Trevor
McCavery
Prodigally
built in warm, mellow sandstone, picturesquely sited under Scrabo, at the
head of Strangford Lough, the ancient town of Newtown (pronounced Newton)
has a history that is in every way the equal of its stunning setting.
This
richly illustrated volume looks at Newtown in all its guises: at its enigmatic
prehistory, at the rise of its great Celtic monastery, at the flourishing
Norman town, given away as a wedding present; the plantation, when the language
of the town became 'broad Scotch hardly to be understood by strangers';
the eighteenth century, when it was one of the worst of the notorious 'rotten
boroughs' and the seat of a bitter dynastic conflict; the Regency town with
its broad streets and fashionable villas, behind which lay fever-ridden
backalleys and the poorhouse; though the Famine and the Home Rule Crisis,
to the present day.
