Introduction

The parish of Ballyrashane is situated in the two counties of Londonderry and Antrim. It is approximately three miles from Coleraine and five miles from Ballymoney going towards Ballycastle by the inland route. It is an agricultural area covering around six and a half thousand areas. The population is a scattered one, most people living on farms. The majority of the houses are privately owned, the remaining few being let out by farmers or the housing executive who still own a handful of former labourers' cottages.

For the purposes of this study I intend to concentrate on the County Londonderry side of the parish, since this is the area which is now considered Ballyrashane, by the majority of the inhabitants, the County Antrim side seeing themselves as belonging to Ballywatt, Bushmills or Windyhall.

The townlands included in this study are comprised of :-Articrunnagh, Ballindreen, Ballynag, Ballyvelton, Ballyversal, Cloyfin, Glebe, Gorticloughan, Islandeffrick, Kirkistown, Knocknekeeragh, Lisnagalt and Liswatty. The centre of the parish is based at Kirkistown. This is where you will find the post office, the creamery, the school and the Presbyterian Church. A few hundred yards away at Glebe is the Parish Church of St. John's. Ballyrashane has been inhabited from early days although there has been little documentation to show this. However, surveys of the land have shown that there are several raths in the parish and also caves have been found by landowners when erecting new buildings. One farmer in Kirkistown claimed there was a large cave under his fireplace into which his ashes fell regularly. He claimed he even lost five ducks in the same way. Even if we are sceptical of his claims there is no doubt that the Ordnance Survey found evidence of a rath on the site of Brookhall in Kirkistown. Also Reverend O'Laverty quotes an extract from a report made to the Ordnance Survey Office sating that when a John Walker was reclaiming land in Gorticloughan he found an artificial cave which had four circular pits containing bones and earth, one of which had a stone carved like a gravestone. [Diocese of Down and Conner Vol. 4 p231]   Lewis' Topographical Dictionary lists the parish as having four Danish forts, two of which are in the County Derry side:- Lisnagalt and Liswatty. This is the only mention I have found of them and there is no evidence of their existence left today. However, on the 1830 Ordnance Survey map the existence of the two Lisnagalt forts is clearly marked. Unfortunately today there are farm building over the area marked.

There is some suggestions that the name Kirkistown is Norse but this is not agreed to by all translators of place names. Munn suggests that the Kirk referred to is the Scotch settler's version of church. This is probably a more reliable suggestion since there was only one church in existence until the 19th century and this was based even more in the centre of Kirkistown than the present Presbyterian one is today.

There is no evidence to indicate who might have lived in the parish before the Normans but it is possible that they were Irish families called O'Brissel or Muldoon. These are the names suggested by the townlands of Ballyvelton and Ballyversal. [Munn]

The next period of occupation of which we have clear evidence is in the 12th century when the church is mentioned in the Taxation of Pope Nicholas. The name which appears is Ecclesia de Coulfade, the church of the long corner. The name St. John's was given to it since it was connected with the prior of St. John's of Jerusalem. On many early documents the name appears as Singeston which is translated as St. John's townland. In Irish Ballyrashane.

We know from the Antrim Rent Roll that the parish was part of the estates of the MacDonnell's of Antrim in the 16th century so it is possible that previous to this it may have been part of the lands of McQuillan. Munn suggests that 'Watty' was a common name among the McQuillans and this may be the connection with the townland of Liswatty. The north part of the parish is often described in connection with the barony of Dunluce. If this is so, then it may have provided a home for the Normans also, since there is evidence to support the theory that the McQuillans were direct descendants of the Norman de Burghs. The townland name of Island Effick may have come from Affreca who was the wife of John de Courcy. The downfall of the Normans who followed De Courcy came after they had tried to interfere in the recruitment of Irish men to fight with England in the war against Scotland. The Norman families began then to assimilate with the Irish and many changed their names to Irish versions. MacRichard (former farmers in Ballindreen) is very likely to be a family with a Norman ancestry.

During the time of the Plantation the whole parish was in the hands of Sir Randal MacDonnell who let his lands out to Scottish planters, mainly under the direction of his relative John McNaughten of Benvarden. In time McNaughton bought much of the land of Ballyrashane and it was his land which was given to the Church of Ireland for the site of the present church. Many of his descendants can still be found in the area and they can trace their ancestry back to the 17th century. The other common family name which appears often in this area is Stirling, and it too is a direct connection with the first Scottish planters. The oldest gravestone in the parish churchyard is that of Janet Wilson Stirling who died in 1699. Many of the lowland settler families died out or migrated in the last century. Names like Moore, Brown and Dunlop were common in the 19th and even early 20th century. The farms which these people worked have passed into the hands of the bigger families who own large parts of the land in the parish. McAfee was a very common name until the last 30 years but unlike the others is a Highland name. It is possible that they were here prior to the other lowland Scots named above and may have originally been Roman Catholic since they were here prior to the Presbyterian influx. The last McAfee family had many girls who, although still in the parish, have married and so lost the family name. The sons have all moved elsewhere and recently their parents have died.

John McNaughten let the lands out to sub-tenants who farmer their own small plots of land in the parish. These settlers were, for the most part, Presbyterian,, and they proceeded to take over the existing church which had fallen into disuse by 1644, the suggestion being that existing Irish tenants (McHugh and McRichard) had been unable to compete with the better farming methods of the Scots settlers and who had therefore been able to gain land from the Irish tenants. During the rebellion of 1641 the rector had been ejected from his church and he did not return.

