Newtownards (Irish: Baile Nua na hArda), is a large town in County Down, Northern Ireland. It lies at the most northern tip of Strangford Lough, 10 miles (16 km) east of Belfast, on the Ards Peninsula. Newtownards is the largest town in the Ards Borough Council area. According to the 2001 Census, it has a population of 27,821 people in 11,502 households, placing it in the Large Town class.

In 545 AD, St. Finian founded a monastery near to present-day Newtownards. He named it Movilla (Magh Bile, "the plain of the sacred tree," in Irish) which suggests that the land had previously been a sacred pagan site. This monastery was destroyed by the Vikings sometime after 824 AD and in the 12th century joined together with Bangor Abbey as an Augustinian Monastery. Later, the monastery was raided by Hugh O'Neill from Mid-Ulster, after which the urban settlement at Movilla disappeared and the area around it became known as Ballylisnevin, "the town land of the fort of the family of Nevin." The Normans, who arrived in Ireland after 1169, founded a town in the same place around 1226, named it Nove Ville de Blathewyc ("New Town of Blathewyc", the name of an earlier Irish territory) and established a Dominican priory. However, the town declined and by the 1400s the land was controlled by the O'Neill clan, and the town lay virtually abandoned. More about Newtownards here >