There is evidence of continual human habitation in the area from early times. During the
Bronze Age, the Newry area had a community that made very detailed jewellery for garments in abundance. Three of these Newry Clasps can be found in the
Ulster Museum, and a massive arm clasp from the same period was also found in Newry. Three miles south of Newry is
Clontygorra Court Cairn which has large portal stones at its entrance. Excavations revealed pot sherds, hollow scrapers, a polished axe and the cremated remains of one person. Nearby is another, smaller court cairn. In AD 820,
Vikings landed in the Newry area, "from whence they proceeded to
Armagh, taking it by storm, and plundering and desolating the country around".
Early history A
Cistercian abbey was founded at Newry in 1144; in 1157 it was granted a charter by
Muirchertach Mac Lochlainn, king of
Tír Eoghain and
High King of Ireland. It might have been a
Benedictine monastery before this. was granted ownership of the former abbey lands. In May 1642, a Scottish
Covenanter army landed in Ulster and seized Newry from the rebels.
James Turner, one of the Scottish officers, recounted that Catholic rebels and civilians were taken to the bridge over the Newry River and "butchered to death ... some by shooting, some by hanging ... without any legal process". The Scottish general,
Robert Monro, said that sixty townsmen and two priests were summarily executed. Turner also said that Scottish soldiers drowned and shot about a dozen Irishwomen before he stopped them from killing more. During the 1689
Raid on Newry,
Williamite forces under
Toby Purcell repulsed an attack by the
Jacobites under the
Marquis de Boisseleau. During the period of the
Battle of the Boyne, the Duke of Berwick set fire to the parts of the town which he had restructured to defend it.
Modern era The
1841 census gives the combined population of the two halves of the city as 11,972 inhabitants. By 1881 the population of Newry had reached 15,590. During the
Irish War of Independence there were several assassinations and ambushes in Newry. On 12 December 1920, British reinforcements travelling from Newry to Camlough were ambushed by the
Irish Republican Army (IRA), who opened fire and threw grenades from
MacNeill's Egyptian Arch. Three IRA members were fatally wounded in the exchange of fire. When
Ireland was partitioned in 1921, Newry became part of Northern Ireland. From the 1920s to the 1960s, Newry
Urban District Council was one of the few councils in Northern Ireland which had a majority of councillors from the Catholic/Irish nationalist community. The reason, according to
Michael Farrell, was that this community formed such a large majority in the town, around 80% of the population, making it impossible to
gerrymander. Also, an oddity was that for a time it was controlled by the
Irish Labour Party, after the left wing of the
Northern Ireland Labour Party defected to them in the 1940s. Newry saw several
violent incidents during the conflict known as
the Troubles, including
a triple killing in 1971,
a bombing in 1972, and a
mortar attack in 1985. These continued into the late 1990s and even
in 2010 – such as
bomb scares and
car bombs. See also:
The Troubles in Killeen, for information on incidents at the border and customs post at Newry on the border with the
Republic of Ireland and close to Newry. In 2003, the
British Army's hilltop watchtowers overlooking Newry were taken down. The British Army withdrew from the area on 25 June 2007 when they closed their final base at
Bessbrook. ==Geography==