Boundary Marker outside 69 Downshire Road Newry Co Down

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Granite boundary stone, believed to date from 1871-72, located on the verge on the E side of Downshire Road (near no.69), about 1km N of Newry town centre.

The stone is oblong in section, but due to the to the rise in ground level, is currently about 0.35m in height. It is dressed in front with a rock-faced finish to the sides, and an arched top (which may originally have been more angular.) On the front face are the incised letters 'M B', which presumably stand for 'Municipal Boundary'; however these are now only partly visible due to the rise in ground level / tall grass.

Historical information

Under the provisions of the Lighting of Towns (Ireland) Act in 1828, local government was established in Newry in the form of the Commissioners of Police. In the years immediately following, a municipal boundary was eventually agreed upon, with the ‘area of the town’ later stated to have been fixed (and possibly modified?) ‘by special act of 1865.’ None of these boundaries, however, appears to have possessed ‘official’ status until 1871, when following the passing of the Newry Improvement and Water Act, the Town Commissioners were formally incorporated as a municipal body and the limits of the settlement laid down, seemingly along those of 1865. This same boundary was later readopted by the Newry Urban District Council, the body which succeeded the Commissioners after the local government reform of 1898.

Whether Newry possessed a series of boundary markers prior to the 1871 Act is uncertain, but the lack of mention of any in the town’s newspapers before this, (in an era when such objects were often referenced as location points in relation reports of incidents, property sale notices etc.), suggests it might not have. So too does the fact that in October 1871, the Commissioners appointed Mr. Robert Beard ‘for the furnishing of eighteen cut granite stones for borough boundary marks, according to specifications’. It may also be instructive that it is only from mid-1872 that not infrequent allusions to ‘boundary stones’ begin to feature in the local press.

It is likely that most of the in-situ granite markers we see today belong to those supplied by Mr. Beard (probably Robert Baird, a stone cutter recorded as having a yard in Mary Street in the 1880s), and therefore date from c.1871-72. It is possible, however, that some are later or that more than the 18 mentioned in 1871 were actually commissioned, for at least 20 stones are marked along the Urban District Council boundary on the various editions of the OS maps for this area between 1903 and 1939. The fact that almost all are of the same basic design (and carrying the same inscriptions) makes it difficult to determine if indeed there is indeed any variation in date, and we can only rely on map evidence. That said, it is possible that there are some inconsistencies in the maps themselves, and that certain editions omitted individual stones. For instance, the marker near 3 Temple Hill Road appears on the large scale 1903 map, but not on the small-scale version of the same year, nor on later editions, whilst that further along the same road does not seem to be marked on any maps at all, yet its location is consistent with its having been here since the boundary was instigated. Perhaps the fact that some stones have become (or were always) encased in walls has led to their being overlooked, but this does not explain those that have always been freestanding – unless they were obscured from view for a period by overgrown grass or shrubbery.

Boundary stone near 69 Downshire Road - This particular stone is marked on the OS map of 1903 and is likely to have been one of the series of markers put in place in 1871-72 to delineate the jurisdiction of the newly incorporated Town Commissioners.

References – Primary sources
1 Lighting of Towns (Ireland) Act, 1828 https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1828/act/82/enacted/en/print.html
2 Newry Improvement and Water Act, 1871 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/Vict/34-35/198/contents/enacted
3 ‘Newry Telegraph’ – 3 October 1871, p.3; 29 August 1872, p.3; 24 October 1872, p.3; 14 April 1874, p.2; 14 November 1889, p.3; 12 June 1897, p.3
4 ‘Newry Reporter’ – 29 July 1879, p.3; 4 June 1907, p.8
5 OS Maps, County series, Armagh sheet 46, Down sheet 50 – 1903-06, 1919, 1939

Secondary sources
6 Canavan, Tony, ‘Frontier town – An illustrated history of Newry’, (2nd ed., Drogheda, 2009), pp.114, 140-47
7 Information from Mr. John McCabe – October 2023

Online sources
8 https://issuu.com/visitmourne/docs/all_politics_is_local (accessed 29 November 2023
9 https://www.newry.ie/newry-100-years-ago/newry-s-municipal-boundary-stones-investigated (accessed 29 November 2023)
10 https://www.newryjournal.co.uk/history/1800-1900/town-boundary-from-1839/ (accessed 29 November 2023)

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
H-. Alterations detracting from building
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Z. Rarity
S. Authenticity
Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance
X. Local Interest
R. Age

Evaluation

This granite boundary stone is one of 14 mainly identical markers set along Newry’s former municipal limits. Believed to have been put in place in 1871-72 (with several possibly later), all 14 are still largely intact and as a group constitute one of the most complete sets of such features in the whole of Northern Ireland. They are also, of course, important local artefacts, marking - both literally and metaphorically - the town’s growth and regional importance during the mid to later Victorian period. Due to the rise in ground level, this particular stone is presently only partly visible, however it remains of value as part of the wider collection of such markers in Newry area.