Painting Ireland: topographical views from Glin Castle. Edited by William Laffan (Tralee, Churchill House Press, 2006) 269pp, 196 colour illustrations. ISBN 0-9550246-1-7. Hardback, £30.00

Almost certainly, the most important collection of topographical pictures of Ireland in private hands has been accumulated over the last thirty years by Desmond FitzGerald, the Knight of Glin. It is not surprising that the major part has dealt with his home province of Munster nor that, given his long connection with the Irish Georgian Society, the emphasis has been on buildings, large and small, and on their gardens and townscape settings. Leinster, with its concentration of great houses and castles especially in the old settled area of the Pale, is also very well represented.

Now sixteen experts in architectural history, archaeology, art history, interior decoration and the history of landscape and garden design have been commissioned to produce this extremely handsome catalogue raisonné of a selection of 178 of the paintings and drawings from the collection.

Ulster plays a minor part with 28 entries, of which ten are devoted to County Down: Finola O'Kane writes on an early 19th-century drawing of the Hermitage at Tollymore; Terence Reeves-Smyth on two mid 19th-century watercolours of Mount Stewart, on a pair of watercolours of the now demolished Belvoir Park by Lord Mark Kerr and dated 1805, and on a 1799 watercolour of the glen at Bishop Percy's Dromore House by Thomas Robinson; Simon Lincoln on a drawing of Newry dated 1849, on a charmingly primitive William Greenlees watercolour of the new Narrow Water Castle dated 1838, and on an 1887 watercolour of the courtyard at Killyleagh Castle; and William Laffan on a recent gouache of the Music Room at Clandyboye by Lindy Guinness.

A treasured landscape: the heritage of Belvoir Park. Edited by Ben Simon (Belfast, The Forest of Belfast, 2005) 178pp, 150 colour and black and white illustrations. ISBN 0-9551583-0-8. Paperback, £10.00

Although the major part of this book is primarily of interest to the naturalist, there is much here also for the local and social historian. Comprehensive chapters by various authorities in their field deal with woods, meadows and wetlands, veteran trees, fungi, invertebrates, birds and mammals; and there are very detailed statistical records to fill these out in a series of appendices.

The history of the 600-acre estate from its creation by Arthur Hill in 1722, from parts of the townlands of Ballylenaghan, Breda and Galwally, to its subdivision today into the Belvoir Park Golf Course, Belvoir housing estate and the Belvoir Park Forest is admirably covered by Ben Simon himself, backed up by an impressive list of notes and references and by a wide range of contemporary paintings and early photographs.

Hill later became Viscount Dungannon, and the estate was sold in 1808 by the second viscount to three Belfast businessmen who sold it on to Robert Bateson, proprietor of Orangefield and Moira, in 1811. Bateson's son, Sir Thomas, was created Lord Deramore in 1885, and following his death in 1890 the Deramores sold the contents of the mansion house in 1900 and moved to England. The estate was then leased to Walter Wilson, a partner in Harland and Wolff, subsequently to Sir James Johnston who had been Lord Mayor of Belfast, and finally, in 1934, to J. and W. Stewart Ltd, building developers. After a period of requisition by the Admiralty during the second World War, the interior of the most impressive 18th-century Belvoir House was considered to be too far decayed and it was blown up as a Territorial Army exercise in 1961! Its superb entrance gates and lodges were later swept away to accommodate the dual carriageway of the Knock ring road.

Ben Simon also contributes a chapter on the gardens of the house, and there is a chapter of memories from local people who knew the estate from 1900 up to the 1950s.

The Whitewashed City: the story of Crossgar, Co. Down. By Tom Hewitt. Vol.2 (Crossgar, Tom Hewitt, 2005) pp iv, 85-163, 46 black and white illustrations. Paperback £3.95.

Thomas Cleland, the landlord of Crossgar, made it a condition of his leases that each house must be lime washed every third year - hence the local leg-pulling nickname, 'The Whitewashed City'.

