placenamesNewcastle
Two dated letters place Thomas Smith’s son on the outer Ards coast.
Recorded locationNewcastle54.39878° N · 5.46655° WInteractive map supplied by OpenStreetMap.
Recorded place location · Logainm.ie
The name
A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.
Recorded forms
- Newcastle · English · main form
Place & story
Newcastle in the Ards
In his history of Sir Thomas Smith’s attempted colony, Mark Thompson identifies two letters sent by Thomas Smith junior to Lord Burghley from Newcastle in the Ards. They are dated 28 October 1572 and 29 May 1573. Thompson locates this Newcastle just south of Cloughey, distinguishing it from the better-known town below the Mournes. The letters provide dated evidence of the colonial venture’s presence in this coastal district. [2]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Townland
- County
- Down
- Barony
- Ards Upper
- Civil parish
- Slanes
- Coordinates
- 54.39878, -5.46655
- Mapped area
- 1.14 km²
- Logainm ID
- 65980 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Newcastle. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Sir Thomas Smith’s Forgotten English Colony of1572, pp18–19 · Mark Thompson, published by Loughries Historical Society
- Boundary geometry retains its source attribution and licence in the downloadable geographic record. Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2019-06-27. How this page was prepared.