The family that named the place
The Sharman Crawfords
William Crawford bought the estate from Lord Clanbrassil in 1670, and the family held it for 277 years — until 1947, when the last colonel sold up. In between, William Sharman Crawford (1780–1861) became one of Ulster's most useful landlords, an MP who spent his career arguing for tenants' rights — fair rent, fixity of tenure, free sale of goodwill, the Ulster Custom written into law. He died at Crawfordsburn House in 1861. The present Crawfordsburn House was built in 1906 by Vincent Craig, the architect who also did the Royal Ulster Yacht Club down the road in Bangor.
Why a tiny village has a 1614 hotel
The mail-coach inn
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Donaghadee was one of the principal cross-channel ports to Britain — the short hop to Portpatrick in Scotland was the standard mail route. The coach from Belfast to Donaghadee changed horses at The Old Inn at Crawfordsburn. That is why a village this small had a hotel this grand: it was a service station for the Royal Mail. The notable persons who allegedly drank here — Swift, Tennyson, Thackeray, Dickens, Trollope — were on their way somewhere else.
C.S. Lewis's perfect fortnight
Jack and Joy
In July 1958, C.S. Lewis — Belfast-born, by then long settled in Oxford — brought his American wife Joy Davidman back to Northern Ireland for what they called a perfect fortnight and a belated honeymoon. They stayed at The Old Inn. Joy had been diagnosed with cancer in 1956 and would die in 1960. Lewis would write A Grief Observed about it. The room they stayed in is still pointed out, and the Inn leans gently on the connection — but the leaning is honest. He really did stay. He really did love the place.
Two six-inch guns aimed at the Lough
Grey Point Fort
Out at the end of the country park, where the headland turns into Belfast Lough, sits a pentagonal coastal battery built between 1904 and 1907. Two 6-inch Mark VII breech-loading guns, mounted on Marquess of Dufferin's land bought for £8,400, aimed at any German ship that might fancy a try at the Belfast shipyards. They never fired in anger. The battery closed in 1956, fell derelict, was passed to the country park in 1971, and a Territorial Army unit started restoring it in 1987. There is a small military museum on site now. Free to wander. The guns still point.
The name before the Crawfords
Ballymullan
Before the Plantation of Ulster, this place was Baile Uí Mhaoláin — Ballymullan, the townland of the Mullan family. The Crawfords arrived from Scotland, bought the estate, and renamed the burn (the stream running through the glen) after themselves. The new name stuck. The old one survives only in the townland records.