| 450 AD |
 |
By 1226 Anglo-Norman settlers were settled and organised, bringing with them
intense agricultural productivity, a motte and bailey and the name "Antrum". Meanwhile, monastic construction
and worship contunued. The ruins of a small priory are seen at Rathmore, thought to have
dated from 1251. | |
1315 |
 |
The O'Neills founded the (3rd Order) Franciscan Friary of the Brothers of
Masarine (Masaregna) in the 15th Century. This friary was only 200 yards from the present
church, on the south bank of the river. This survived into the 16th Century. During the 15th century a
former Viscount Massereene is thought to have brought the continental window, depicting
the martyrdom of St John the Baptist, to be used as part of the church, from continental
Europe. It can be seen today in the Massereene Chapel. This was England's "century of smooth-faced peace
with smiling plenty and prosperous days". That peace was reinforced with Henry VIII's establishment of the
first "Reformation Parliament" and the dissolution of the monasteries throughout Britain and Ireland. With only a
slight reprieve during the reign of Queen Mary, the Masarine Friary was completely destroyed by the time Elizabeth I took
the throne. | |
1552 |
 |
Part of Elizabeth's war plan included sending Devon's young Captain Hugh
Clotworthy marching from Carrickfergus to Ballyboley. There, he and his troops encountered
the Sixmilewater. This led down to the Vale of Moylinny and Masarine. By 1596 the river could
be forded and the Elizabethan English had created their small settlement of "Anthrona"("ford" or "ferry").
The site of All Saints parish church as we see it today in the 21st century was first used as
a church in the 1500s. During the Nine Year War (1592-1601) between the Gaelic Lordships and
English Crown the first church building was completed, including the nave and Massereene chapel.
The Elizabethan tripartite style windows from this period are in use today on the North Wall.
The foundation stone, bearing the date 1596, marks the edge of the original door, to the left
of the present door. Anthrona was dubbed "Gall-Antrum" (Antrum of the English foreigner) by the
O'Neills. Clotworthy supervised construction of secure military quarters beside the motte (seen
opposite the Antrim Forum today). The O'Neills fought running battles with Crown forces, sailing
up the Sixmilewater to attack the fort...
| |
1600s |
 |
Various preachers launched a Great Revival at Oldstone in 1625 and the Sixmilewater was known as
"The cradle of Irish Presbyterianism". As local bard William McComb wrote,
"Two hundred years ago the dew of God's refreshing power
On Oldstone and on Antrim fell, like Israel's manna shower;
The waters of the Six-Mile stream flowed rapidly along,
But swifter far the Spirit passed oe'r the awakened throng:
Where'er the fruitful river went, God's presence seemed to go,
And thus the Spirit blessed our sires, two hundred years ago."
All Saints was the fourth planters' church in Ireland and is currently the second oldest. One of the Oldstone revivalist
preachers, Puritan English vicar John Ridge, was its first recorded (1619) preacher. He welcomed both
Anglican and Presbyterian worshippers into the parish church.. |
|
1636 |
|
Clotworthy in 1660 was chosen by England's parliament to invite prince Charles
to accept the English throne. He welcomed King Charles II to London on behalf of
the Irish people and in turn Charles made him "First Viscount Massereene and Baron of
Lough Neagh". He died in 1665 and is buried in St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. His daughter (Mary)
and wife were buried in the graveyard. |
|
1671 |
 |
Around this time, in 1683, Richard Dobbs of Castle Dobbs, interestingly wrote that the town name Antrim derived from "Undruim" meaning one back or one ridge. Other scholars
suggest this referred to the ridge from Antrim Bay to Tardree Forest.
