Here’s a question: what is the county town of Donegal? Donegal town? Letterkenny? Killybegs? It’s none of these. Not the town after which the county is named; Donegal. Not the largest town by population in the county; Letterkenny. Not the town known for its commercial fishing; Killybegs. It’s Lifford, population just 1,613 in the 2022 census, the administrative centre of Donegal County Council.
County towns are common to the island of Ireland. Their creation began in the 12th century with Dublin, and carried on into the early 1600s, with the creation of Wicklow. In the Partition of 1921 the six counties of Armagh, Antrim, Down, Fermanagh, Derry and Tyrone were decreed to be part of Northern Ireland but retained their traditional county towns.
I’m in Downpatrick, county town of Co Down, population 11,545 in the 2021 census. Summer may be here but it happens to be a day of torrential, incessant rain. Excess water is a always a danger here. Downpatrick is half a metre below sea level, making it the lowest-lying town in Ireland. I’m initially puzzled by the number of premises that look derelict, before realising many were severely damaged by floods in the winter of 2023.
McCartan’s Footwear on Market Street is a family business, selling shoes, runners, boots and GAA county jerseys. The shop is now run by three siblings, Paul, Ciaran and Nuala McCartan. “We’re trading since 1926, and at these premises since 1932. We have two birthdays, like the queen, if you believe in all that, which I don’t,” Paul McCartan says, referring to the late Queen Elizabeth.
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The business has moved a couple of times. Two years ago the current premises were flooded. “Look,” Paul says, showing me a staircase at the back of the shop. “The water came up as far as the fifth step.”
They lost all stock, and were out of the Market Street building for a year. “Only for the fact we owned the premises, we would have walked away. We are the only shoe shop in town now. There used to be six or seven, and we the last man standing.”
Nuala McCartan says she’d like to sell up and retire. “We’ll go another while yet,” her brother says.
Pressed on what they think are the characteristics of a county town, Paul replies: “There are still a lot of independent traders. I think that sets us apart. Downpatrick was essentially a big market town back in the day.”
Downpatrick has a compact centre. Four of the main streets are, variously, Irish Street, English Street, Scotch Street, and Barrack Street. I also notice a street name of Britches Close, but nobody I talk to in the town can tell me the origins of this one.
Downpatrick is famously synonymous with St Patrick, who is reputed to have landed at nearby Strangford Lough. There is a visitor centre dedicated to the national saint, the town’s Catholic churchcarries his name, and, as far as anyone knows, his remains lie beneath a rock in the graveyard of Down Cathedral.
I walk up the hill to look at the large stone memorial in the Church of Ireland cathedral’s cemetery. It’s a surprise to me to read the inscription on the bronze plaque, dated 1985, atop the stone. “According to tradition the remains of St Patrick with those of St Brigid and St Columba who is also known as Columcille, were reinterred on this site by John De Courcy in the 12th century, thus fulfilling the prophecy that the three saints would be buried in the same place.”
I had not known that St Brigid and St Columcille apparently reside in death alongside St Patrick.
“We probably don’t maximise this enough,” says Stephen McGorrian, who co-owns Denvir’s Inn on English Street.
A former coaching inn, it’s the only place to stay in the town, and where I am staying for the night, in one of its characterful rooms. There is a huge stone fireplace dating from the 1600s. In 1829, Daniel O’Connell made a speech here. As there are only six bedrooms, it apparently can’t be defined as a hotel.
McGorrian is talking about the potential of the three saints’ resting place to attract tourists. “The St Patrick Centre gets 800 coaches a year, but everyone drives on and doesn’t stay, because there is nowhere to stay. We are the county town of Down, but we play second fiddle to Newry. We need to bring Downpatrick back to a status it deserves, and recognise it as a county town. When you don’t have any other alternatives, you have to maximise your tourist strengths.”
According to McGorrian, Downpatrick’s status as a county town “has been in decline” since Partition. “It used to be a very important town, with a courthouse and the Down Mental Hospital.”
The former Down Mental Hospital had 300 beds until the 1980s, when it underwent a period of transition and reduced to 16 beds. Part of the building was subsequently converted into offices for Down District Council.
“Council borders have changed,” McGorrian says. “Newry has city status, so there is an ongoing rivalry between Downpatrick and Newry. It has given the people of this town a slight inferiority complex. We are now trying to reinvest in Downpatrick, and focus on its heritage. There used to be a lot of wealth in this town in days gone by.”
What does he think makes a county town? “It can’t do without local shops, and it needs constant regeneration in the town centre,” he says. “You have to keep regenerating it. And you need customer loyalty to survive.”
Then he reconsiders: “Maybe the idea of a county town these days is more about nostalgia. Does it really have any meaning any more? I don’t think it does in the North anyway. It’s different in the South.”
There are some arresting shop signs around the town. At Harbinson Hair on Irish Street, the exterior has a quote, “Gorgeous hair is the best revenge.” Who said this? Apparently Ivana Trump, the first wife of Donald Trump who died in 2022. Her name is underneath the quote, all in gold letters. The name of one of the town’s many charity shops, the BPMR on Market Street, refers to the “Bird of Paradise Ministries in Rwanda.”
I spend some time wandering around the Down County Museum. There is a huge cast iron pot, believed to have come from the townworkhouse, and used in hungry times to make soup or thin stew. This pot was donated by a local family: it was once a planter in their garden. It’s a visceral reminder of a time when famine crossed all county borders.
[ Down town — Paul Clements on the delights of historic DownpatrickOpens in new window ]
There is also a curiously shaped object described as the “Silver Shrine of St Patrick’s Jaw”. No bones are visible, but the accompanying sign states that it contains a jawbone, “traditionally that of St Patrick”. There is some tenuous provenance to the jawbone. A note says it “probably dates to the 17th century”. It came through the Savage family, and then the Cullen family, and has been loaned by the Diocese of Down and Connor. Whether anyone can state it was once located in St Patrick’s face is another matter.
Ciaran Fitzpatrick is the owner of Fitzpatrick and Sons estate agents and chartered surveyors, on Irish Street. He’s also involved with an undertaking business in the town.
Like others, he mentions the former mental hospital of Downshire. “There’s an 83-year-old man who works for me driving a hearse,” he says. “He remembers the place. There was a farm there, and he remembers farm labourers being called to work by bells. The farm produced food for the community of patients who lived there.”
Fitzpatrick asks if I have been to see the reputed triple grave of St Patrick, St Brigid and St Columcille. I say I have.
“So we have her up here, but it’s you down south who got the annual February bank holiday in her honour,” he says with a laugh.
A new three-bed semi in Down’s county town is £200,000 (€230,416). “Back in 2007, the average price for the same house was £250,000, so we are still below that price today. We had a huge property crisis, it was comparable to Japan and we still haven’t recovered from that fully.”
A similar three-bed semi in Belfast is, on average, £300,000. Fitzpatrick thinks it will be 20 years before the property market steadies in Northern Ireland. As for the future of Downpatrick, he sees it becoming a commuter town, where people buy in Downpatrick and work in Belfast, just over 40km away.
Back at Denvir’s, supervisor Shane Hayes pauses to thinks when asked if Downpatrick seems to him like the centre of Co Down.
“Maybe once, but things have moved on now,” he says. “It used to be the centre of things, and there used to be a cattle market in the centre of town, but those days are gone now.”
