Finnian, 540 AD
Movilla Abbey
Saint Finnian founded Movilla on a hill above Strangford Lough in 540 AD. Magh Bhile — 'the plain of the sacred tree' — was a pagan sacred site before the monastery went up, which was a common-enough pattern for early Irish foundations. Finnian taught Columba here. The story goes that Columba copied a psalter without permission, the row ended in the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne, and Columba was sent into exile on Iona by way of penance. The Vikings sacked Movilla in the ninth century. The Normans rebuilt it as an Augustinian house in the twelfth. Henry VIII suppressed it in the 1540s. The cemetery off the Movilla Road still holds a few medieval stones.
A folly that ruined its contractor
Scrabo Tower
On 27 February 1857 the foundation stone was laid for a memorial to Charles Stewart, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry. The design — Scottish Baronial, peel-tower silhouette — came from Lanyon & Lynn, the Belfast firm whose name is on half the listed buildings in Ulster. Hugh Dixon of Newtownards took the contract for the fourth design submitted. Costs ran from the original estimate up to £3,010 by 1859. Dixon was ruined. The interior was left unfinished. The walls are over a metre thick, dolerite at the base, Scrabo sandstone above. It is still standing. He is not.
How the modern town began
Hugh Montgomery and 1606
By 1606 the medieval town of Newtown was a ruin. Hugh Montgomery, a Scots Ayrshire laird, took possession that year as part of the Hamilton & Montgomery settlement — the private Scottish plantation that preceded the official Ulster Plantation by three years. He moved into the old castle, repaired the priory chancel as a church by 1607, and by 1611 had a town of about 100 houses on the ground, 'all peopled with Scots'. Most of the surnames in the Newtownards phone book still come from that influx.
Strangford Lough, every September
The Brent geese
Around 25,000 light-bellied Brent geese fly from Arctic Canada to Strangford Lough every September and October — about 90% of the world population of the subspecies. They feed on the eel-grass on the mudflats. WWT Castle Espie, fifteen minutes south of Newtownards, runs hides over the lough. Show up in early October on a still morning and you'll hear them before you see them.