Boundary Post near 12 Carnagh Park Chapel Road Newry Co Down BT34 2QR

This granite boundary stone is one of fourteen largely identical markers set along Newry's former municipal limits, believed to have been installed in 1871–72, with possibly some additions later. All fourteen remain substantially intact, making this one of the most complete sets of such boundary markers in Northern Ireland. The stones are significant local artefacts, marking both literally and metaphorically the town's expansion and regional importance during the mid to later Victorian period.

The stone is located on the verge on the south side of Chapel Road (at the rear of 12 Carnagh Park), approximately 1.4 kilometres south-east of Newry town centre. Due to the rise in road level over the decades, the stone now stands roughly 0.2 metres in height. It is oblong in section with a dressed front, rock-faced sides, and an arched top (which may originally have been more angular). Like the other boundary markers of this type around Newry, the front face is presumably inscribed 'M B', although this inscription is no longer visible due to the rise in ground level, with a large part of the marker now lying below ground.

Following the Lighting of Towns (Ireland) Act of 1828, local government was established in Newry in the form of the Commissioners of Police. A municipal boundary was gradually agreed upon in the following years, with the area of the town later stated to have been fixed by special act of 1865. However, these boundaries appear to have lacked official status until 1871, when the Newry Improvement and Water Act was passed. At this point the Town Commissioners were formally incorporated as a municipal body and the settlement's limits were laid down, seemingly along those established in 1865. This boundary was later readopted by the Newry Urban District Council, which succeeded the Commissioners following local government reform in 1898.

Whether Newry possessed boundary markers prior to the 1871 Act is uncertain. The absence of any reference to such stones in the town's newspapers before this date—in an era when such objects were frequently mentioned as location points in incident reports and property sale notices—suggests they may not have existed. Further evidence comes from October 1871, when the Commissioners appointed Mr. Robert Beard to furnish eighteen cut granite stones for borough boundary marks according to specifications. References to 'boundary stones' begin to appear regularly in the local press only from mid-1872 onwards. It is likely that most of the in-situ granite markers visible today were supplied by Mr. Beard (probably Robert Baird, a stone cutter recorded as having a yard in Mary Street in the 1880s), and therefore date from approximately 1871–72.

It is possible, however, that some markers are later or that more than the eighteen mentioned in 1871 were actually commissioned. Ordnance Survey maps for this area between 1903 and 1939 show at least twenty stones marked along the Urban District Council boundary. The uniform basic design of all the stones makes it difficult to determine if there is any variation in date; reliance can only be placed on map evidence. It is possible that inconsistencies exist in the maps themselves, with certain editions omitting some stones. For instance, the marker near 3 Temple Hill Road appears on the large-scale 1903 map but not on the small-scale version of the same year or on later editions, whilst another stone further along the same road does not appear on any maps, yet its location is consistent with it having been in place since the boundary was established. Some stones may have become encased in walls and thus overlooked, though this does not account for those that have always been freestanding unless they were obscured by overgrown vegetation for a period. This particular stone is marked on the Ordnance Survey map of 1919. Given the inconsistencies in the maps, however, it is possible that it is one of the series of markers installed in 1871–72.