Carryduff is town in County Down, Northern Ireland, about 8 kilometers south of Belfast city centre.

Carryduff means black quarter in Irish.

The original village formed where six roads and a river crossed, and is the site of the ancient Queen's Fort Rath . The road south from Belfast (now the modern A24) climbs out of a gap in the Castlereagh Hills , and splits at Carryduff, one fork (now the A7) continuing to Downpatrick (via Saintfield and Crossgar); the other fork (A24) continuing to Newcastle (via Ballynahinch). In addition, the road westwards from the Ards Pensinsula , Newtownards and Comber (now the B178) crosses here en route to Hillsborough in the west. All six roads cross the small Carryduff River here (which flows northwards to eventually join the River Lagan at Minnowburn . The townlands of Carryduff, Ballynagarrick and Killinure adjoin each other here, originally all farmland in a classic drumlin landscape. Local churches built there (in the 19th century?) include Carryduff Presbyterian and St. Ignatius' Church of Ireland.

The good road connections and proximity to the capital, Belfast, made Carryduff an ideal site for overspill development from Belfast in the 1960s. This period saw numerous housing developments (swallowing Queen's Fort Rath), the construction of the Town and Country Shopping Centre, and Carryduff Primary School, leading into the 1970s with the building of the Killynure council estate. Ribbon development along one side of the northbound A24 took place adjacent to St. Joseph's Catholic Church and Primary School, with the substantial open-air Carryduff Reservoir on the other side.

The 1980s saw expansion continue, with Carryduff becoming a dormitory satellite town for Belfast commuters. Developments continued into the 1990s and included Carryduff Library, the 'Wellworths' shopping centre, numerous further housing developments erected on former green-field sites (mostly by the ubiquitous Fraser Housing), and the Loughmoss Leisure Centre. Sadly these developments saw the Carryduff River somewhat ignominiously place inside a covered pipe for much of its journey through the town.

The current population is roughly 20 000. Very little green-belt land now remains between Carryduff and the southern border of Belfast, the 1980s having seen the former Matthew Stop Line breached in somewhat dubious bending of planning regulations. Carryduff's original raison d'être as a focus of routes on the southern approach to Belfast have ironically led to something of a transport problem, as the road network struggles to cope with commuter traffic, resulting in large amounts of rush hour congestion. Urban Citybus routes did not extend out to Carryduff, leaving the only public transport as the somewhat mediocre Ulsterbus services from Belfast to Downpatrick and Newcastle, although the recently privatised Translink bus company has attempted to revamp this somewhat in recent times.

Culturally, as it moved beyond its farming roots in the latter half of the 20th Century, Carryduff suffered somewhat from the classic British suburban satellite syndrome, being rather devoid of interest in the field of the arts. No cinema, theatres or nightclubs existed in the town, with the rather middle-class population's social lives centred more around the town's several churches than its two pubs. The Troubles touched Carryduff little although the Spar did get robbed on Christmas eve last year. As the '90s turned into the 'noughties', Carryduff's average social bracket seems to have lowered somewhat, with unpleasant sectarian graffiti adorning walls and kerbstones in many of the new low cost housing estates. The town's youth does seem to have made a small but notable name for itself in the wider Belfast music scene, however - the Dodgy Stereo collective provided an umbrella for acts such as Kidd Dynamo and Cecil's Flea Circus, plus archetypal debauched rock wretch Johnny 'Goatboy' Reid , and Feline1 of The Feline Dream .