Although this volume deals principally with the period during which the author has been associated with Crossgar, there are also a few retrospective glances, such as the evolution of the provision of primary education from Kilmore to Crossgar; the commercial importance to the town from 1823 onwards of its livestock market; and the abortive attempt in the early 1860s to run a branch railway line to Killyleagh to service the Shrigley and Killyleagh linen mills.

An invaluable portrait is provided of house and business ownership in 1920 with later changes of hand; and the description of the many domestic and public pumps before the introduction of mains water in 1932, and of 'dry' waste disposal before the coming of a public sewerage system in 1949 really brings home to us just how recently such facilities reached the average County Down village: electricity came to Crossgar only in 1933.

A detailed account is given of the events leading to the foundation by Dr Ian Paisley of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster in Crossgar, following an attempt by some of his supporters in the Lissara Presbyterian congregation to make their church hall available for a mission to be conducted by him without official sanction.

A chapter, 'Some sons of Crossgar', includes Willie Kennedy, breeder of two Grand National winners of 1966 and 1968; Sir James Martin, inventor of the aircraft ejector seat; and tailor Willie Ringland, creator of the first successful racing leathers for motorcyclists. There are several amusing anecdotes of the 'characters' who used to be so common in local rural communities before the coming of the Welfare State.

Portavo: an Irish townland and its people. Part two: the Famine to the present day. By Peter Carr (Dundonald, The White Row Press, 2005) pp xiii, 340-720, 299 colour and black and white illustrations. ISBN 1-870132-21-1

This second volume is a rattling good tale of the decline and fall of an Irish landed family during the later nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries. In about 1840 one in every twenty acres in Count Down belonged to the Ker family of Portavo and they owned a further 6000 acres in County Antrim. They were amongst Ireland's thirty wealthiest families. David Stewart Ker continued from 1844 as an ideal and successful landlord, but the burning down of Portavo House in the same year led to his removal to his Montalto estate at Ballynahinch. However, expenditure on relief work and the loss of rents during the Famine meant borrowing and sales of the library and Old Master paintings. David was returned as one of the Conservative MPs for Down in the violent election of 1852, but at great financial cost to himself. As a Liberal, he lost the 1857 election to the Conservative candidates. His estate debts then exceeded a quarter of a million pounds, and his personal extravagance quickly disposed of the annual balance of about £6,500 available to him out of an estimated income of £31,600, once all outgoings had been paid. He began selling off land in the Landed Estates Court in 1863. By 1867 the estate debts had risen to £371,000 and David had taken to drink. To add to his woes, his second wife and his 23-year old second son, Charley, ran off together in 1871 (Charlie committed suicide five years later). In 1872 he was declared bankrupt, and management of the estates was placed in the hands of trustees, while he himself was pensioned off and his eldest son succeeded to the heavily encumbered estates. Downpatrick had to be sold off in 1873 to one of the trustees, John Mulholland.

The surviving estates were in reality now run for the benefit of the creditors rather than the Kers. (Nevertheless, a modest replacement house was finally built at Portavo in 1885.) In 1886 the current Ker incumbent of Montalto, the incorrigibly spendthrift Richard, ardent huntsman and womaniser, was receiving only £910 out of a gross income of £17,490. In spite of the supreme efforts of his trustees and of his solicitor, William Wallace, he too ended up in the bankruptcy courts in 1898 at the age of forty-seven.

The agricultural part of the entire Ker estate was sold off in 1911 under the Wyndham Land Act and Montalto itself went to the Earl of Clanwilliam in 1912. The house in the demesne at Portavo was to be the final Irish home of the Kers. However, by the 1970s the rejuvenated trust fund had been exhausted, and the overdraft had again risen to £80,000. Home farm, demesne, house and its furnishings were sold off in 1980, and the resident Ker moved to Wiltshire, only to lose everything as a Lloyd's 'name' in 1992.

