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Killough was formerly in Rathmullan
parish then transfered to Bright parish. The population in 1659 was
21,by 1821 it was 1140 and in 1846 1148 with 224 houses, 51 families
employed in agriculture, 126 in manufacturing or trade; 21 in professions;
118 in labouring jobs and 68 directing labour. In 1836 there was a Church
of Ireland , 2 Methodist & a Catholic church, some schools and an
ancient well, St. Scordon's, here. The proprietor was Lord Bangor.
No one who knows Killough today,
with its mouldering sea walls and silted harbour, can have any idea
of the bustling life that was there in the 18th century. The village
and port were the creation of Michael Ward of Castleward, father of
the first Lord Bangor and a justice of the King's Bench. From Norman
times the Russell family ( Catholics) had held the manor of Killough,
but they had been deprived of it after the rising of 1641. It was a
place of little consequence, however, until Michael Ward turned his
attention to it. He renamed it Port St. Anne, in honour of his wife,
established a salt works there and made a number of improvements to
the harbour. Its principal trade was the export of barley with fifteen
ships and twenty boats engaged in fishing.
After the outbreak of war between
Britain and France in 1793 the growing of cereals increased in Lecale
and Killough, as one of the ports of export, expanded to deal with it,
until its population was almost double what it is today. The existing
harbour facilities were soon inadequate and between 1821 and 1824, Michael
Ward' s son, the first Lord Bangor, employed the engineer Alexander
Nimmo, to build new quays at a cost of £17,000. The piers, a long
one of nearly 600 feet on the Killough side and a short one of 100 feet
on the Coney Island side, enclosed a fine harbour. The village prospered
and the grain merchants built their imposing houses in Castle Street,
and their stores on the narrow lane leading to the quays.
For a brief period in the early 19th century, Killough was the busiest
and with its tree-lined main street, in many way the most attractive
of the seaside villages of East Down. But when the post-was depression
of the 1830s brought a fall in grain prices, merchants, who had expanded
in many fields during the inflationary period, soon found themselves
in difficulty. For a time their reserves enabled them to keep going,
but soon Killough saw one grain store after another close and its once
busy harbour lay idle. The decline of the village was reflected in the
population which fell from 951 in 1851 to 380 in 1937.
Newspaper articles from Down
Recorder;
road impassable 18 Feb 1837; school house erected 8 Apr 1837; lead mine
8 Apr 1837; effects of the Big Storm 12
Jan 1839; Poor Law district population was 3589 in 30 Nov 1839;
windmill to let 21 Oct 1843: charity money 23 Dec 1843; Famine
soup kitchens 16 Jan 1847: the trustees of the Bangor Estate gave
£3 towards the soup kitchen 6 Feb 1847; Famine relief committee
18 Sep 1847; new flax scutch mill 28 Aug 1852; windmill to let 14 Oct
1854; dangerous state of Killough Bridge 9 Feb 1856; Tea party, Juvenile
Temperance Society 17 Apr 1858; report from Killough dispensary 27 May
1880; email me for a photo of Killough railway station which opened
in 1892 (27 Mar 1967R); meeting of Catch-My-Pal Total Abstinence Society
23 Oct 1915*; deputation to parliament for a deep water harbour 3 Nov
1926*; photo of Main Street c. 1960s (10/10/1939*)
Newspaper article from Northern
Herald;
brig 'Dale' knocked to pieces at Killough 14 Nov 1835
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