NEWTOWNARDS

Newtownards is a town in a region known as the Ards, an area of astonishing beauty and diversity which has evolved through the natural forces of wind, water and ice, as well as through man's activities.

Dating from 1607, the town was built by the Scottish planter Sir Hugh Montgomery. A ruin in the Court Street area of the town is all that remains of a Dominican priory founded by the Anglo-Norman Savage family in 1244.

One of the dominant features of the area around Newtownards is the Scrabo Tower, built as a memorial to the 3rd Marquis of Londonderry in 1857, which affords impressive views over the town and also the northern part of the Strangford Lough. The tower is part of the Scrabo Country Park.

Ards Art Centre is credited with being Ulsters finest Georgian Town Hall, built between 1767 and 1771 as a market house. A bronze sculpture stands there too, a memorial to Lt Col Blair Paddy Mayne, a native of Newtownards and one of the most decorated soldiers of the Second World War.

Even earlier than the Town Hall, is an odd-looking little building, with a conical roof, called the Market Cross, built in 1636, destroyed in 1653 and then replaced in 1666, and was probably used as an office or shelter for the town's night watchmen.

Once a quiet market town, Newtownards is now a busy manufacturing and commercial centre.