Antrim was under Jacobite rule and without a vicar
as Lord Massereene and his son , Col. Clotworthy Skeffington, were besieged inside Derry's city walls.
| |
1690 |
|
The Nave and Chapel continued to be used as
a place of worship through the Williamite era and into the rule of
Anne then the Georgian era. In the early 1700s the church acquired
its handsome gateposts (inscribed with the vicar's name - Rev. J. Finston)
and the perimeter wall, both of which stand today. |
|
1797 |
|
By the next year
public outrage had led to the biggest military uprising by the Irish against the British
ever seen in Ireland - The United Irishmen. One of the most notable events was the battle of
Antrim, on 6th June 1798. In one of the most decisive battles of the uprising, 500 United Irishmen
(mainly Presbyterians from Donegore, Templepatrick,Glengormley and Crumlin but
also Roman Catholics) marched from Roughfort. They were led by Belfast textile manufacturer,
Henry Joy McCracken, with the cry "Remember Orr!" At Templepatrick they were joined by volunteers
from Larne, Ballyeaston and Ballyclare. In the end 3500 marched into Antrim from the Belfast Road
and 1500 were expected from Randalstown to cut off a Crown force retreat to the castle. A more detailed account
of the battle and History of Antrim is found in The Story of Antrim.
Records of All Saints' part in the battle includes these extracts:
The clouds of smoke generated by the engagement, mingling with that from the cottages which still smouldered
in Scotch Quarter (now the library and adjacent shops), provided a dense cover which the rebels used to clamber behind the strategically sited
wall of All Saints' churchyard
Also The Leper or Loop holes on the East and North
facing walls of the church are said to have been points from
which muskets could have been fired. While Vicar Macartney was frantically rowing across
the Lough to acquaint General Knox with events in Antrim, his teenage sons, William and Arthur
Chichester, were commanding a party of 20 yeomen who ventured into the main street and retrieved
the cannons. When these guns again roared into action, and(from The Battery overlooking Market Square)
"Roarin' Tatty" fired her last historic shot, it sailed over the town to crash down through the roof
of the parish church. The United Irishmen retreated out of range. On 17 July 1798, the Irish Parliament
passed its Act of Amnesty and McCracken was publicly executed at
Belfast's Old Market House. | |
1801 |
|
Rev. George McCartney, who fought in the Battle of Antrim alongside Lord
Massereene, borrowed £1500 in 1812 to build a square embattled tower above the main entrance.
Four years later the elegant octogonal steeple (or spire) was added, which to this day remains
the most prominent feature of the Antrim skyline. He was buried in the church graveyard, surrounding
the church (most graves are on the South side) in 1824.This (19th) century saw the greatest amount
of structural adjustment. As well as the spire, the bell was added(1812) and the current main
door came into use (1816). The Skeffington memorial wall sculpture (4th Earl of Massereene) was
gifted by the Earl's widow (1821). | |
1825 |
 |
However the "most famous son of Antrim", Alexander Irvine, (1863-1941), recalls
his childhood in his book "My Lady of the Chimney Corner". The
preacher, author and social philosopher gives many interesting insights into the Antrim of this period. The first
Massereene monument was built in memory of Chichester Skeffington at the request of Viscountess
Harriet and her daughter. | |
1863 |
The beautiful East Window, depicting 10 scenes from the life of Our Lord, dates
from 1870. | |
1890 |
| Several additions were made to the church in 1892 : the Victorian marble font;
the marble pulpit and the organ. The latter was hand-pumped until the 1930s and was brought
about partly by John Foster, the 11th Viscount Massereene and Ferrard, who had a deep passion
for music and was an accomplished violinist. His son became the 12th Viscount in 1905. | |
1895 |
|
Throughout the end of the Victorian era, through the reign of Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII,
George VI and the coronation of the present Queen
Elizabeth II, no further major structural adjustments were made. The Clarke Windows ( in memory
of George Clarke) were added in 1905. The window at the pulpit depicts Jesus as The Good Shepherd
with St John and St Paul. At the vestibule window four main panels show St Peter holding
the keys, Jesus holding a child, St James the major with a staff and St James the minor
