2. The landscape

The Mourne landscape is characterised by high peaks, cultivated lowlands and coastal margins. This contrast, ‘Where the Mountains o’ Mourne sweep down to the sea’, as the Percy French song so memorably describes it, is surely part of their appeal. The Mourne Mountain range is not vast in extent but manages to be both remote and challenging, yet familiar and accessible at the same time. The area has long attracted photographers and artists as well as walkers and climbers. These photographs of the landscape, at all seasons, clearly show Pat Hudson’s love of the land.

2.1 to 2.6 The Mournes

Pat took these six photographs so they could be joined together to give a panoramic view of the Mournes. (Photograph published in Kilkeel Urban District Council handbook, 1940s) (H-102 to H107)

Names of peaks to be inserted (copy to be e-mailed)

2.7 – 2.8 Winter in the Mournes series, 1947

These are just two of many different views taken by Pat in February 1947. The photograph above was taken from Tullyree, with the Trassey Bridge and Shimna River in the foreground. In the background are Slieve Bearnagh, Spellack and Slieve Meelmore. This image was published by E Estyn Evans in his book, Mourne Country. You can see a similar view, taken by Cecil Newman, later in this book (Part 2, Chapter 2, N-903). (H-119 and H-008)

2.9 Mournes under snow series, 1947

The image on the right had also been published in E Estyn Evans’ Mourne Country. (H-121 and H-122)

2.12 View from Binnian, 1938.

(H-006)

2.13 The Mournes from the sea

This is probably looking across Mill Bay, towards the Mournes. (H-133)

2.14 Whitewater at Mourne Park

This scene was photographed at Ballyrogan, Mourne Park Td, Lisnacree, 1940. The estate at Mourne Park, near Kilkeel, had been granted to Nicholas Bagenal in the sixteenth century. The house was re-built in 1806 by Francis Needham, later first earl of Kilmorey, but destroyed by fire in May 2013. (H-076)

3.1 Kilkeel, 1949

The name of the town derives from the Irish Cil Chaoil, meaning ‘narrow church’. Kilkeel is still the main fishing port on the County Down coast, although much decimated compared with earlier times. It was also once an important centre for boatbuilding (see photograph by Pat in Chapter 6, H-030). (H-048)