Bangor

Bangor has a long and varied history, from the Bronze Age people whose swords were discovered in 1949 or the Viking burial found on Ballyholme beach, to the Victorian pleasure seekers who travelled on the new railway from Belfast to take in the sea air. The city has been the site of a Gaelic Irish monastery renowned throughout Europe for its learning and scholarship, the victim of violent Viking raids in the 8th and 9th centuries, and the new home of Scottish and English planters during the Plantation of Ulster.

Despite escaping much of the sectarian violence during The Troubles, Bangor was the site of some major incidents. During the Troubles there were eight murders in the city including that of the first Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) woman to be murdered on duty; 26-year-old Mildred Harrison was killed by an explosion from a UVF bomb while on foot patrol in the High Street on 16 March 1975. On 23 March 1972 the IRA detonated two large car bombs on the town's main street. On 30 March 1974, paramilitaries carried out a major incendiary bomb attack on the main shopping centre in Bangor. On 21 October 1992, an IRA unit from the lower Ormeau exploded a 200 lb bomb in Main Street, causing large…