Grace Neill's Restaurant & Bar

The French Connection

Today Grace Neill’s is peppered with antiques and framed pictures reminding curious customers of days gone by. These pictures are interesting, and each tell their own story. But there is one frame that tells a very specific story. Written by Bill Pollock for one of the local papers some years ago, this article tells the very interesting tale of Donaghadee’s “French Connection”.
The text of the article can be viewed below.

“The fact that the town was owned for about three centuries by a family of Huguenot descent explains the French-ness of Donaghadee.

Visitors to Donaghadee often comment on the ‘French-ness’ of the Co. Down seaside resort and the reason undoubtedly is to be found in the fact that for three centuries the town was owned by a family of French Huguenot descent.

Sir Thomas Montgomery, the last Earl of Mount Alexander, owned large estates in Co. Down in the seventeenth century, including Donaghadee. He married a beauty of French Huguenot extraction – Angelique de Lacherois – to whom, when he died childless, he left all his property. She bequeathed the estates in due course to her relatives, Samuel de Lacherois and Nicholas Crommelin.

The de Lacherois family were of aristocratic stock and came from the Champagne area of France. They were instrumental in having a new harbour built because the old one, crescent-shaped, provided little shelter for ships at anchor. Altogether they exercised a great influence on the lay-out and architecture of Donaghadee and undoubtedly gave the town a French flavour which it retains to this day.

The Harbour still dominates the whole town. It is a reminder that at one time Donaghadee was very important as a port. It was in fact called the ‘Dover of Ireland’. A ferry service operated for almost three hundred years between the town and Portpatrick, a distance of 21 miles. In those early days of the ferry, when three and four masted schooners berthed in the harbour, Donaghadee must have been a lively and exciting place.

The sailing ships carried horses, mail, sheep, cattle, wool and passengers. The Customs duty on each horse was one shilling and thus led to the smuggling of horses in a big way.

I think the atmosphere of old Donaghadee is nicely captured by letter-writers who visited the town. For instance, in the early seventeenth century, the Marquis de Vare had this to say:

"Donaghadee is a busy town with many horse-drawn carriages going hither and thither all the time. The taverns serve good fare and excellent ale."

Rough seas and high winds wrecked the harbour of Portpatrick and in 1865 the ferry service to Donaghadee was discontinued. Now almost all that remains of those hectic and colourful days in the history of Donaghadee are Grace Neill’s bar, and the tomb-stones in the church-yard which mark the graves of hardy old sea-captains who guided their ships across the narrow waters between Scotland and Ulster.

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