placenamesPort Stewart
Port Stíobhaird
Two former private houses became enduring centres of education and cultural life in Portstewart.
The name
These Irish name elements are associated with this record in the Logainm glossary.
An element’s translation is a clue, rather than a complete explanation of the name. Its form and meaning depend on local history and the full Irish name.
Recorded forms
- Port Stíobhaird · Irish · main form · validated name
- Port Stewart · English · main form
- Portstewart · English · main form
Place & story
Rock Castle on the headland
The conspicuous castle above the western end of Portstewart’s promenade began as Henry O’Hara’s private house in 1834. Known as Rock Castle, it used turrets, battlements and Gothic windows to give a modern dwelling the appearance of a fortress. William Wilson Campbell enlarged it after O’Hara’s death in 1844, adding a seven-bay southern front and projecting rooms to the north and west. Subsequent school buildings changed its outline further, but the former house and the boundary walls along the headland remain identifiable parts of the complex. [2]
The Dominican school
The Dominican Sisters acquired the property in 1917 and founded a girls’ school there. The college later became coeducational in 1968. Boarding was a substantial part of school life: in the 1970s there were as many as 130 boarders. When boarding ended in the mid-1990s, former residential accommodation became classrooms and specialist teaching rooms. The building’s successive uses therefore remain closely connected: rooms once occupied by a household, then by resident pupils, were adapted again for a day school. [3]
Flowerfield’s second life
Flowerfield, on the Coleraine Road, underwent a different public conversion. Samuel Orr built the present house around 1855, replacing an earlier house on the estate. Charles and Muriel Munro rented it from about 1922; Muriel remained after her husband’s death until 1962. A period of vacancy followed, and a 1971 architectural survey described serious decay. Coleraine Borough Council acquired the property in 1973 and opened it as an arts centre in 1980. The Victorian house survived as the centre of the later redevelopment. [4]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Town
- County
- Derry
- Civil parish
- Ballyaghran
- Coordinates
- 55.17350, -6.72861 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 58464 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Port Stewart. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- St Mary’s Dominican Convent, HB03/08/003 · Department for Communities, Historic Buildings
- Dominican College Prospectus 2026: Our History · Dominican College Portstewart
- History · Flowerfield Arts Centre, drawing on Peggy Vowles, The Bann Disc 3
- Portstewart Strand illustration: based on a Portstewart Strand by Rossographer. AI-assisted watercolour and ink adaptation; cream paper margins added, incidental clutter omitted and fine details simplified. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0; adapted illustration distributed under the same licence.
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2011-06-28. How this page was prepared.