The lands of Ballyrashane which were farmed by Irish McHugh's and McRichard's began to pass into Scottish lowlanders' hands around the time of rebellion in 1641. There were also some Irish McHenry's with land in Ballyvelton and Ballindreen in the period prior to 1653. At this time, after the rebellion, McHenry's lands were confiscated because he was a Catholic. Interestingly, although Randal McDonnell was a Catholic, he managed to persuade the Queen that he was loyal and so kept his land. Stirling, Wilson and Montgomery began to take over from the previous Irish tenants because they were better farmers.

The congregation of the Established Church must have been almost depleted at this time since the rector was responsible for Ballywillan and Agherton as well as Ballyrashane. It is not clear whether they moved from the area or whether they converted to Presbyterianism. The numbers remained small until the early 19th century, using the church at Ballywillan.

Danish troops of cavalry are said to have quartered in Ballyrashane at the time of the Williamite Wars. No doubt the suspicion aroused at the time of the 1641 rebellion about the loyalty of the people would have made this a suitable place for an encampment. A large number of Scots were murdered on Dunmull (just outside the parish) by the government forces because they were suspected of being in league with the rebels in the 1641 uprising. [Calendar of State Papers 1660 -1652]

Examples of life in the 18th century can be found in Dr Mullin's book on the Kirk and Parish of Ballyrashane. He describes how the people would spend the greater part of Sunday at the church. They were so illiterate that the minister had to read out each line of the psalms before the people sang it. Between the lecture and the sermon (which I take to mean service), there was an interval in which the people had their lunches of oatcake, cheese and spring water.

One of the ministers in the 18th century was the Reverend Samuel Boyce. He left a notebook which tells us about the parish for which he was minister until 1760. In it he mentions that his parish consisted of 261 Protestant families and 5 Roman Catholic families. This would appear to have been a sizeable population since the average family size at this time would seem to have been about five children. However, complications were to beset the church. The Seceders arrivedin 1747 and split the congregation, followed later by Covenanters who both set up rival churches on the boundaries of the parish at Ballywatt and Ballyclabber.

There were few luxuries around in the 18th century and anyone who wanted to learn to read would have found it very expensive. An example from Boyce's notebook shows that a Bible with a cover cost 4 shillings and 8and a half pennies compared with the 4 shillings and 1 penny for thatching a roof.

The population made a living by planting corn, hay, barley, flax and potatoes and supplied the corn-mill at Kirkistown. Other occupatons pursued by the inhabitants of the parish were masons, carpenters, labourers, thatchers, blacksmiths, maids, grooms and ploughmen.

The roads through the parish were not well developed and ran on a different path from today. Since the only traffic at this time was riders on horse back it did not matter that these roads ran across hills at Knocknekeeragh, Kirkistown and Ballyversal. In the late 18th century the road between Kirkistown and Ballybogey was cut through the moss. This road was also on a hill and it was re-cut this century so that it is now below the higher ground on either side at Lisnagalt. The road which ran from Kirkistown across the Glebe and Ballyversal to Ballywatt was replaced at some time before 1859 as the present Rectory Road appears on the Griffiths Valuation map. The 1830 Ordnance Survey map also shows Rectory Road but part of an old road can still be seen and indeed today it is possible to see a portion of the old road if you look carefully behind the Brookhall house. It is probable that this road was one which was built under the authority of the Grand Jury who were from 1860 led by the local landlord to keep control and organisation of the labour force. They had the right to demand the local men to construct and repair roads [Beckett]

Information about the 18th century has been difficult to find and I have no idea of the centres of population. Going by the 1830 Ordnance Survey map it would seem that the people were less scattered than today and lived in clusters of farmsteads and houses. The parish would seem to have been thriving at the beginning of the 19th century since it was during this time that schools were being opened to educate children. Before the National School system was established in 1831 there were already four schools operating in the parish. The only one for which there is details is a private school in Ballyversal with 25 pupils. The population must have risen rapidly between 1750 and 1835 since this was the period in which two new churches were built. The present St John's church was built in 1825 and a new Presbyterian one onits present site at the corner of Kirkistown was built at around the same time. By 1831 according to the census there was a population of 1637. During the 19th century the population experience many changes. In the early part the growth of population had produced enough wealth to enable the congregations to build two new churches. Samuel Boyce built Brookhall which was, and still is, the most impressive house in the parish.

However, the middle years of the century were to bring about a turnaround in the fortune of many of the inhabitants. As much as three quarters of the population were dependent to a large extent on the linen industry and their primary income was from weaving and spinning. After 1830 when machines began to take over and large enterprises were set up in towns, the home industry began to decline. This meant many people migrating, either to towns or abroad, and others were forced to turn back to their tiny pieces of land for support. The result was a rapid decrease in the population. By the turn of the century the total number of people had been cut by more than a half.

The famine, too, had large-scale effects for the people, although the parish does not seem to have suffered as badly as many other places.

The twentieth century has been one in which a smaller population have to a large extent, prospered. Although there was comparitive stagnation in the first four decades of the century, caused by the two wars and the low income of the farmers, they were to see almost a revolution in circumstances in the forthcoming fifty years. There has been so much improvement in farming methods since 1950 that many of the older generation can hardly believe they lived as they did 60 years ago.

Today the parish flourishes and is still peopled by the same farming families who were here at the beginning of the century. In most cases they now have fine farms and are increasing their holdings and continually making improvements. Most of the other houses have been renovated and the population is made up from people involved in all sorts of work. Recently Brookhall and the Rectory have been renovated and people from the town have moved into them.