June 1690
William of Orange counted his army here
In the last week of June 1690, William III rode south from Belfast and pitched his entire force in the fields around Loughbrickland — somewhere in the order of 36,000 men by the time the camp was full. Dutch regulars, Danes, French Huguenots, Germans, English, Scots, a smattering of others. He held a review on the open ground, waited for the rest of the army to come in, then marched on to the Boyne. The battle was 1 July (Old Style). Loughbrickland was the last quiet day the campaign had.
The name on the postmark
Bricriu's lake
Loch Bricleann means Bricriu's lake. Bricriu was a chieftain and hospitaller of the Ulster Cycle — a poet and a troublemaker, the man who hosted the feast in the saga Fled Bricrenn ('The Feast of Bricriu') and then set the warriors of Ulster at each other's throats for sport. Tradition puts his fort on the lake here. The crannog in the middle of the lough is real and early medieval; the Bricriu connection is older and mythological. Both stories sit on the same water.
1704 to today
The Whytes of Loughbrickland House
The estate came to John Whyte of Leixlip Castle in 1704 as the dowry of his wife Mary Purcell — a direct descendant of Sir Marmaduke Whitechurch, who'd been granted the land by Elizabeth I in 1585. Loughbrickland House itself was built in the early eighteenth century and largely rebuilt around 1780–90. The Whyte family still have it. By 1868 the estate ran to 1,928 acres; it's smaller now, but the woodland walks, the two ring forts and the gate lodge are all still there.
Before everyone else
The Magennises came first
Long before the Whytes, before Whitechurch, before the planters, Loughbrickland was a major seat of the Magennises of Iveagh — the Gaelic lords who ran most of this corner of Down from the late medieval period. Their castle is believed to have stood on the shores of the lough. Nothing of it survives above ground. The lake stayed; the lordship did not.