The earliest port on the North Down coast; scene of the Eagle Wing’s attempted emigration to America in September 1636.
James Hamilton’s 1606 coastal lands stretched from the River Lagan in Belfast to Groomsport. The natural harbour here was initially owned by the O’Mulcreves, whom Hamilton was on good terms with, and who called the area ‘Gilgroomes port’.
Soon it was settler Scots families who developed the area, such as Robert Kyle of Irvine in Ayrshire. The Rosses also of Irvine settled at nearby Portavo. Thomas Raven drew a map of the‘Gromsporte’ settlementc. 1625.
In 1634 Groomsport was the departure port for Rev John Livingstone, when he sailed to London to make plans for the eventual emigration of Eagle Wing which set sail on 9th September 1636, carrying four Ulster-Scots Presbyterian ministers and a further 136 passengers.
A stone at the seafront marks the arrival in 1689 of the army of the Duke of Schomberg.
Groomsport House was founded by the Maxwells in the late 1600s. They came to Ulster from Calderwood,south of Glasgow, in the early 1600s. The current building, dating from 1849, was recently converted into private apartments.
In 1973 the historian Michael Perceval-Maxwell (a descendant of the Maxwells) wrote the landmark volume The Scottish Migration to Ulster. His Perceval-Maxwell ancestors had led a migration from North Down and Ards to Amherst Island in Canada during the 1800s, where they founded a little Ulster-Scots community complete with Presbyterian church and Orange Hall.
Find out more about Groomsport.
