Bitter morning chill gave way to something more sinister that left legacy never forgotten

Bitter morning chill gave way to something more sinister that left legacy never forgotten

29 October 2025

LIKE any fable, there’s always a sliver of truth – blended with fiction, hearsay and whispered recollections – stirred gently in the pot until a story begins to rise to the surface.

Some names and places have been changed to protect the living. The dead, I fear, need no such protection.

Like many others growing up in the shadow of the Troubles, my parents fled Belfast in search of a quieter life –somewhere safer to raise a family.

After a brief spell in an old cottage in Raholp, near Saul, we found ourselves living in a caravan at Minerstown Caravan Park, waiting for our new Housing Executive house to be built at the New Model Farm in Downpatrick.

I must have been around seven when we finally moved in. Every day back then felt endless. I remember the smell of fresh plaster on the walls, workmen still hammering and shouting as we carried in boxes.

It wasn’t until I was about 12 that I began to venture beyond our estate. Just three fields away stood the grand, brooding silhouette of the old Victorian lunatic asylum – built in 1869 and renamed in 1948 as the Downshire Hospital. 

It was a colossus from another age, with towers that scraped the sky and lawns groomed like palace grounds. For a 12 year-old boy, it was the perfect playground.

We played for hours among its shadows, chasing each other in games of hide and seek, pretending we were soldiers or explorers. No one ever stopped us. No one seemed to care.

Looking back now, I realise how many of Downpatrick’s people worked at the Downshire, or were married to someone who did. 

I never knew back then that change was looming. 

Around 1990, with the introduction of the Care in the Community Act, everything would shift. The great mental hospitals across Britain – once isolated sanctuaries for the forgotten – were being dismantled. Patients would now be sent back into the world. Out of sight, no more.

But that’s not where this story lives.

 

The Bishop’s Ruins

It was a bitter February morning – the kind that bites at your skin and makes the ground feel like iron. 

The old Bishop’s house stood in ruins, its once grand bones crumbling under the weight of time and neglect. Once, it gleamed with fine-dressed Papist stone. 

Now, it lay collapsed, robbed of its glory. The roof lead was long gone, the windows shattered, the ornate fire surrounds pilfered. Even the plaster mouldings had been torn from the walls.

They said the Bishop had moved to Belfast, and the house had quietly changed hands. Occasionally, a dim firelight or flickering lantern could be seen in the distance, glowing through the vines. 

But no one paid it much mind.

Not far from the ruin sat a small cottage on the crossroads home to Jim Fitzpatrick. A tall, wiry man with the health of someone half his age, Jim put his strength down to long walks and never marrying. 

His only companion was a little Jack Russell named Ticket and the two were often seen marching the roads, pausing only to chat or water a hedge.

Jim knew the sounds of the countryside well – the bark of a fox, the slap of pigeon wings. But on one particular evening, as he passed the high wall near the Bishop’s ruins, something made him pause.

Glass. Breaking. Even Ticket growled in alarm.

Was it a trapped sheep? Kids messing about? Jim waited. There was silence.

Then, as he continued uphill, a young man appeared from the gloom. He looked no older than 20 – thin, pale and fidgeting.

“Did you hear that?” the young man asked. “I thought I did,” Jim replied.

The young man explained he’d also heard the glass and had been walking nearby when the sound echoed out. 

He said he’d always wanted to explore the ruins, and now seemed the right time.

Jim hesitated. He wasn’t keen on the idea, especially not at dusk. 

But the boy was determined. Finally, Jim agreed, on one condition: no one was to enter the house. Not properly. Just look. Observe.

They crossed through a break in the boundary wall and stood before the ivy-covered shell of the Bishop’s house. The shadow it cast felt colder than the February air.

Ticket began barking. Low at first. Then louder, more frantic.

“Hello?” Jim shouted. “Anyone there?”

Silence.

They inched closer. The floors and ceilings inside had all but collapsed, making it hard to tell one from the other. But strangely, a few rooms still had their original shape – some with cornicing still clinging to the walls like ghostly veins.

They reached the back of the house. Ticket’s barking turned wild. Then, with a sudden jerk, his collar snapped and he bolted straight into the ruin, vanishing through a broken doorframe.

“Ticket” Jim cried, too late.

The young man turned. “I’ll go in after him. I’m faster, more agile. It makes sense.”

Jim didn’t like it. But agreed. Someone had to stay outside.

The boy stepped into the fading light and was gone.

Jim waited.

 

Minutes passed. Then 10 and 15. No bark. No voice. Nothing.

The light died completely. The temperature ped. Jim called for them both, again and again. But the darkness remained silent.

Panic finally took hold. Jim turned and sprinted down the lane toward his neighbour’s house, half a mile away, Ticket’s name echoing off the trees.

When he arrived, breathless and shaking, the farmer and his four sons wasted no time. Saddling ponies, they rode fast into the night, Jim and the farmer following on foot. 

The weight of guilt pressed hard on his shoulders.

Nearing the ruins, they spotted two of the sons crouched in the road, horses tied to the gatepost.

They had Ticket.

He was filthy, covered in soot, cuts on his paws, his fur slicked back with fear. They said he came stumbling from the darkness, yelping like something had chased him.

But the young man was nowhere to be seen.

Jim reattached Ticket’s collar. The others searched the grounds. Minutes turned to an hour.

Then, finally, lantern light appeared. The farmer came first, face pale, eyes cast down. Behind him, the two sons carried something between them.

It was the young man.

Blackened with dirt. Shaking violently. Rambling incoherently.

They sat him on a pony and led him slowly down the path, holding him upright like a broken doll.

Back at the cottage, they tried to calm him, wrapping him in blankets, offering drink. But he just stared, eyes wide, whispering nonsense, trembling like a man lost between two worlds.

By morning, he was taken to the infirmary. Whatever he saw inside those ruins, it never left him.

Jim never walked that way again. He and Ticket both seemed to understand: that road was no longer theirs to walk.

Years later, the ruins were flattened, buried beneath concrete and corrugated iron.

Echoes

We kept playing around the Downshire for years after that. Most of the staff ignored us, and when questioned, we just claimed we were waiting for our parents.

One autumn evening, as we were collecting conkers, a man approached us. Middle-aged, odd-looking. At the time, we didn’t think much of it. He seemed friendly, almost childlike.

Then he said something strange. He told my friend he had healing powers.

We laughed, made our excuses, and left. It was weird, but we didn’t feel threatened. Just unsettled.

Time passed. Summers came and went. We grew up and moved on.

Then, aged around 16 I was telling a ghost story about the Bishop’s ruins and the young man who disappeared inside them with Big Jim Fitzpatrick. The boy who came out broken.

Someone listening said the lad had never recovered. That he now wandered the Downshire grounds, mumbling to himself. A harmless soul, but never quite right.

And in that moment, something icy passed over me. I remembered the man from the conker field. The one who spoke of healing powers. The one with eyes that didn’t quite look at you.

Was it him?

Had we met the young man from the Bishop’s house, years later wandering the edges of our childhood?

I don’t know. I’ll never be sure.

I like to believe it wasn’t. That my imagination got the better of me.

But even now, when I walk near those grounds, I keep my distance from shadows.

Just in case.