with a staff and book. The crests of all the dioceses of the Church of Ireland surround this
window. There are references to the many soldiers, sailors and airmen connected with the church
who gave their lives in the two World Wars. | |
1945 |
On 27th July 1946 the ashes of Alexander Irvine were received at Pogue's Entry
by Rev William Mitchell (Antrim) and Vicar of Antrim Rev S P Kerr. Four nephews; Thomas, William and
Alexander Scott and Henry Adams, carried the plain bronze casket to the church. The memorial address was
given by the Lord Bishop of Down and Dromore as Alexander was laid i his parents' Love is Enough
grave in the church graveyard, under the East Window. | |
1950 |
| In September 1956 The Lord Bishop of Connor laid the foundation stone for the
new Church Hall in Railway Street. It was officially opened by Hon. Mrs. Terence O'Neill,
wife of the Northern Ireland Prime Minister from 1963 until his resignation in 1969 at the
outbreak of "The Troubles". | |
1963 |
|
By 1969 the population had risen ten-fold. |
|
1970s |
| With the closure of Enkalon in 1982, hundreds of families faced unemployment,
leading to social problems and vacant housing. | |
1984 |
|
In 1989 the South Annex/entrance to the choir vestibule was constructed. |
< |
1994 |
 |
The church continued to serve a diverse population and celebrated its 400th
anniversary in 1996 with musical, historical and ecumenical events and services. A 65-page
book was published giving a detailed history of the clergy, events
and people in the church over the previous 400 years and beyond, including the names and
dates of curates and vicars serving Antrim Parish back to 1380. | |
2000 |
|
The church looks forward into the 21st Century. | |
|
St Patrick was sent, as a missionary Bishop, to Ireland somewhere around 430 AD.
It has been suggested he "herded swine" on Slemish mountain, 9 miles north of Antrim
however this has never been substantiated by evidence. One thing is certain is that the real St Patrick
had a profound and lasting effect on the Irish people of the time. One legacy of this was
the church of monastic origin, called "Aentrobh" (from an Irish word meaning "one tribe" or "one hill"). This was completed 30 years after the death of St Patrick and survived until 1137. The society of the time
was overwhelmingly pagan and druidic. In the early 9th or 10th centuries Aentrobh monks built the Round Tower, 30 yards
SE of Aentrobh. Antrim's Christian heritage of writings and
church items were protected from Viking and other raids by
storage in the (preserved) Round Tower. More artefacts (including the founding
saint's bell, now protected in The Ulster Museum, Belfast) from this time of
traditional artistic and religious Irish culture can be viewed in museums in London
and Dublin.
St Columbkille's nephew, Colmanellus, had built the Abbey at "Mach aire Mor"(Muckamore,
"the great field of (druidic) adoration"), as prophesied by St Patrick himself. It survived in
various forms until the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII in 16th Century. |
|
1226 |
|
Norman rule was ended by 1370 after a Scots' invasion (1315) and the O'Neills attacked Antrum, expelling the
de Mowbrays. Antrum became "Masaregna"("The Queen's Hill" after one of their clan's queens). |
|
1400s |
|
She married protestant church and state, based on the "Protestant Prayer Book of 1552". Initially
welcoming Roman Catholics to be able to worship in the state church, they later suffered, along
with Puritans and other dissenters, under the penal laws, designed to consolodate her reign.
With one eye on the rebellious O'Neills, the other on the farming potential of the area, the Queen
resolved to launch a war to take control of Ulster... | |
1596 |
 |
Throughout the Jacobite, Charlite and Williamite era
the church survived as the nave and Massereene Chapel. The oldest
readable tombstone is dated 1666.
Under James I the official plantation of Ulster (1609) took place. However County
Antrim was never part of it. Antrim town had royal patent to hold fairs and markets. These attracted
"adventurous spirits from Scotland, whose finances had run low, glad of the opportunity of a chance in
a new country, yet within sight of the old". Later in the century, lowland Presbyterian Scots joined them to
escape their persecution as dissenters in Scotland (First Antrim Presbyterian was formed in
1625).
| |
1625 |
|
Ridge refused to sign Episcopalian canons
in accordance with the Order of Convocation and was ejected from his pulpit by
Bishop Leslie of Down in 1636, who said of him,"The church hath no need of those who do not know how to obey her".
