extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair. COUNTY DOWN The Ards Peninsula had its own market towns. Most of them (with the exception of Carrowdore) were also ports of varying degrees of importance. Portaferry had the best markets. Donaghadee was the busiest port. Others included Kircubbin, Greyabbey and Ballywalter.       Portaferry had excellent fairs and for a short time a small linen market. In addition to the monthly fairs held on the second Tuesday of each month it had two patent fairs dating back to the seventeenth century. They were held on the last day of July and the first day of December.       In those days it was the custom in Portaferry to pay £1 premium to the person who brought the last horse to the fair. Smaller premiums were paid to the person who brought the last sheep, cow and pig. No doubt many farmers and buyers came from the Strangford side of the lough, for a ferry was making the journey back and forth thirty times a day as far back as 1837. Fares ranged from one- to threepence. About a mile north of the town there was a quay which was often used as a safe harbour for vessels travelling between Belfast and Dublin.       Kircubbin’s markets began in the latter half of the eighteenth century thanks to the Right Honourable Robert Ward who encouraged trade and built a market house in 1795. However although it had fortnightly markets and quarterly fairs, the village at that time was better known for its straw bonnets than its agriculture. The straw was brought by boat from England and the finished bonnets were exported to England, Belfast and Dublin. Women also did flowering (embroidery), this work being imported from Scotland. By the middle of the nineteenth century twelve additional fairs had been established and were held regularly on the first Monday of the month until well into the twentieth. By then the main exports were grain, beans and potatoes and the imports were coal, salt and Indian corn.       The ruins of the abbey founded for Cistercian monks by Affreca, wife of John de Courcy in 1192 proclaim the ancient origins of Greyabbey. The first Plantation owner was James Hamilton who acquired the lands in a grant from James I early in the seventeenth century. James also granted a port to Greyabbey ‘with pilotage, anchorage, keelage and other privileges’. However an insufficiency of water decreed that the port was little used except by a few sloops discharging coal onto carts. Fairs established at that time survived to the end of the nineteenth century but were never considered of much importance. Places like Ballywalter, Carrowdore, Donaghadee and Bangor had fairs too though never more than two in the year. Thousands of cattle and horses were exported through Donaghadee except for a period at the end of the seventeenth- and beginning of the eighteenth century when Charles II placed an embargo on the import of Irish cattle into England. ?Donaghadee was a favourite point of departure. From there a short sea crossing brought them to Portpatrick and dealers were quite prepared to do business in such towns as New Galloway and Dumfries as they passed through on their way to Carlisle. In 1790 over 17,000 beasts were carried across to Portpatrick, mainly cattle but including horses and other animals, together with a considerable number of passengers. Some departed from other ports such as Bangor. Bangor also had a sizeable livestock trade and their usual destination was Portpatrick. Passengers used to complain about the smell of the animals which travelled on the same boat.       Holywood was said ‘to have the advantage of the short distance to Belfast where there is always a ready market.’ Places like Knockbreda and Ballymacarrett, then mere villages, fell into the same category. Holywood once had four fairs held on the first Monday of February, May, August and November at which the usual farm animals were sold, though the fairs were said by the surveyor of the 1830s ‘to be held more for pleasure than business.’       Extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair. Previous extracts regarding County Armagh: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 Forthcoming extracts regarding County Down: Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 |

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