//
Photo: Ulsterbeef, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Grand 19th-century house and gardens, the lavish creation of the 3rd Marquess of Londonderry. Having spent £150,000 on the makeover of what had been a Georgian mansion, he fortunately had £30 spare to donate to famine relief. He's the fellow commemorated by the Scrabo Tower; he also has a fancy statue in Durham where he furiously opposed laws against child labour down his coal mines. Mount Stewart slumped under later descendants until revived by the 7th Marquess, then it passed to the National Trust.
Mount Stewart is a 19th-century house and garden in County Down, Northern Ireland, owned by the National Trust. Situated on the east shore of Strangford Lough, a few miles outside the town of Newtownards and near Greyabbey, it was the Irish seat of the Stewart family, Marquesses of Londonderry. Prominently associated in particular with the 2nd Marquess of Londonderry, Britain's Foreign Secretary at the Congress of Vienna, and with the 7th Marquess of Londonderry, the former Air Minister who at Mount Stewart attempted private diplomacy with Hitler's Germany, the house and its contents reflect the history of the family's leading role in social and political life in Britain and Ireland.
© OpenStreetMap contributors
Substantial ruin of a Cistercian abbey founded in 1193, with a small physic and kitchen garden. The exhibition centre is only open Feb-Nov Sa Su 1-4PM, but you can stroll around the ruin any time in daylight.
This grand Folly is a 135-ft (38-m) turreted tower, completed in 1859 as a memorial to Charles Vane, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry. It's in Scottish Baronial style imitating a pele tower, and the interior is occasionally open. It's built over a prehistoric hill fort, of which nothing remains. You mostly come for the view from the hill, and the surrounding country park.
The most terrible loss of life in the First World War was on the Somme in 1916, but this museum commemorates Ireland's role throughout that war. It's a guided tour, usually on the hour. They also manage the Ulster Memorial near Thiepval, midway between Amiens and Arras, where the Ulster Division captured the German Schwaben Redoubt.