The History of Holywood

 

Today, Holywood is renowned as a vibrant, speciality-shopping town with established art galleries, local artists and craftspeople, all working to promote the area as an attractive place to live or visit.  The commercial core of Holywood is High Street, one of the town’s original streets, which lay on the main Belfast to Bangor Road until the construction of the A2 bypass in the 1970’s.  Situated on the southern shore of Belfast Lough most of Holywood district has great views of the Antrim Hills on the northern shore and the town is only six miles from the city of Belfast. 

Evidence in the form of flints and axe heads dug up at Kinnegar sand dunes during the 19th century testify that people have settled in what is now Holywood from very early times.  In the graveyard at the east end of the town, are the ruins of the Anglo-Norman Abbey, known as the Priory.  The Abbey replaced an earlier church founded by St. Laiseran in the 7th century.  St. Laiseran was the son of a local princess called Nasca and after him the settlement was named "Ard Mac-Nasca"- the height of the son of Nasca. 

The power of the Normans in Ulster gradually waned and by the fourteenth century the clans from Derry and Tyrone forced their way into the districts, later named the counties of Down and Antrim and established the Clannaboy colony, ('Clann Aodh Bui Family or Clan of yellow-haired Hugh’). 

The modern town of Holywood was founded in the early 17th century when a group of Scotsmen under Sir James Hamilton and Sir Hugh Montgomery crossed over to County Down to found a Scottish plantation.  The local chief, thought at one stage to have been a supporter of a rebellion against the Crown, was forced to sign away a large portion of his lands to the Scots in return for a royal pardon.  Sir James Hamilton, later to be known as Lord Clandeboye, built his house at Clandeboy and proceeded to rebuild Bangor and Holywood as market towns, re-developing their former monastic churches for parish church use.  The maypole in Holywood is documented in a map of the area dated 1625.

Until the 1800’s the primary source of income for local residents came from fishing and lace making, but by 1810 Holywood was becoming popular as a fashionable sea-bathing town and place of retirement.  The town underwent a period of rapid growth, especially with the opening of the railway from Belfast to Holywood in 1848.  Charles Lanyon, the celebrated Ulster architect, was commissioned to design a number of landmark buildings in Holywood including Sullivan School (now the Library), the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church in High Street and the Church of Ireland in Church Road.  During this period parts of the huge Hamilton estate were sold to settle family debts.  As a result much of the land around Holywood, including the Holywood Hills, Cultra and Craigavad, was bought over by wealthy Belfast industrialists and merchants who erected large Victorian mansions. 

By 1852 Holywood officially became a town, but when the railway was extended to Bangor four years later its expansion began to wane and it reverted back to being a dormitory town for the rich merchants and workers of Belfast.  After the Second World War Holywood again underwent a period of growth, providing new housing estates such as Loughview and Redburn for those former Belfast residents whose homes had been destroyed during the Blitz. 

Today, in recognition of its unique Victorian architectural heritage, the area known as High Holywood has recently been designated a conservation area.