How the Steeple lost the battle for the souls of Antrim town

NOT a lot of people may know it, but back in 1981 Antrim was declared the ‘brainiest town in Northern Ireland’.

Why so, you might ask.

Well, that year John Williams, secretary of the Northern Ireland branch of the international club for folk with high IQs came up with an interesting statistic.

Of the 76 MENSA members in the province, Antrim laid claim to three of them.

Better still, he named the bright sparks. They were S Arthur of Birch Hill Avenue, WR Magill, from Ash Green and Bill Nesbitt, of Corbally Avenue.

“Now I’m pretty certain, Belfast apart, no other town can lay claim to that sort of record,” he said.

So why then, with that rich gene pool, did our ancestors decide to build a round tower in a field far from the town centre?

By any standard it is a remarkable structure, but why leave it standing in perfect isolation far from the throng of local life?

Back in 1943 journalist and academic Barbara B Boyd set out to answer just that - and in doing so, she curated a fascinating history of Antrim’s religious roots.

The simple answer, of course, is that the Steeple once was the town centre.

The original parish church once stood in the shadow of the ‘noble monument of antiquity’ which for a thousand years has ‘braved the battle and the breeze’.

The tower is 93-feet tall, and is one of only two still standing in Northern Ireland - the other standing sentinel on Devenish Island in Lough Erne.

For centuries the Steeple was a busy hub, yet there are now no visible traces of the ancient town of Antrim.

What we now consider to be the centre did not appear until after the Anglo-Norman invasion.

The two, around a mile apart, sat uneasily together for some time, but for the residents of the told town, the new settlement was ‘Gallantrim, signifying the arrival of ‘the English and foreigners’.

Right up until the 1800s, evidence of the English influence in the foundation of Antrim was still evident in a number of ‘ancient houses’ of timber framework and plaster. They had gable fronts, of which the upper projected over the lower storey after the fashion of the timbered houses of Chester and Warwick.

The scale of the settlement at the Steeple was finally laid bare when the foundations of walls were unearthed and removed. It was clearly a large church, perhaps even a monastery.

And then there was the bodies. ‘Vast quantities’ of human remains were uncovered.

The fact that a pierced cross within a circle has been sculpted over the lintel of the tower’s raised doorway, hints at the ‘ecclesiastical character’ of the site.

The original church of Antrim was a monastic institution intimately connected with Bangor, and perhaps erected by St Comgall, the founder of Bangor.

As a consequence of one of the frequent Danish raids, the relics of St Comgall in 822 AD were removed from Bangor and brought to the relative safety of Antrim.

But it subsequently became the turn of Antrim to ‘suffer spoilation’, at the hands of Viking raiders.

The monasteries of Muckamore and Antrim were destroyed, the marauders maintaining a fleet on Lough Neagh to carry away the loot.

In the early fourteenth century when the valuation for the Pope Nicholas Taxation was made, the rectory of Antrim was valued at a paltry five marks and vicarage at 12.

‘These were not only rather small amounts, but were also curious inversions of the general order’, wrote Barbara B Boyd.

‘Evidently the monastic church of Eantrobh (Antrim) had sunk in importance no doubt as a result of the Danish invasions and had never fully regained its quondam importance’.

The earliest known Vicar of Antrim was William Proketour, who held the parish in 1380, but it not until 1435 when John O’Gillamyr, a clerk of Connor, was collated by the Primate to the vicarage of what would become All Saints in the heart of ‘Gallantrim’.

The style of architecture of the church corresponds to the date - 1596 - which is inscribed upon it.

The original church at the Steeple, however, instantly became obsolete and soon fell into ruin. In time, it was as if it had never existed.

In the early part of the 17th century, when the vast majority of churches in the diocese of Connor - as elsewhere - were ‘in ruins in consequence of the unsettled and turbulent conditions which the province of Ulster had experienced’ Antrim was one of the half dozen churches in the diocese described as being in ‘decent repair’.

The Ulster Visitation of 1622 described the church as ‘newly erected’. The incumbent was John Ridge MA (Oxon) who, although episcopally ordained, was ‘so imbued with Puritan views’ that he was ejected for non-conformity by Bishop Leslie in 1636.

The rectory and vicarage of Antrim in 1609 formed part of the Prebend of Connor, but by 1622 the patronage of the living was in the gift of Sir Hugh Clotworthy.

Clotworthy was one of the adventurers who accompanied the Earl of Essex on his expedition to Ulster in 1573. He married Mary, daughter of Roger Langford of Muckamore, and received from the Cromwellians the right of nomination to the vicarage of Antrim.

His son, Sir John, was a trimmer who, ‘comparatively speaking was hardly less successful as such than the famous General George Monk, the restorer of the British Monarchy in 1660’.

Originally a Parliamentarian, Clotworthy subsequently became an Independent, and for his activity and seal in helping to promote the restoration of Charles II was elected to the peerage of Ireland in 1660 as Viscount Massereene and Baron of Lough Neagh.

He obtained the grant of a patent to hold fairs in Antrim and to enable it to send two members to Parliament - a right the family exercised until the Act of Union in 1880.

Prior to the great fire that destroyed Antrim Castle 100-years-ago, its Oak Room contained a portrait of the first Lord Massereene. His Lordship was represented in a close fitting doublet and trews, as a Puritan soldier of the Cromwellian period, but without close cropped hair.

The parish church, together with the town, was burned by General George Munro in 1649. Indeed, only a few houses survived damage.

It was soon repaired and during the Commonwealth various independent ministers officiated in it.

In 1671 Sir John Skeffington, 2nd Viscount Massereene, appointed Rev George Evans to the vicarage.

In his time Thomas Gowan came to Antrim as Presbyterian minister. As he was ‘without a preaching house’ when he assumed his ministerial charge, the Bishop of Down and Connor Thomas Hackett - who was subsequently deprived for non-residence, neglect and other offences - gave him permission to preach in the parish church.

The Antrim Presbytery consented to him doing this, but on the condition that ‘the people who own him be not ensnared to countenance the liturgy’.

There also had to be an assurance that they ‘do not profane the Sabbath by attending at the church door while it is reading’.

Finally, there was a condition that ‘a considerable number of the people do not absent themselves from the public ordinances of the Presbytery’.

The Presbyterian congregation was divided on the wisdom and expediency of this interesting arrangement and a bitter dispute followed.

Mr Gowan died in 1683 and his mortal remains, together with those of his immediate predecessor Rev James Cunningham, rest almost side by side within the hallowed walls of the Parish Church of All Saints.

They share the plot with thousands of people - each and every one with a story to tell.