Back to my roots...Rostrevor Northern Ireland.

This is Rostrevor where my family and a friend helped me trace my great great grandparents on my mother's side, Richard and Mary (McCormack) Mallon to. I was pleasantly surprised as to how pretty it was and it made me wonder why my great grandfather, Richard and his wife, Elizabeth (McComish) moved from here to Kilmarnock, for work perhaps? They brought my mum's mum, gran Turnbull (Minnie) with them.

My great great grandfather was a baker in the town and this is Mary Street where they lived at No 2 and No14 at different times. The houses above are nos 4,6 & 8 so No 2 would have been to left of them.

This is looking back up Mary street.

This is bridge street with the Rostrevor Inn and its adjoining  Crawford's Bar. We had a lovely meal in the award winning Inn and a few pints of Guinness in the bar. We attended their weekly folk night on our second night here. 

The town has a strong link to author, C S Lewis writer of ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’. With a mural on the building more than hinting at it!

As a young boy he spent many holidays in the Mournes and Rostrevor in particular and it provided the inspiration to create his magical world of 'Narnia'. The Inn offers themed 'Narnia 'rooms. 

If you continue down Bridge Street on the left immediately after the bridge, beside the entrance to Kilbroney Park you will find the start of the town's The Fairy Glen walk which takes you along the river and back into the park itself that has a small 'Narnia' walk for kids, we did both of course, more on this later.

The town has its own famous son Robert Ross who is commemorated by a 100ft granite obelisk near the shoreline of Carlingford Lough. His military career include burning down the White House!   

My search was for my own Irish roots which lead me to the local Catholic church 'St. Mary's Star of the Sea' which would probably have played a part in my great great grandfather's life and it is probably where my great grandfather would have been baptised.

I wanted to locate the last resting place of my great great grandfather so we went to the Catholic graveyard which is a few miles outside of town to see if it could be found.

He died in 1913 so the chances were it was going to be in a bad state of repair so we narrowed our search to the oldest part of the graveyard but to no avail. You can read about the interesting small church at the centre of the graveyard here.

On the way back into town I called into the parish office to check if they had any records or plan of the graveyard. A very helpful young lady let me see the records for 1913 where it confirmed he and Mary died here but I could not find them in the graveyard record, which was more modern and had sadly, a lot of 'unclaimed' graves.

He is listed fourth from the bottom on the left hand page.