Qualla: Ballymena https://qualla.com/ballymena en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:13 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/g/8/ballymena-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Ballymena https://qualla.com/ballymena Ballymena: Introduction https://qualla.com/ballymena/ Photo credit Kenneth Allen, CC BY-SA 2.0. Liam Neeson grew up here. So did James McHenry, who signed the United States Constitution. So did Timothy Eaton, who built Canada's largest department store. So did Mary Peters, who won pentathlon gold for Great Britain at the Munich Olympics. The town's name, An Baile Meánach, means "the middle townland." Ballymena is the seventh largest town in Northern Ireland, with 31,205 people at the 2021 census, and the geographical centre of County Antrim. It is also a town that has been described - by some of its own observers - as the heart of Northern Ireland's Bible Belt. In June 2025 it was the town where the worst anti-immigrant rioting in Northern Ireland in decades began. Like a lot of places, Ballymena is more than one thing.

Read more: Ballymena on Qualla

Image: Kenneth Allen | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/g/8/ballymena-wp/gcg8-ballymena-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Ballymena: Edward Bruce at Connor https://qualla.com/ballymena/ Photo credit Jimbob7810, CC BY-SA 4.0. Recorded history here begins in the Early Christian period - ringforts in the townland of Ballykeel, a souterrain found in Kirkinriola two miles north, and a seventh-century inscribed stone unearthed by a gravedigger in 1868 that now stands in the porch of St Patrick's Church of ...

Read more: Ballymena on Qualla

Image: Jimbob7810 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/g/8/ballymena-wp/gcg8-ballymena-edward-bruce-at-connor.mp3 0:06 2 full Ballymena: Charles I, William Adair, and a Saturday Market https://qualla.com/ballymena/ Photo credit Simon Scurr, CC BY-SA 2.0. On 10 May 1607, during the Plantation of Ulster, King James I granted the Ballymena Estate to the native Irish chief Ruairí Óg MacQuillan. The estate passed through several hands until William Adair, a Scottish laird from Kinhilt in southwestern Scotland, came into possession. He...

Read more: Ballymena on Qualla

Image: Simon Scurr | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/g/8/ballymena-wp/gcg8-ballymena-charles-i-william-adair-and-a-saturday-market.mp3 0:06 3 full Ballymena: The Bible Belt and the Troubles https://qualla.com/ballymena/ Photo credit Albert Bridge, CC BY-SA 2.0. Ballymena has long had a Protestant majority. The 2021 census showed 59.5 percent of residents from a Protestant or other Christian background, 27.4 percent from a Catholic background. Some observers have called it Northern Ireland's Bible Belt. In the early 1990s, the Democratic...

Read more: Ballymena on Qualla

Image: Albert Bridge | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/g/8/ballymena-wp/gcg8-ballymena-the-bible-belt-and-the-troubles.mp3 0:06 4 full Ballymena: When the Factories Left https://qualla.com/ballymena/ Photo credit Lisa Jarvis, CC BY-SA 2.0. Ballymena was traditionally a market town, then in the twentieth century it became a manufacturing centre. Michelin opened in Broughshane. JTI Gallaher ran a tobacco plant at Galgorm. Wrightbus, the local bus manufacturer, employed thousands. The 1980s brought the first wave of j...

Read more: Ballymena on Qualla

Image: Lisa Jarvis | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/g/8/ballymena-wp/gcg8-ballymena-when-the-factories-left.mp3 0:06 5 full Ballymena: June 2025 https://qualla.com/ballymena/ Photo credit Whispering Pine, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 7 June 2025, a teenage girl was allegedly sexually assaulted on Clonavon Terrace in Ballymena. Two Romanian-speaking Roma boys, aged fourteen, were charged with attempted rape. (The charges were dropped in November 2025 after new evidence meant the case no longer met the thres...

Read more: Ballymena on Qualla

Image: Whispering Pine | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/g/8/ballymena-wp/gcg8-ballymena-june-2025.mp3 0:06 6 full