Greyabbey or Grey Abbey is a small village, townland (of 208 acres)[4] and civil parish located on the eastern shores of Strangford Lough, on the Ards Peninsula in County Down, Northern Ireland.

[6] It was founded by Affreca, daughter of Godred Olafsson, King of the Isles, and wife of John de Courcy, Anglo-Norman conqueror of the province of Ulster.

The site of the abbey was on the Ards Peninsula, 7 miles (11 km) from Newtownards, at the confluence of a small river and Strangford Lough.

The abbey is located in the parkland of Rosemount House, home of the Montgomery family, to the east side of the village.

Tradition says that Affreca founded the abbey in thanksgiving for a safe landing after a perilous journey at sea.

The abbey was colonised with monks from Holmcultram in Cumberland, with which it maintained close ties in the early years.

In 1572, Bryan O'Neill burnt Grey Abbey to stop it being used as a refuge for English colonists trying to settle in the Ards Peninsula.

Tradition relates that this is Affreca, who was buried in the abbey, but the style suggests that the effigy actually originated in the fourteenth century, a hundred years after her death.

Irish Rebellion of 1798: on the morning of Pike Sunday, 10 June 1798, a force of United Irishmen, mainly from Greyabbey, Bangor, Donaghadee, and Ballywalter, attempted to occupy the town of Newtownards.

The Rebellion of 1798 also affected the village in another form, with the death by hanging of the Rev James Porter, Minister of Trinity Presbyterian Church, Greyabbey, on 2 July 1798.

The final resting place of Rev Porter is in the Old Graveyard, Greyabbey, which itself lies adjacent to the ancient Abbey ruins.

On Tullykevin Road, in Greyabbey, there is a brass plate on a field post in remembrance of a pilot who crashed and died there during the Second World War.

The local Roman Catholic place of worship is at St Mary Star of the Sea, Nunsquarter, Inishargy.

There is a DRD Water Service wastewater treatment works at Greyabbey, which employs sophisticated membrane technology.