Qualla: Ards Forest Park

Ards Forest Park: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Willie Duffin, CC BY-SA 2.0. Diarmuid and Grainne slept here, or so the old people will tell you, pointing at the megalithic tombs that lie scattered through the trees like furniture from another world. The legendary lovers, fleeing the wrath of Fionn Mac Cumhaill, supposedly spent their nights of exile in these stone chambers across Ireland - and four of them happen to stand in Ards Forest Park, on a small peninsula jutting into Sheephaven Bay in northern Donegal. The myth has outlasted the manor house. Ards House, the Stewart family seat that once anchored this 480-hectare estate, was demolished in the early 1960s. The forest remembers what the architecture forgot.

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Image: Willie Duffin | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ards Forest Park: The Stewart Centuries

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rossographer, CC BY-SA 2.0. Alexander Stewart bought the Ards Estate in the 1780s, and his descendants held it for roughly 150 years. The last of them was Lady Ena Stewart-Bam, who inherited from her grandfather around 1904 and married Lt. Col. Sir Pieter van B. Stewart-Bam in 1910 - a South African soldier...

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Image: Rossographer | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ards Forest Park: Stone Beds and Iron Rings

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Valkyryn at English Wikipedia, Public domain. Inside the forest, the visitor walks across multiple layers of Irish history without always realizing it. The four ringforts here are the circular earthen enclosures that once housed farming families during the Early Christian period - prehistory in stone, scattered across the co...

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Image: Valkyryn at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Ards Forest Park: Walking the Peninsula

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Thpohl, Public domain. The park offers four signposted trails, each tuned to a different appetite. The Ards Heritage Trail covers about 3.5 kilometres, threading past the well and the Mass rock. The Nature Trail and Green Trail run roughly 3 kilometres apiece. The Red Trail stretches 13 kilometres arou...

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Image: Thpohl | Public domain

Ards Forest Park: What Remains

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joseph Mischyshyn, CC BY-SA 2.0. Ards Forest Park is a strange and gentle survival. The estate that created its parklike character is gone - the house demolished, the family scattered, the empire that produced South African colonels and Donegal landowners reduced to footnotes. But the trees the Stewarts planted ...

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Image: Joseph Mischyshyn | CC BY-SA 2.0