To Northern Ireland and Patrick’s birthplace.

Drumballyroney, County Down where Patrick Bronte and family worshipped.

 In August 2017, my Brontë travelling companion Alison and I left our homes at 4a.m. and arrived at Manchester airport. By 8a.m. Easyjet had deposited us at Belfast airport and by 9a.m we were in our hire car and happily heading off to Patrick Brontë’s birthplace. We were going to follow the “Brontë Homeland Drive” and see the places associated with Patrick, his family and the first 25 years of his life.  

Following the brown signs of the Bronte Homeland Drive

                                

The start of the Brontë Homeland Drive is known as the Brontë Homeland Interpretative Centre comprising of both Drumballyroney Church and Schoolhouse. 

Drumballyroney Schoolhouse where Bronte taught.

Patrick had taught at the schoolhouse and he and his brother William were christened at the Anglican church next to it. 

Drumballyroney church with the schoolhouse next to it.

 It is purported that Patrick may have given his first sermon at Drumballyroney Church after his graduation from Cambridge University. However, Juliet Barker in her biography The Brontes, believes that Patrick probably didn't have enough money to return home to Ireland after graduating and so questions this assertion.

 At the back of the schoolhouse and church, the Brontë family burial plot is situated, where Patrick’s parents and other family members are buried. 

For our journey to Drumballyroney, online research had told us that the Schoolhouse / interpretative centre opened at 10a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. We were there on the Saturday arriving precisely at 10a.m. But when we tried the door, it was locked! We just thought that maybe the person employed to open it up was running a little late. But after 15 minutes - nothing! 

We wondered if someone in one of the bungalows along the road we had arrived on might be a key holder. But which bungalow to enquire at? In the end we just walked around the Schoolhouse, which is a low, single-storey building. We were easily able to look through the windows and could read the many tall information boards and get an idea of its interior. However, at one window we almost jumped out of our skin when we saw what we thought was a human being in there, but it was just a mannequin dressed up in period clothing looking out of the window!  

Surprisingly, we weren’t angry or irritated that we had travelled all that way and failed to get into the Schoolhouse. We chose instead to have a good giggle about it! Only we could have dragged ourselves out of bed at 3.30a.m., left our homes at 4.00a.m. flown from Manchester to Belfast and arrived in Drumballyroney, Northern Ireland at 10.00a.m. to find we couldn’t get in!  

There was a telephone number on a window to phone with any enquiries, so I did. It was the Tourist Information Centre in Belfast. I pretended to be quite cross, telling the lady how we had flown from Manchester to be there, that their website said it would open at the weekends from 10.00a.m. but to contact them if we were a group. I said we were two people and that surely isn’t a group, so we didn’t need to contact them and only needed to turn up at 10a.m. The lady was lovely, and so apologetic. She said she would be contacting her manager and they’d sort out the website.

 Anyway, there was nothing anyone could do, so we decided to go and have a mooch around Drumballyroney Church instead. But yes, you’ve guessed it! That too was locked! We were a bit surprised as it is such a quiet and unpopulated place. Was there a need to lock the church? So, once again we had a giggle, shrugged our shoulders and settled for a stroll around the graveyard noting the Brontë gravestones and looking out across the fields to the mountains of Mourne beyond.

 What really mattered, was that we were able to get – and here are three very important words – “a sense of place”. We certainly did that. It was marvellous to be looking at the same natural views Patrick would have known. It is such a gentle and pleasant land and we felt surprisingly relaxed! 

After a marvellous breakfast in a super café we found in Rathfriland we headed off following the brown book signs to the other Brontë sites. The circuit is 7.3 miles in total. We passed the house  where Patrick’s parents, Hugh and Alice, had gone to live when their family of 10 children outgrew their first house. 

The house the growing Bronte family moved to and the house Patrick's mother was born in.

Our next stop was to see the birthplace of Patrick’s mum Alice Mc Clory, a pretty much tumbledown cottage in Ballynaskeagh which was sprouting bushes and ivy and sadly uncared for.  

We then carried on and really enjoyed seeing the very humble birthplace of Patrick Brontë in Emdale. 

Patrick Brontes two roomed, thatched birthplace in Emdale, County Down.

It is little more than a ruin nowadays, with many of the walls missing as well as the thatched roof of the tiny two roomed stone cottage. But how marvellous to be there to see such a small and humble beginning for a man who is genuinely a giant in my eyes! It really drove it home to me how much Patrick achieved in his long and productive life from such truly humble beginnings. He went far! It felt very special to be there. Little did he or his family know then, how famous he and his talented literary family would later become.  

 The final stop on our Brontë Homeland Drive was to Glascar church and schoolhouse where Patrick had his first teaching job. 

Glascar Church

So, all in all it was a short Brontë themed drive but it was absolutely fantastic to get a feel for the countryside and the views which Patrick knew and enjoyed, both as a boy and a young man, before he finally left Ireland and headed off, aged 25, to St. John’s College, Cambridge arriving there in July 1802. 

The views Patrick Bronte would have grown up with -here looking towards the Mourne Mountains.

                               

Incidentally, our Bronte tours also include none Bronte related places as can be seen below with our trip to The Giants Causeway and Dark Hedges. We also had a day in Belfast which is a fascinating city, even watching an excellent production by the Bristol Old Vic theatre group of Jane Eyre which, quite fortuitously, was playing at the iconic Grand Opera House.

 We also loved travelling up the Antrim coast enjoying the glens then walking on the white sands of Portstewart Strand...breathtaking. 

Our Bronte trips also include visits to other nearby places the Brontes didn't visit but which we can easily enjoy. Here we are at The Giant's Causeway and the Dark Hedges.

                              

So all in all we had a marvellous time in County Down enjoying the views that Patrick would have known and seeing the churches, school house and homes he worshipped, studied and grew up in. 

 What we didn't accomplish though, was a visit to Arthur Bell Nicholl's birthplace in Killead which is not far away from Patrick's birthplace. We shall just have to return to wonderful Northern Ireland and that will be a great joy!