Killough, Cill Locha, Co. Down

Cill Locha · Co. Down

A planned 18th-century port the tide gave up on. The tree-lined street is the whole point.

Killough is the postcard version of a planned village. Long straight main street, two rows of mature sycamores down the middle of it, merchant houses turning their backs on the weather, a harbour at the bottom that the sea has more or less given up on. The Wards of Castle Ward laid it out in the 1740s - Michael Ward drove the eight-mile straight road from his house at Strangford down to the bay and called the new port St Anne. The name didn't take. Killough did.

What you have to understand is that Killough was meant to be a town. Lord Bangor brought the engineer Alexander Nimmo down between 1821 and 1824 to build proper quays out of the Napoleonic-war corn boom. Then the war ended and the corn market collapsed, and a few miles up the coast Ardglass took the fishing boats with it. The village stopped growing. The merchant houses on Castle Street stayed. The sycamores went in in 1850 and they did all the growing instead.

Come for a slow morning. Walk the avenue, walk the pier, drive the two miles down to St John's Point and look at the lighthouse - the tallest onshore lighthouse on the Irish coast, painted in the bold black-and-yellow bands it has worn since 1954. If you have a copy of Van Morrison's Avalon Sunset in the car, put on "Coney Island" on the way back; the townland it names is the one tucked into the bay between Killough and Ardglass, and the road in the song is the road you are on.

Population

~845 (2001 census)

Walk score

Top of Castle Street to the pier in ten minutes

Founded

Built up as a port from the 1740s

Coords

54.2528° N, 5.6500° W

01 / 08

At a glance.

Three things every local will eventually mention. Read these and you've already understood more than most day-trippers do.

01 Castle Street

A mile of sycamores, planted 1850.

The long avenue down the spine of the village is the thing people remember. Two rows of mature sycamores, the merchant houses behind them, the harbour at the bottom. The trees are older than most of what is left of the trade.

Stories & lore → 02 The harbour

Built for a corn trade that didn't last.

Lord Bangor brought the engineer Alexander Nimmo down between 1821 and 1824 to build proper quays for the Napoleonic-war grain boom. The war ended, the market collapsed, Ardglass took the fishing - and the harbour has been quiet ever since.

Walks & outings → 03 St John's Point

The tallest onshore lighthouse in Ireland.

Forty metres of tower, painted black with two yellow bands since 1954, on the headland a couple of miles south. The Titanic used the light as a marker on her sea trials in 1912. You can rent the keeper's cottage now.

Stories & lore →

02 / 08

The pubs.

None of these are themed Irish pubs, because they don't need to be. A few that earn the trip:

The Anne Boal Inn

Locals, two hundred years of them

Village pub

On Main Street at the top of the village. Has been open in some form for about two centuries. The Guinness gets a serious hearing in the regional Guinness groups online, which is the kind of accolade a place like this earns slowly.

Saddle or Sail Inn

Quiet local

Pub on Castle Street

Down on Castle Street under the sycamores. A pub the way a village pub is meant to be a pub - no concept, no theme, no menu beyond what's needed.

03 / 08

Where to eat.

Place	Type	€	Local note
The Quay	Café & bistro	€€	On Castle Street at number 61, near the harbour. Traditional breakfasts, lunches, Sunday roasts, proper coffee. The kind of place a village like this needs and is lucky to have.
Fired	Pizza & casual	€€	Pizza out of a village kitchen. Check before you drive - opening hours are the opening hours of a small place doing this for love rather than scale.

04 / 08

Stories & lore.

The reason to come back. The things every local will eventually tell you about, usually after the second pint.

And the corn market unbuilt it

The Wards built a town

Michael Ward of Castle Ward, sitting just outside Strangford, drove a straight eight-mile road down to Killough Bay in 1740 and called the new port St Anne. His son, the first Lord Bangor, brought the Scots engineer Alexander Nimmo down between 1821 and 1824 to build the proper quays - a long pier of nearly six hundred feet on the Killough side, a short one on the Coney Island side, enclosing the whole bay. The corn went out of here to Liverpool. When the Napoleonic wars ended the bottom dropped out of the market and the harbour slowly silted into the quiet thing it is now. The street the Wards drew is still there. The trees they didn't plant - the sycamores - got planted along it in 1850.

The one in the Van Morrison song

Coney Island

Coney Island here is a small townland of forty-eight acres on the bay between Killough and Ardglass. Not the New York one. Van Morrison wrote a spoken-word piece called "Coney Island" on his 1989 album Avalon Sunset - a road-trip narration through Downpatrick, St John's Point, Strangford Lough, Killyleagh, Ardglass and the Lecale country, with a refrain about wishing it could be like this all the time. The road is the road through this village. If you've not heard it, hear it on the way out.

