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 Ballycarry. Co. Antrim

Once Known as "The Place Of Learning"

Site of an ancient Irish Catholic Community

Sadly today it lies as a relict of the ethnic cleaning of the mid 1600's, there is barely a trace of the old Monastery today, but look close and they are there. .

Today there is little to be learned in Ballycarry, one could hardly buy a newspaper although I noticed they have a well stocked gun shop, and a very old Historic pub on the main street, a very nice building. 

 

A Battle near Ballycarry 1598

" On 4 November 1598 in a skirmish with James and Randal MacDonneil at the Old Mill Glen, Altfracan, near Ballycarry. Sir John Chichester was killed, Chichester had set out from Carrickfergus determined to “give them a charge” to the end, as one of his officers said, that “he might have a good killing upon them or at least take a good run out of them”? Lieutenant Rant, a survivor, recorded that their casualties were “cyght or nyne score” killed (including Sir John Chichester) a captain and two lieutenants and “thear wear hurte between thirtye and fortye, most of which recovered”. Sir Moses Hill, founder of the Downshire family, escaped by swimming across to Islandmagee where he concealed himself in a place still known as “Moses Hill’s Cove”.

The old Anglican Church ruins in the Templecorran cemetery in which the Rev Brice began preaching his Presbyterian doctrine, he was sacked and died two years later and is buried in the old church. A new Anglican Church was built behind this by the local landlord Ker but in its early years it had trouble getting a congregation as the are was almost totally Prebyterian.

Above , the oldest Presbyterian Church in the Village, although another Presbyterian Congregation at the other end  of the street claims to be the oldest. Presently there is no Catholic Chapel, but the ancient chapel is believed to be roughly where the cemetery is today ,  on the site of this Chapel a Protestant Church was build back in the days of the plantations, the local Irish having been driven from their ancient homelands by joint marauding English and Scottish Armies. Their places of worship desecrated and lands stolen. The worse atrocity haven taken place at nearby Islandmagee which you can read about on the Islandmagee page of this site. At Ballycarry you will see kerbstones painted red white and blue, a huge mural of King Billy on a wall and yet here 1000 years ago the place was known as “A Place Of Learning” through the fact that a huge Monastery was sited here it was tumbled and wrecked and now historians would tell us “there is no trace of where the early Monastery was sited,” maybe if they took off their blinkers they would see it.

The last resting place of "The Irish Man ",  Rebel & Poet James Orr

But for all that I still have a soft spot in my heart for Ballycarry when I recall James Orr, “The Irishman”, 16 year old Willie Nelson, “The Ballycarry Martyr” and James Burns, who manned the cannon at the 1798 battle of Antrim, all three great Irish Republican Presbyterians lie there in the local cemetery, ironically they died for what the earlier residents of the area already had before being driven from their homes - a Free Ireland.! And to think that this was “A Place Of Learning”, before the ignorant invaders came hungry for land and ready to massacre “The Mere Irish” to obtain it ready to them drive to Hell or off the Antrim Plateau.