A blue plaque has been erected in Crawfordsburn village, County Down, honouring 19th-century landowner and politician William Sharman Crawford.

Crawford was a significant landowner in County Down and a supporter of the Tenant Right Custom, which aimed to improve conditions for tenants.

Contemporary accounts from the Belfast News Letter in April 1852 described him variably: one portrayal labelled him as 'the upholder of a desperate democracy, a striker at the roots of property, a secularist in education, a papist in disguise and besides all a man in his dotage'.

That same year, the paper's then-editor James McKnight praised Crawford as an aristocrat who 'came forward nobly to advocate the abolition of the great social grievance which he saw destroying his native country'.

Crawford faced opposition from his social class due to his positions. He died in Crawfordsburn in 1861.