Attraction in Ards and North Down District Council

Mount Stewart on the shores of Strangford Lough in County Down is one of the finest gardens in Ireland and one of the most remarkable National Trust garden properties in the British Isles, a garden of approximately 30 acres created from 1921 onward by Edith, Marchioness of Londonderry. The mild Strangford Lough microclimate allows cultivation of tender plants from the Southern Hemisphere and the Mediterranean impossible in most of Northern Ireland. The formal gardens include the Spanish Garden, the Italian Garden, the Sunken Garden, the Mairi Garden and the Shamrock Garden, each with distinct character and planting reflecting the warmth and ambition of their creator's horticultural vision. The mildness of the microclimate creates the diversity of plant material that gives the garden its remarkable variety. The woodland walks around the lake provide a more naturalistic complement to the formal gardens, the mature trees and the lakeside setting of Strangford Lough creating a landscape of considerable natural quality. The combination of the formal and informal gardens with the extraordinary lough setting makes Mount Stewart one of the most rewarding garden visits in Ulster.

Grey Abbey on the shores of Strangford Lough in County Down is the finest and most completely preserved Cistercian abbey ruin in Ireland, a monastery of the twelfth century founded in 1193 by Affreca, daughter of the King of Man and wife of John de Courcy, whose substantial church and cloister buildings survive in unusually good condition above the beautiful setting of the lough shore. The abbey is managed by Historic Environment Northern Ireland and the combination of the architectural quality of the ruins, the medieval physic garden and the surrounding Strangford Lough landscape creates one of the most rewarding monastic heritage visits in Ulster. The abbey church at Grey Abbey is one of the finest examples of early Gothic architecture in Ireland, its pointed arches and ribbed vaulting representing the arrival of the Gothic style in Ireland in a building of considerable ambition and quality for its remote lough shore setting. The west doorway of the church, with its elaborate mouldings and decoration, is one of the finest pieces of medieval stonework in Northern Ireland and demonstrates the architectural ambition of the founding community's building programme. The reconstructed physic garden adjacent to the ruins provides a creative interpretation of the medicinal plants that a Cistercian community would have cultivated for the treatment of the sick in their infirmary, and the combination of the garden, the ruins and the lough shore setting creates a visit of considerable variety and historical depth.