On the Ards peninsula, near Newtownards, in County Down, Mount Stewart is today famous for its great house and its twentieth-century gardens. But the link of this estate with our period rests on its roots: it was, in the seventeenth century, a land of the Scottish colonisation of the Ards.
A land of the Scottish colonisation
The estate that would become Mount Stewart belonged, in the seventeenth century, to the Montgomery then Colville families — in the direct wake of the Scottish colonisation of the Ards. Sir Hugh Montgomery, one of the two great Scottish colonisers of the peninsula (with Hamilton), had established here, from 1606, thousands of Scottish Protestant colonists. The estate thus embodies the Protestant landed consolidation born of this colonisation — the lasting settlement of a new population and a new class of landowners on the lands of the Ards. It is this landed footing, born of the colonisation, that brings Mount Stewart into our atlas.
A handed-down estate
The estate, then called 'Mount Pleasant', remained in the hands of families born of the colonisation before being acquired by the Stewarts (who gave it its present name): in 1744, Alexander Stewart bought the manors of Newtownards and Comber for £42,000. The present house and gardens — among the most famous in Ireland — are much later than our period: Mount Stewart must therefore be treated as a landscape of an estate inherited from the Plantation, rather than as a built monument of the Renaissance. Its interest, for us, is that of a landed continuity going back to the Scottish colonisation. To see: the estate landscape and the gardens (National Trust), the context of the Ards peninsula (land of the Montgomery colonisation), the lake and the terraces.
Did you know?
The Ards peninsula, where Mount Stewart lies, is one of the cradles of the 'Ulster Scots' — that culture and language (Ulster Scots) brought by the Scottish colonists of North Down from 1606. These Scots, come mostly from Ayrshire and the Lowlands, lastingly imprinted their mark on the region: language, Presbyterianism, place names, architecture. Mount Stewart, through its Montgomery roots, is part of this founding history of the Scottish identity of Ulster.
Notes
Mount Stewart lies on the Ards peninsula, near Newtownards, County Down; house and gardens (National Trust) open to the public. The present fabric is later than the period; the interest is the estate born of the colonisation. Hours to check.
Quiz
- To which families did the estate belong in the seventeenth century?
- Montgomery then Colville
- The Tudors
- The Maguires
- From which colonisation does the estate stem?
- The Scottish colonisation of the Ards
- The Norman conquest
- The Viking invasion
- Is the present fabric of our period?
- No, it is much later (eighteenth-twentieth century)
- Yes, from 1500
- It is Roman