The Burning of Ballydugan House

Part of the Irish History timeline 

in the Downpatrick museum. 

Ballydugan house was subsequently 

rebuilt by the West family, and has 

been subsequently restored.

There is no sense of any identity crisis with New English families like the Wests, no lingering sentimentality about their Catholic past, and no evidence that the liberal unionizing ideals of groups like the United Irishmen would ever have been seen by them as anything but a threat to the English crown, and the march of English civilization to be quickly and ruthlessly dealt with. 

Not indeed, when we consider again the 1641 rebellion, which provides ample evidence of how warmly welcomed the West family were by certain elements of the local Down population, native Irish and certain old Anglo-Norman families (such as the Hadzors) alike. 

Castle Ward, July 2016

Castle Ward is located just a few miles away from Quoile Castle on the road to Strangford, and by way of contrast is a genuine stately home set in 820 acres of immaculately kept lands.  The castle and surrounding lands were owned by the Ward family, until they were passed over to the National Trust, with the agreement that the family would continue to make limited use of the property. This, the Viscount of Bangor, as he is now known, apparently continues to do.  

The Ward line traces its lineage back to Bernard Ward, who sometime before 1638, married Anne West, the daughter of Captain Richard West. 

Their eldest son, Nicholas, married Sarah Buckworth, the daughter of the Bishop of Dromore. Sarah was the niece of James Ussher, whose claim to fame was his discovery of the Book of Kells, which he donated to Trinity College, Dublin, where it resides to this day. Nicholas was M.P. for Downpatrick between 1661 and 1666.

Their daughter Mary married her cousin, Tichbourne West. He was a son of Major Roger West, and grandson of the original Richard West.  

Their son, Bernard, was born in 1654, and married Anne Ward. He met his end in a duel in 1690. This duel would seem to have been with a Jocelyn Magennis. An extant letter records that Bernard shot Jocelyn unfairly with his pistol, and that Jocelyn, in response and although weakened, still managed to bury his sword up to the hilt into Bernard, thus ensuring that both disputing parties made their way into the next world at the same time. 

It was the son of Bernard and Anne, a namesake, Bernard Ward (1719-1781) who became the first Viscount Bangor. He married Lady Ann Bligh (died 1789). It was as a result of this confrontational marriage that the extraordinary interior of today's property dates. Unable to agree on anything, and least of all interior architecture and decoration, the couple partitioned the home down the middle, one side to be Classical and the other side Gothic. Thus did issues of identity and opinion playfully confound domestic harmony at even the highest levels of aristocratic engagement.

Such were the circles in which the West family moved in the early seventeenth century.