Tollymore: the story of an Irish demesne. By the Earl of Roden (Belfast, Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, 2005) xii, 195pp 111 colour and black and white illustrations. ISBN 0-900457-65-1. Paperback, £15.00. ISBN 0-900457-64-3. Hardback, £20.00

The original Magennis lands which form Tollymore Park in the foothills of the Mourne Mountains came into the possession of William Hamilton of Bright in Lecale in the 1660s through his marriage to Ellen Magennis. They settled in the Manor House at Tollymore from about 1675. In 1692 William's son, James Hamilton, at the time MP for Downpatrick, began to buy land at Dundalk, and, after his death in 1701, it was Dundalk which was to become the principal residence of the Hamiltons. James's son was created Viscount Limerick in 1719 and he began to upgrade the rough grazing land above Tollymore into a deer park for hunting and recreation by the planting of many trees. This was already greatly admired by 1732, but it was much extended in 1740, and the whole park was transformed after 1746 when Limerick persuaded Thomas Wright, the English astronomer and garden designer, to visit and provide plans for the demesnes at both Dundalk and Tollymore.

Wright made proposals for a new house at Tollymore which was commenced within the park as a summer residence in the 1750s, and for the series of some of the earliest 'gothick' buildings in Ireland which forms such a remarkable feature of the demesne today. Limerick had become Earl of Clanbrassill in 1756, and it was his son the second Earl, who, from the 1770s onwards, realized most of Wright's plans, planted an enormous number of trees, and established one of Ireland's earliest arboreta. The second Earl died childless, and all the Clanbrassill estates passed to his sister, the dowager Countess of Roden.

The Rodens made Tollymore their principal seat and further developed the demesne for forestry and the extraction of timber: the main house was vastly extended in the 1830s, badly damaged by fire in 1878 but subsequently restored.

In 1929 the eighth Earl of Roden sold a tranche of the forest to the Northern Ireland Government; the remainder and Tollymore House followed in 1941. Following demolition of the house in 1952, Tollymore became Northern Ireland's first and hugely successful forest park, opened to the public in 1955.

A number of appendices to the book include records of outstanding trees, and there is a detailed site gazetteer of all the buildings and features within the historic demesne.

Radicals and revivals. By WD Bailie (Belfast, Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland, 2006) 121pp. ISBN 0-9538526-7-9. Paperback, £5.00

As a tribute to fifty years of his research and publication, the Presbyterian Historical Society has reprinted here some of the most significant of the pieces written by Dr Bailie, chronicler of the Presbyterian Church and its congregations, authority on the 1798 Rebellion, distinguished local historian, and former minister of Kilmore.

County Down items include articles on the United Irishmen William Steel Dickson, minister of Portaferry and Samuel Barber, minister of Rathfriland, and on Sir George Rawdon who founded Ballynahinch in the 17th century. Professor Finlay Holmes's introduction is an eloquent appreciation of Dr Bailie's qualities, both as a historian and as a man.

(Our own Lecale Miscellany has benefited from contributions by Dr Bailie on Strangford Presbyterian Church, in No. 15, and on the development of Crossgar in the 19th century, in No. 20).

The blue cabin: living by the tides on Islandmore. By Michael Faulkner (Belfast, Blackstaff Press, 2006) v, 212pp, 37 black and white illustrations. ISBN 0-85640-793-3. Paperback, £7.99

After careers in Scotland as a solicitor and then as a furniture maker, Michael Faulkner came back in 2002, with his artist wife and their two terriers, to make a new life in Northern Ireland, setting up house in what had been his family's holiday getaway on an uninhabited island in Strangford Lough -- an extended wooden hut without mains electricity, which had served as part of an internment camp on the Isle of Man during the second World War.

This is the saga of settling in during the following four years, often hilarious, sometimes alarmingly perilous: battles with recalcitrant generators, submarine water pipes, exploding boilers; and both maritime misadventures and idyllic picnics. With great sensitivity Michael Faulkner records his reactions to the living landscape around him: the smells, the sounds, the tastes, the changing light and the textures. He delights in the outdoors, the wildlife and in working with his hands, describing what befalls him with a gentle self-deprecating humour, which is altogether disarming, and with a frankness and honesty which is at times painfully personal, making one feel like an intruder and yet at the same time invited to be a sharer.