His replacement was the rector of Ahoghill, who in turn, suffered the persecution
of imprisonment. The darkest days of persecution had arrived under Charles I. Archbishop
Laud had directed that all pastors who would not conform to Episcopacy be deposed and put on trial.
With Thomas Wentworth as Lord Deputy of Ireland, rents and duties went up.
The "Black Oath" obliged dissenters to swear allegiance to Charles, obey all his future commands and renounce the
Scottish (Presbyterian) National Covenant. Sir John Clotworthy, Lord Massereene,
who had petitioned for the abolition of the Episcopal ascendancy, resigned his seat
in the Irish parliament and fled with his wife to England. Of the other less mobiledissenters, the lucky ones were incarcerated in filthy dungeons (one of which can
be seen at Shane's Castle) for years.
As Charles' reign was coming to an end, Cromwellian soldiers fought crown forces in Antrim,
having been welcomed to the Castle by former servant boy Owen O'Connolly (whose remains are interred in the graveyard)
Crown forces were a Scottish army under Major General Robert Monro. When Cromwell's troops would not yield the castle,
the town was razed to the ground and the church suffered "considerable fire damage".Official church records state that is
was not rebuilt until 1720 yet there are records of various independent ministers officiating in it during Commonwealth (1649-1660) times. | |
1660 |
|
Sir John Skeffington became Lord Massereene and in 1671 invited a celebrated English puritan theologian, John Howe, to become
resident chaplain at Antrim Castle. He had been private chaplain to Oliver Cromwell
and his son Richard. After the reformation he refused to subscribe to the Act of Uniformity and as a dissenter, "having been chased out of England
on theological grounds took refuge with our people and preached with freedom
in the parish church for some years". During his 5 years at the castle, he wrote two great
Christian classics - The Vanity of This Mortal Life and The Good Man, the Living Temple of God - both earned a place in Webster's and
Chamber's modern biographical dictionaries.With Roman Catholic James II on the throne, his Irish Jacobite army marched north from Dublin.
With the garrison of Belfast routed, they were on the march to Coleraine, via Antrim. When Lord Massereene
heard of this he packed and fled for Derry where he sailed to England. William King, D.D., the vicar at the time,
was jailed for "furnishing treasonable information to the Duke of Schomberg". The historian Macaulay
described him thus:"It was only after he had been repeatedly imprisoned by the government, to which
he was devotedly attached; after he had been insulted and threatened in his choir by soldiers; after he had been interdicted from burying in his own
church-yard; from preaching in his own pulpit; after he had narrowly escaped with his life from a musket shot
fired at him in the streets that he began to think the Whig theory of government less unreasonable and
unChristian than it had once appeared to him."
| |
1683 |
|
Mountjoy sailed up the Foyle to relieve the siege after William III of Orange had been invited
to take the throne from Holland, thereby restoring a protestant monarch. William landed at Carrickfergus
and marched from there, resolved to launch a determined war to take control.
On 1st July (Old Calendar) 1690, William's troops defeated James' at the Orangemen's celebrated
Battle of The Boyne.
