Patrick's contested grave
The slab is from 1900
The granite slab in the cathedral churchyard with PATRIC carved on it — the one in every photograph — was set down in 1900. The Mourne granite came from the Mournes; the inscription was added because Victorian pilgrims had been chipping pieces off the ground itself. The actual location of Patrick's grave is one of three claims: Down has him, Armagh has him, Glastonbury has him. The medieval story tells it best — in 1196 John de Courcy reputedly translated the bones of Patrick, Brigid and Colmcille into the cathedral together. The bones are not there now. Nothing is, that you can see. The hill is the thing.
Sabhall Phádraig — Patrick's barn
Saul, the first church
Three kilometres east of the town stands Saul Church. Patrick is supposed to have landed at the mouth of the Slaney from Strangford Lough in 432, been given a barn by the local chieftain Dichu, and preached his first sermon in Ireland from inside it. Sabhall Phádraig — Patrick's barn — became Saul. The current church on the site is from 1932, built in Mourne granite for the 1500th anniversary, with a small round tower. It is empty most of the time. Walk up the hill behind it for the statue and the view back to the cathedral on the Hill of Down.
Cistercians, 1180; Game of Thrones, 2011
Inch Abbey and Robb Stark
John de Courcy founded Inch Abbey in 1180 as an act of repentance for sacking the older Erinagh Abbey three years earlier. He brought Cistercian monks over from Furness in Lancashire and gave them 850 acres on the north bank of the Quoile. The community held until the Dissolution in 1541, when Henry VIII's men granted the lot to the Earl of Kildare. Eight hundred years on, the Game of Thrones crew turned up and used the ruined nave as Robb Stark's camp at Riverrun — the scene where the Northern bannermen kneel and shout 'The King in the North.' The abbey is across the river from the town, signposted off the Belfast Road. Free.
Downpatrick Racecourse, since 1685
The oldest racecourse in Ireland
A mile out the road, on the Ballydugan side, is Downpatrick Racecourse — the oldest racecourse in Ireland, with the first recorded meeting under the charter of James II in 1685. The Byerley Turk, one of the three foundation stallions of the modern thoroughbred, is reputed to have raced here in 1690 before carrying Colonel Robert Byerley to the Battle of the Boyne. The feature race today is the Ulster National Handicap Chase, run as the Ulster Grand National.
An unfinished motte
The Mound of Down
On the marshy floodplain north of the town, on its own drumlin, sits the Mound of Down — also called Dundalethglas, English Mount, or Rathkeltair. An egg-shaped earthwork enclosure with a steep crescent-shaped mound in the south end. The enclosure is Iron Age and Early Christian — the town of Dún da Lethglas burned here in 1040 and again in 1069. The crescent in the middle is a Norman motte that John de Courcy started in 1177 and abandoned within eighteen months when he moved his main base up to Carrickfergus. It has been sitting unfinished for 850 years. You can walk up it for nothing. The view is the cathedral on its hill, and the river curling in the marsh below.