Down — Where Patrick Came Home

Down takes its name from An Dún, ‘the fort’, seat of the ancient Dál Fiatach kings at Downpatrick — the town that gives the county its resting saint.

This is where St Patrick is said to lie buried, beneath a single granite stone in Downpatrick’s cathedral graveyard, in sight of the Mourne Mountains sweeping down, as the old song goes, to the sea.