Qualla: Downpatrick https://qualla.com/downpatrick en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:12 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Downpatrick https://qualla.com/downpatrick Downpatrick: Introduction https://qualla.com/downpatrick/ On a hilltop in the middle of County Down, a granite slab carved with a single name catches the rain. Patrick. According to long tradition, three Irish saints lie buried beneath this hill - Patrick, Brigid, and Columcille, the trio of patrons whose lives shaped Christian Ireland - though only Patrick's name is on the stone. Downpatrick is older than the stone, older than the cathedral above it, older than the medieval royal fort that gave the place its name. The dún - the fort - stood on a drumlin overlooking the River Quoile, surrounded on most sides by tidal estuary, defensible by geography. People have lived on Cathedral Hill since the Bronze Age. The name has been Downpatrick only since the late twelfth century, when an Anglo-Norman knight rededicated everything to a saint who had died seven hundred years before.

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/v/downpatrick-wp/gcev-downpatrick-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Downpatrick: Before the Normans https://qualla.com/downpatrick/ The hill above the Quoile was once called Ráth Celtchair - the fort of Celtchar, a hero from the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology. By the early Christian period, an actual ringfort stood there, and it grew into the capital of the Dál Fiatach, the ruling dynasty of the medieval kin...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/v/downpatrick-wp/gcev-downpatrick-before-the-normans.mp3 0:06 2 full Downpatrick: The Day Patrick Came Home https://qualla.com/downpatrick/ John de Courcy began building a motte inside the older royal fort, then quickly abandoned it when he made Carrickfergus his Ulster capital instead. But before he left, he rededicated the cathedral to Saint Patrick - linking the saint who had evangelized fifth-century Ireland with...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/v/downpatrick-wp/gcev-downpatrick-the-day-patrick-came-home.mp3 0:06 3 full Downpatrick: The Hanging of Thomas Russell https://qualla.com/downpatrick/ On 21 October 1803, a co-founder of the United Irishmen named Thomas Russell was hanged outside Downpatrick Gaol. He had tried to raise local United Irishmen and Defenders in support of Robert Emmet's rebellion that July, and the rebellion had failed. Russell is buried in the gra...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/v/downpatrick-wp/gcev-downpatrick-the-hanging-of-thomas-russell.mp3 0:06 4 full Downpatrick: Holy Wells and Saint Patrick's Day https://qualla.com/downpatrick/ A mile and a half east of Downpatrick, four stone wells sit in a hollow at Struell. They predate Saint Patrick by centuries and have been used as healing wells since pre-Christian times. People still come. A few miles farther, Saul Church marks the spot where Patrick is said to h...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/v/downpatrick-wp/gcev-downpatrick-holy-wells-and-saint-patricks-day.mp3 0:06 5 full Downpatrick: What the Hill Still Holds https://qualla.com/downpatrick/ Inch Abbey, founded by John de Courcy in 1180, ruins beautifully beside the Quoile a mile north of town - the railway runs from Downpatrick out to it. Quoile Castle, a sixteenth-century tower house, stands closer to Strangford. Ballynoe Stone Circle, just south of town, ringed it...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/v/downpatrick-wp/gcev-downpatrick-what-the-hill-still-holds.mp3 0:06 6 full