Newry, United Kingdom

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. Newry Abbey (now the area around Newry Museum) would have been a sprawling complex of buildings and the heart of a monastic settlement. It existed for four centuries. The abbey was dissolved by the English in 1548, when it was recorded to consist of a church, steeple, college, chapter house, dormitory, a hall, a graveyard, two orchards, and one garden. Modern archaeologists unearthed thirty-three burials from part of the former graveyard, and further bones were found in charnel pits. They included remains of men, women, and several youths, and some of the individuals suffered violent deaths. It is believed this was a graveyard for the lay community from when the abbey was still in existence.

In April 1552, Nicholas Bagenal, Marshal of the English army in Ireland, was granted ownership of the former abbey lands. He built a fortified house known as Bagenal's Castle on the site of the abbey and its graveyard, re-using some of the abbey buildings. Bagenal also had an earthen rampart built around his Castle and the small town of Newry.

During the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Newry was captured by Irish Catholic rebels led by the Magennises and McCartans. 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.

Newry suffered hunger, poverty and mass emigration during the Great Famine (An Gorta Mór) in the 1840s. The population of the workhouse increased to over a thousand, while ships sailed from nearby Warrenpoint to New York, carrying over 5000 people during the Famine.

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.