Bangor

Bangor lies on the southern shore of Belfast Lough, where a harbour grew beside an ancient monastic site. The abbey had been a notable centre of early Irish learning, and its church remained a landmark as a new town developed around it. Under Sir James Hamilton in the early seventeenth century, Scottish and English settlers arrived in numbers; a 1611 account recorded eighty new houses occupied by them. James I made Bangor a borough in 1612, giving the growing settlement representation in the Irish parliament.