Ards Lower (named after the former barony of Ards) is a barony in County Down, Northern Ireland.
In 1977-1978 season Ards achieved Senior status when they were elected to the Ulster Senior League.
Knight and combatant par excellence, in 1325, at the age of sixteen, he took Varey, near Pont d'Ain, in a brilliant battle against the Savoyards.
His son Hugh Montgomery, 2nd Viscount Montgomery of the Great Ards, succeeded him, married in 1623 Lady Jean Alexander, who died in 1670, daughter of the 1st Earl of Stirling, and died on 15 November 1642.
John de Courcy, a Norman knight who invaded Ulster, brought Benedictines from Stoke Courcy in Somerset and Lonlay in France, for whom he founded Black Abbey (St Andrews in Ards), near Inishargy in the 1180s.
The Priory of St. Andrews of the Ards (Blackabbey) was a Benedictine Abbey at Stogursey in Somerset.
The hospital provides acute services to 250,000 people in the North Down, Ards and Castlereagh council areas, as well as east Belfast.