissioned by the first Earl of Moira, finished three years before his estate at Montalto became a rebel camp. That is the texture of the place. It looks like a quiet country town, and it is, mostly. The history underneath is not.
The 1798 battle is the thing. The United Irishmen of Down - four thousand of them under Henry Munro, a linen draper from Lisburn - camped at Montalto on the night of the 12th of June and were broken by sunrise on the 13th. The town was burned. Munro was hanged. Betsy Gray, who rode with the rebels, was killed at Ballycreen and buried where she fell. A memorial put up in 1896 was smashed by a unionist mob two years later, on the eve of the centenary. The grave is unmarked again. That story still sits in the local air.
Today the draw is Montalto Estate - gardens, woodland trails, the same demesne the rebels camped in, now run as a paid visitor attraction by the Wilson family. Beyond that, Ballynahinch is a commuter town for Belfast and a stop on the way to the Mournes. The Primrose has been on Main Street since 1935. Café Rossi does the breakfasts. The traffic on the A24 is its own permanent feature. Come for Montalto, the battle, and a pint after.