Viscount Massereene was able to return to Antrim and take a House of Peers seat in the new Williamite
parliament in Dublin. Shortly after in 1695 he was laid to rest in the graveyard and his son
became 3rd Viscount Massereene. | |
1700s |
|
The vicar of Antrim and Templepatrick (1773-1824), Rev George Macartney, was
anxious to maintain the ascendancy of his Established church. He was not enamoured with
one William Orr, son of the purveyor of troops at Shane's Castle, Presbyterian Scots
farmer and author of the article in the Northern Star Journal of
the time which demanded absolute political and religious equality and freedom for citizens of every creed and class;
liberty rather than liberties, equality rather than priviledge, fraternity
rather than co-existence. Orr was inspired by the rebel
Americans' Declaration of independence from the British in 1776 and the
French Revolution of 1789. Macartney had
his son arrest Orr and he was taken to be imprisoned in Carrickfergus Castle
to await trial. Orr went through a mock trial, jury members of which reported being threatened
if they did not return a verdict of guilty. The judge is reported as weeping while he passed the automatic death sentence
for treason. Orr, being told his life would be spared if he admitted guilt replied :
"I glory in my innocence. I am no traitor; I die a persecuted man. I die in peace and charity
with all mankind."
Orr was hanged at Carrickfergus Gallows Green on 14th October 1797. |
|
1798 |
 |
The United Irishmen had, ironically, succeeded in bringing the
Act of Union in 1801, forming the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
The Borough of Antrim at that time had 382 houses and 2183 people. | |
1812 |
|
The church was given a new roof in 1825. Other interesting graves from this
period include : The McCaughen's, Dumbarton Defensibles and George Victor du Noyer (whose
family were Huguenots). | |
1837 |
|
Another sculpture in memory of the 6th Earl was fitted (1863). In 1869 the
choir vestibule and small room were added. | |
1870 |
|
With the Act of Union, Baron Oriel, the last speaker of the Irish House of Commons,
took possession of the speaker's chair and mace. The chair was installed in Antrim Castle, having
seen many an historic speaker from Ireland's history - Foster, Grattan, Flood, O'Neill, Connolly and Curran.
His grandson John inherited the castle and estates as the 10th Viscount Massereene, transforming
it into a "superlative mansion". His effigy is shown in the church. Viscountess Olivia, buried at
Torquay in 1874, is still remembered by her son's gift of a memorial stained glass window (1890) on the North Wall. | |
1892 |
|
John Foster presented the adjacent window in 1895 as a memorial to his three brothers. | |
1905 |
|
The Holy Table, beneath the East Window, in memorial to V.Rev.M.Collis,
Dean of Connor, who served in Antrim Parish from 1889 to 1945, was given shortly after his
death. | |
1946 |
|
Antrim continued as a market town throughout this century,
with comparitively few dwellings outside the town centre, of which the church formed the
major landmark. The church continued to serve a town population of around 2500 and 3000 by 1960. | |
1956 |
|
The siting of Aldergrove Airport as Belfast
(International) 4 miles away (Harry Ferguson had been the first Briton to build and fly
his own aircraft (now preserved in the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum)
here in 1910 and the Province's first aerodrome was built here before the
end of WWI) and the arrival of British Enkalon's textile factory, both in 1963, brought with
them new inhabitants and workers from a non-rural background. | |
1969 |
 |
Government policy in the 70s and 80s, as the Troubles were at their most violent,
encouraged the rehousing of families from worse affected areas, particularly West Belfast.
Yet Antrim was described as a "boomtown" (in the economic sense!) in the late 70s, with a
population growth to 69000 anticipated and the prospect of 14000 Enkalon jobs. There were
20065 electorate within the officially re-accorded Borough in 1972. | |
1982 |
|
the electorate rose to 27048 by 1984 but by 1991 had fallen to 20878. In the 80s and 90s
some new employment was created in the computer and electronics industries with the arrival
of the Technology Park and Daewoo(UK). | |
1989 |
| Health workers benefitted from the construction of Antrim Area Hospital, completed
in 1994. | |
1996 |
|
The Parish celebrated its entry into the
third millenium by a series of events and sevices, including construction of a wooden
carved "time capsule" containing artefacts from 1999(on display in the church)!... As the "peace process" grows
through local political responsibility and with it stability and economic prosperity the church
continues to serve a diverse population of commuters, rural and urban workers and the disaffected.
| |
2001 |
*NOTE: More links and supporting materials to be added.