page_title: Ballymena
section_title: Post-medieval
hierarchical_section_title: Ballymena / History / Post-medieval
caption_attribution_description: Ballymena, County Antrim, Northern Ireland This is a photo of a listed building with HB number HB07/17/006. English: South-east view of the surviving tower of the former parish church at Church Street. Listed as B2 building.
context_page_description: Ballymena is a town in County Antrim, and the eighth largest in Northern Ireland. It is part of the Borough of Mid and East Antrim. It had a population of 29,551 people at the 2011 Census.
  The town is built on land given to the Adair family by King Charles I in 1626, on the basis that the town holds two annual fairs and a free Saturday market in perpetuity. As of 2018, the Saturday market still runs. It is a popular shopping hub within Northern Ireland and is home to Ballymena United F.C.
  Ballymena incorporates an area of 632 square kilometres and is home to large villages such as Cullybackey, Galgorm, Ahoghill and Broughshane. The town used to host Ireland's largest one-day agricultural show at the Ballymena Showgrounds. The town centre has many historic buildings. The Town Hall was built in 1924 on the site of the old Market House, and was refurbished in 2007 at a cost of roughly £20 million.
context_section_description: In 1576, Queen Elizabeth I granted land, including the town of Ballymena, to Sir Thomas Smith. The lands had been forfeited to the crown after Shane O'Neill's resistance in the 1560s. Smith brought English settlers to the area, among the first pioneers in planting English and Scots settlers in Ireland. By 1581, Smith's settlement failed and the lands reverted to the crown.
  On 10 May 1607, King James I granted the native Irish chief, Ruairí Óg MacQuillan the Ballymena Estate. The estate passed through several owners, eventually passing into the possession of William Adair, a Scottish laird from Kinhilt in southwestern Scotland. The estate was temporarily renamed "Kinhilstown" after Adair's lands in Scotland. The original castle of Ballymena was built in the early 17th century, situated to take advantage of an ancient ford at the River Braid. In 1626 Charles I confirmed the grant of the Ballymena Estate to William Adair, giving him the right to hold a market at Ballymena on every Saturday. He hired local Irish as workers on the estate; they served as tenant farmers for much of the next two centuries and more.
  In 1641, the local Ballymena garrison were defeated by Irish rebels in the battle of Bundooragh. Ballymena's first market house (on the site of the present town hall) was built in 1684.
  In 1690, the Duke of Württemberg, a Williamite general, used Galgorm Castle as his headquarters. Sir Robert Adair raised a Regiment of Foot for King William III and fought at the Battle of the Boyne.
  By 1704, the population of Ballymena had reached 800. In 1707, the first Protestant (Church of Ireland) parish church was built. In 1740, the original Ballymena Castle burned down. The Gracehill Moravian settlement was founded in 1765. During the 1798 rebellion, Ballymena was occupied from 7 to 9 June by a force of around 10,000 United Irishmen. They stormed the Market House (now the Town Hall), killing three of its defenders.
  The first modern Roman Catholic Church in Ballymena was consecrated in 1827. By 1834 the population of Ballymena was about 4,000. In 1848 the Belfast and Ballymena Railway was established. In 1865 Robert Alexander Shafto Adair (late Baron Waveney) started building Ballymena Castle, a magnificent family residence, in the Demesne. The castle was not completed until 1887.
  In 1870 The People's Park was established.
caption: The remains of the 1707 church. The tower was built in 1822 and is a listed building.[9]
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