A lighthouse the Titanic looked at

St John's Point

Two and a bit miles south of the village, on the headland that closes off Dundrum Bay, is St John's Point Lighthouse. Built in 1844, extended in the 1880s to its present forty metres, painted in its current black-and-yellow bands since 1954 - the tallest onshore lighthouse on the Irish coast. The Titanic used the light as a fix point on her sea trials in the Irish Sea in 1912, before she ever crossed to Southampton. The Commissioners of Irish Lights rent out the two former keepers' cottages on the headland; a few nights out there in winter, with the lamp turning above you and the wind doing its work, will reset something.

St Anne's, on the Ward family's saint

The other church

St Anne's, the Church of Ireland church at the village, takes its name from the saint Michael Ward named his never-stuck port for - Anne, patron of sailors and protection in storms. The building on the site was rebuilt in 1716 and rebuilt again in 1802 with money left in the will of the Reverend J. Hamilton. It is small, white, looking down Castle Street. The Catholic church up the hill is a different congregation and a different century. The two of them shape the silhouette of the village from the bay.

05 / 08

Things to do outside.

Wear waterproofs. Bring a sandwich. Tell someone where you're going if it's the mountain.

Castle Street and the pier The whole village in one walk. Top of Castle Street down the sycamore avenue, past the merchant houses, out onto the old quay, and back. Do it slowly. Read the dates above the doors.

2 km returndistance

40 mintime

Killough Coastal Path From Shore Road a stile starts the rough coastal trail above the rocky shore towards St John's Point. Exposed, with steep drops in places - not a pram walk. Wear boots.

3 km one waydistance

1 hourtime

St John's Point lighthouse Drive the back road down to the point or walk the coast from the village. The lighthouse compound is gated but you can stand at the wall and look up at the forty metres of tower above you. The way the bands stack against the sky is the photograph.

Short drive + walkdistance

1 hourtime

Lecale Way through Killough The Lecale Way runs from Downpatrick around the coast to Newcastle via Strangford, Ardglass, Killough, Tyrella and Dundrum. The Ardglass-to-Tyrella section comes right through the village. Walk it for an afternoon either side.

Stage of 79-km traildistance

Pick a sectiontime

06 / 08

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

The sycamores leaf out and Castle Street goes from bare ribs to green tunnel inside a fortnight. Lambs in the fields above the village. Quiet.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Long evenings on the pier. The Lecale Way busier. Still nowhere near the volume of Newcastle or Strangford - Killough is the place you stop for lunch on the way to somewhere louder.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep-Oct

Sycamores turning, light low across the bay, the lighthouse picking up earlier each evening. Best season here if you had to pick.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

Bleak in the good sense. The coastal path is genuinely dangerous in storms - stay back from the edge. The Anne Boal will still be open and the fire will be on.

◐ Mind yourself

07 / 08

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

If a local was sitting beside you, this is the bit where they'd lean in.

Trying to launch a boat from the old harbour

Killough Bay silted up long ago and there is little depth alongside the pier. Working fishing moved up to Ardglass two centuries ago. Look at the harbour, don't plan around it.

Confusing this Coney Island with the American one

The townland on the bay is forty-eight acres and a handful of houses. There is no boardwalk, no funfair, no hot dogs. There is a road, a few fields, and the view back across to Killough. The Van Morrison song is the only fame it has and the only fame it wants.

Driving the village in a hurry

The whole point of Killough is the avenue. If you're through Castle Street in under three minutes you've missed it. Park at the top, walk down, get a coffee at The Quay, walk back.

Getting there.

By car

Downpatrick to Killough is 15 minutes on the B176 via Ardglass. Belfast is about an hour and a quarter via the A24 and A2. Newcastle is 25 minutes down the coast through Tyrella.

By bus

Ulsterbus 16E links Downpatrick with Killough and Ardglass several times a day Monday to Saturday. Sundays are sparse.

By train

No rail. The nearest mainline station is Belfast Lanyon Place; then bus or hire car.

By air

Belfast City (BHD) is 50 minutes by road. Belfast International (BFS) is 1h 15m. Dublin Airport is around 2 hours via the M1.

Next on the tour

Co. Down

Ardglass

Two miles up the coast. The fishing port that took the trade Killough lost - still a working harbour, with the castles above it.

Co. Down

Downpatrick

The county town, fifteen minutes inland. St Patrick is buried up at the cathedral on the hill, allegedly.

Co. Down

Dundrum

Half an hour down the coast past Tyrella. The Norman castle on the hill above the inner bay is the headline; the oysters are the under-card.