16th and 17th century In 1556, an account of an English expedition against the
MacDonnells, a branch of the Scottish
Clan Donald that lorded over a wide expanse of north and east Antrim known as the Route and Glynns, records "a bishop's house, which was with a castle and a church joined together in one, called Ballymonyn". Destroyed in the
Irish Rebellion of 1641, no vestige of the bishop's house or castle remains, but a tower of a church built in 1637 by
Sir Randal MacDonnell survives and is the town's oldest structure. In the wake of the devastation caused by the
Nine Years War, Sir Randal had invited settlers from
lowland Scotland. Unlike the MacDonnells and the
native Irish, the majority of these were not
Roman Catholics, but neither did they recognise the
episcopacy of
the reformed church established under the
British Crown. Conscious of their disabilities both as "dissenters" from the established church and as
tenants at will, after two/three generations, these Scottish
Presbyterians began to leave in search of opportunity elsewhere.
18th century In summer 1718, people from Ballymoney and the surrounding area waved goodbye to five ships carrying Presbyterian ministers and their congregations across the Atlantic to start new lives in
New England. This was among the early wave of departures that, in the course of the coming decades, was to carry tens of thousands of "Scots-Irish" to the
New World. From 1778, inspired by the revolt of their relatives in the American colonies, the disaffection among the people of the town and district took a more radical turn, first in the drilling and political conventions of the
Volunteer militia, and then from 1795 in the
Society of United Irishmen. The
"test" or pledge of the Society "to form a Brotherhood of affection amongst Irishmen of every religious persuasion" and secure an "equal representation of all the people in Ireland", was administered by leading residents of the town, among them a doctor, a schoolmaster and two attorneys. When in June 1798, having despaired of parliamentary reform, the Society called for insurrection, men assembled on Dungobery Hill, parading with guns, pikes, pitchforks, and scythes tied upon sticks. Although they quickly dispersed on news of the
defeat of the larger rebel host at Antrim town, The young licentiate minister, Richard Caldwell, who had had command of the rebels found exile in the United States, there to die in
War of 1812 in a march on
Canada.
19th century In 1837, Lewis's
Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, describes Ballymoney as "a market-town and post-town" containing 2,222 inhabitants (11,579 in the broader
civil parish) with a long established
linen market chiefly supplying the London market, and with "a very extensive trade ... in grain, butter, pork, and general provisions". Transport was largely via the Bann. By 1860, the town was connected to both
Belfast and
Derry by rail. At the height of the
Great Famine in 1847, entire families were being admitted to the Ballymoney
Workhouse. At one point, it became vastly overcrowded with 870 inmates. The destitute families were separated, men, women, and children being subject to demanding work regimes. By the end of the century, the number of people seeking relief had declined, and the workhouse closed in 1918. It later became the site of the Route Hospital. In the decades following the famine, the issue of
tenant right challenged large landowners who, as "loyalists" and "unionists", had believed they could count on popular support, and had contributed to the electoral successes of
James MacKnight and
Samuel MacCurdy Greer in neighboring County Londonderry. In 1869, the Rev.
James Armour and others in Ballymoney formed the Route Tenants Defence Association. In 1874, the association organised a major North-South National Tenants' Rights conference in Belfast, which called for loans to facilitate tenant purchase of land and for breaking the landlord monopoly on local government. In 1906, the IOO supported the election of
Liberal R. G. Glendinning due largely to his support for compulsory land purchase. By the time of the 1912–14
Home Rule crisis, the land question had resolved largely in the tenants' favour, and official unionism reasserted itself. A meeting in Ballymoney Town Hall in October 1913 organised by Armour and Ballymena's
Jack White, and with
Sir Roger Casement and
Alice Stopford Green on the platform, disputed the claim of
Edward Carson's
Unionists to speak for northern Protestants. Local historian Alex Blair notes, "the meeting put Ballymoney into the press headlines across the United Kingdom. All the big London papers had a representative in the Town Hall and ‘
The London Times’ carried an editorial as well as a report". But while the dissident meeting had filled the hall, in November an anti-Home Rule meeting addressed by Carson's lieutenant
Sir James Craig had the crowd spilling out of the hall into the surrounding streets. Broadly in line with its three-quarters Protestant majority, Ballymoney remained a Unionist town. From 1921, its
Antrim, and later
Bannside, constituencies returned Ulster Unionists to the
Northern Ireland Parliament virtually unopposed. This ended only in February 1969, when standing as a
Protestant Unionist, the
Rev. Ian Paisley came within a few percentage points of unseating the
Prime Minister of Northern Ireland,
Captain Terence O'Neill. This was at the onset of the
Northern Irish Troubles, in the course of which Ballymoney and its immediate surroundings witnessed 14 conflict-related deaths. Seven people were killed by various
loyalist groups, four by the
Irish Republican Army (IRA), and three by the
British Army. The most notorious incident occurred at the height of the
Drumcree protests, three months after the 1998
"Good Friday" Agreement under which both
republican and
loyalist paramilitaries had committed to permanent ceasefires. The
Ulster Volunteer Force petrol bombed a house in a predominantly Protestant area of the town, killing three Catholic children, the
Quinn brothers. The last major flax-spinning operation in the area, the
Balnamore Mill, made its final shipment of linen (to Germany) and closed its doors in 1959. The same year, saw the camera manufacturer
K.G. Corfield moved from
Wolverhampton to Ballymoney, becoming the only camera manufacturer on the island of Ireland. But this surprise addition to Ballymoney's shrinking industrial base failed in the face of Japanese and German competition. It ceased production in 1971. A further blow to the local economy was delivered in 1988 by a fire that destroyed the Lovell and Christmas pig processing factory that had employed more than 400 people and processed about 40% of Northern Ireland's pork.
21st century In the 21st century, Ballymoney recovered its ability to attract industrial investment. Examples included a 2015 €6.8 million expansion in the operations of McAuley Engineering, and the announcement in June 2022 of a £9 million expansion of the metal fabricator facility of the U.S. machinery giant
Terex. In the 30 years between the
1981 census and the
2011 census, the population of the town almost doubled from 5,679 to 10,393 people. In the broader-than-the-town census area, the population rose from 26,865 in 2001 to 32,505 in 2020. ==Politics==