Ballysallagh Road

This is the Ballysallagh Road. Although not on Raven’s 1626 map,[1] it was marked on Taylor and Skinner’s map of the Roads of Ireland in 1777, connecting Bangor across the Craigantlet hills to Dundonald.[2] The section that passed to the South of what was then Ballyleidy House (now Clandeboye House) was shown on Sloane’s map of the Blackwood lands in about 1712.[3] More to the point, it probably existed as far back as 1674, when John Blackwood purchased Ballyleidy from the Hamiltons of Killyleagh, and built the first iteration of the house, complete with an avenue leading from the road.

Further evidence of the early existence of the road arises from a tale that was relayed to me by the late Charlie Williamson, who managed the farm between the 1950s and 1980s. We were walking in the woods one day and he pointed out a very large Beech tree near the lake to the East of the house. “Marshall Schomberg tied his horse to this tree” he said, with apparent confidence. Later research showed that the old road did run past that tree, and furthermore that in 1689, Schomberg sent many of his 10,000 troops along this road to camp in the Craigantlet hills overlooking Belfast. Although he set up his headquarters in Newtownards, it is quite possible that he did use this route to visit his troops.[4] There is even a house on the hills called Schomberg’s cottage.

The reason that I did not realise that the road once went past Schomberg’s tree was that it had been realigned further from the house sometime in the late eighteenth century. Then, in 1852, James Frazer drew the outline of a lake in front of the house on his map of the new landscape plan, but he also drew the line of a new road that skirted it. When Lord Dufferin finally started work on the lake in 1865, he abandoned the idea of a new road in favour of diverting traffic around the estate completely, thus removing access through his demesne. However, his tenants from this part of the estate were not at all pleased at this development and set off to Downpatrick to appeal to the Grand Jury to stop the project. Dufferin’s agent, Mortimer Thompson, got wind of this and followed them. On catching up with them, their spokesman, Mr Gelston, who farmed the land near here, on the Millbrook Lane, explained that the road closure would mean that they could only bring back one load of turf a day from the bogs of the Ards peninsula, instead of two. So, Thompson arranged compensation to allow for this inconvenience and the closure was accordingly accepted.[5] Hence the sharp bend in the road as you travel towards Bangor from here.

[1] On display in the North Down Museum

[2] Taylor and Skinner, Maps of the Roads of Ireland. Surveyed 1777 (1778), Map 6.

[3] PRONI T3666/1

[4] PRONI D1071/B/B/19/1

[5] PRONI D1071/A/K/1/B/14/1 (9 March 1865)