Abercorn Barracks

Abercorn Barracks, sometimes referred to as Ballykinlar Barracks or Ballykinler Barracks, is a former military base in Ballykinler in County Down, Northern Ireland. The surrounding training area is retained by the Ministry of Defence.

The Ballykinler Barracks were built in 1901 at the time of the Boer War but often spelled "Ballykinlar". They were renamed Abercorn Barracks in 1949 in honour of James Hamilton, 3rd Duke of Abercorn who was the first Governor of Northern Ireland.

The sprawling site was pressed into service as an internment camp during the Irish War of Independence in 1919. After the Partition of Ireland, the new Government of Northern Ireland continued to use the base for internment. There appear to have been attempts by those incarcerated to maintain a normal social structure within the confines of the camp and evidence exists of an orchestra and some examples of typical prisoner art are still available for viewing in museum collections in Ireland, including examples of humorous cartoons. 'Camp tokens' also circulated within the camp in place of money, being made of printed cardboard. A former Irish Republican Army (IRA) prisoner, Louis Joseph Walsh (a native of County Londonderry and later a judge in County Donegal), published a book in 1921 about his experiences in various institutions in Northern Ireland including a chapter about his time in Ballykinlar Camp which describes, amongst other things, having to march for three miles, handcuffed and carrying luggage, only to be placed in bare huts with nothing to sleep in except damp straw. He continues in a second chapter to describe how the prisoners set up their own 'Council' which then began to negotiate with the military authorities for better food and conditions within the camp. "The camp regime was notoriously brutal - prisoners were shot dead for minor infractions, such as standing too close to the barbed wire fence that kept them penned in (the camp magazine was titled Barbed Wire)." Ballykinlar internment camp housed over 2,000 men from the thirty-two counties of Ireland and was the first mass internment camp in Ireland during the Irish War of Independence. Three prisoners were shot dead

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