Scrabo Tower Newtownards
Scrabo Tower is a conspicuous Victorian monument on Scrabo Hill above Newtownards in County Down, a 41-metre castellated tower built in 1857 as a memorial to the third Marquess of Londonderry, whose tenants erected it in gratitude for his relief efforts during the Great Famine. The tower stands on the summit of Scrabo Hill, a prominent basalt plug rising above the southern shore of Strangford Lough, and its position provides outstanding views across the lough, the Ards Peninsula and the Mourne Mountains that make it one of the most rewarding viewpoints in County Down. The tower is built from the distinctive Scrabo sandstone quarried from the hillside below, a warm brownish-grey stone that was extensively quarried for building throughout County Down and used in the construction of many of Belfast's Victorian buildings. The quarries on the hillside below the tower are now managed as a country park and provide excellent walking through a landscape shaped by centuries of stone extraction. The memorial to the Marquess of Londonderry was built by grateful tenants during a period when the relationship between landlord and tenant in Ireland was one of the defining social tensions of the age, and the fact that this memorial was erected at all, and at such scale, reflects the exceptional circumstances of the famine years when some landlords provided relief to their tenants while others did not. The tower stands as a document of this period as much as an architectural feature. The views from the tower across Strangford Lough, the Ards Peninsula and toward the Mournes on a clear day provide one of the finest panoramas available in County Down and reward the short climb from the car park.