As a counterpoint woven amongst his present day experiences there are memories of a superbly happy childhood spent at Seaforde and in the same island surroundings with a father who did his utmost to ensure as normal a life as possible for his family, in spite of the restraints of security imposed upon him as Prime Minister.

For those not fortunate to have been brought up to mess about in boats, there is much here to be learned, among other things, about the conflicting behaviour of wind and tide, about navigation, buoyancy and runaway engines - and about the misbehaviour of ill--tied knots! For those of us who simply rejoice in Strangford in all its moods, the whole book is guaranteed to be a treat.

Recent periodicals: selective contents lists

Down Survey. Yearbook of Down County Museum, 2005. Treasures of Down

This special issue celebrates not only the Museum's 25th birthday but also the completion of a five-year programme of planning and reconstruction to enable better access and display in the Governor's Residence building under the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act. New inter-connecting galleries on a single level have made it possible to exhibit over three times more than before, and the opportunity has been taken to refit the space using the most up-to-date electronic, tactile and hands-on aids. The chapters in this year's Survey have all been written by the Museum's staff and follow the 'timeline' arrangement of the new galleries: prehistory, St Patrick, mediaeval, early modern, 1798-1803, Victorian, Home Rule, World War I, inter-war, World War II, and post-war. Each contribution contains a commentary on half-a-dozen or so illustrated objects considered to be of outstanding significance; and throughout an emphasis is laid on a number of key donors to the collections.

Inverbrena [No 10] Memories from the Strangford area, 2005 (Inverbrena Local History Group)

'Strangford is not the same', P.J. Lennon [Recollections of the open boat ferrymen and of dockers' work at the quayside]; 'Men, women, horses and hounds', Willie Crea [Hunting in the Bishopscourt and Ringawoody areas in the period before the second World War]; 'Farewell to the blacksmith', George McKibbin [The 200-year old Breen blacksmith's shop at Glebe, Kilclief, run latterly, until about the 1980s, by Tom King]; 'Michael McLaverty - a writer of Lecale', Sheila Campbell; 'Down on the farm', 'In Strangford' [14-page section of old photographs, 1890s-1956]; 'Strangford buses - 1920s', Eamon McMullan; 'Stella Maris Public Elementary School [Strangford, 1933-1964]', Michael McConville; 'Memories - the ceili house', Mary W Denvir [Story-telling entertainment in the 1930s]; 'Extracts from "Home Words" [and Ballyculter Parish Magazine, 1877, selected by ] Isabel Magee [Chapters 1-3 of an account of Strangford Lough].

Journal of the Upper Ards Historical Society, No 30, 2006

'A tall story', David Dunlop [The removal in 1810 of the unsafe 1787 spire from the tower of St James's Church of Ireland, Ballyphilip]; 'Reed warblers discovered at Lough Cowey', Hugh Bradley; 'Shopping in country areas long ago', Keiran McCarthy [Small rural shops in the Upper Ards in the mid-20th century]; 'Thomas Gelston of Portaferry [1769-1843, shipbuilder]', David Dunlop; 'Logan's apple', Amy Anderson [The various Echlin owners of Rubane/Echlinville where the apple known as Echlinville was first bred by Logan, the gardener]; 'McFaddens of the Ards and West Cumberland', Derek Elwood [Family which migrated from Loughdoo to Workington in 1872]; 'Queen's University Marine Biology Station, a personal account - plus a little science. Part 5', PJS Boaden; '"Helgoland" (1895-1924)', Jim Blaney [Rescue of the crew of a brigantine wrecked off Tara Point in 1924]; 'The War House', George Busby [The RAF Operations Room at Kircubbin in 1941].

Gordon Wheeler