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From Magheramorne's Comgall (b. circa 516 AD), a prominent missionary of the early Celtic Church, to the hereditary Ó Gnímh bards in the Kilwaughter area in the late middle ages, Larne could be described historically as a land of saints and scholars.
Larne in the Early Middle Ages
Larne takes its name from Latharna, a Gaelic territory or túath that was part of the Ulaid petty kingdom of Dál nAraidi. The name spelt as Latharne was used at one point in reference to the Anglo-Norman cantred of Carrickfergus. Latharna itself means "descendants of Lathar." Lathar, according to legend, was the son of the pre-Christian king Úgaine Mór.
The town sprang up where the River Inver flows into Larne Lough. This area was known in Irish as Inbhear an Latharna ("rivermouth/estuary of Latharna") and was later anglicised as Inver Larne or simply Inver. Latharna was only applied exclusively to the town in recent centuries. In 204 CE, The Roman emperor Severus described a Roman galley bound for Scotland, which veered off course to a place called Portus Saxa. This is thought to be Larne Lough.
There was Viking activity in Larne during the 10th and 11th centuries CE. Viking burial sites and artefacts have been found in the area and dated to that time. Ulfreksfjord was an Old Norse name for Larne Lough. According to the Norse historian Snorri Sturluson, Connor, King of Ireland, defeated Orkney Vikings at Ulfreksfjord in 1018. Later anglicised names include Wulfrichford, Wolderfirth, Wolverflete. The surviving name is Olderfleet, and the ending, fleet, comes from the Norse fljot, meaning "inlet". Older may come from the Norse oldu, meaning "wave". The town motto is Falce Marique Potens (Latin for "Powerful with the sickle and on the sea").
Ruins of Olderfleet Castle in the late 19th centuryLarne in the High to Late Middle Ages
During the 12th and 13th centuries, Larne sat on a shifting frontier of Gaelic, Norse‑Gaelic and Anglo‑Norman influence. Following the temporary expulsion of Hugh de Lacy from Ulster in 1205, grants were made to members of the Galloway family, including Duncan FitzGilbert/ de Galloway (d. 1250), who was given Wulricheford(Ulrichfiord — Larne Lough), Iverthe (Inver in Larne parish) and Glinarne (Glenarm). In 1224 Duncan 'of Carrick' complained that Hugh de Lacy had seized the land of ‘Balgeithelauche’ — likely Ballygally.
In the parish of Kilwaughter, a fort held by the Anglo-Norman Adam Bisset was burned in 1282. The Bissets were associates of De Lacy and intermarried with the Fitzgilbert (Galloway) family. The Bisset clan was still ruling the Glynns area until at least 1522. The old tower at Ballygally Head was probably under Bisset control.
In 1272 Henry de Mandeville was a tenant of Adam Bisset in Craiganboy on the south side of the Glynn. De Mandeville went on to claim the townland as his own. There was subsequently a dispute over land at Kilwaughter between the de Mandevilles and Fitzwarins.
In 1245, the townland of Greenland was associated with the Pe de Lu family. The Earl of Ulster also leased Drumalis to Nicholas Pedelowe in 1333: the land comprised three carcucates, a mill and a court. A mill at Kilwaughter was also owned by the Earl of Ulster.
Ecclesiastical parishes were set up in Larne after 1210. Killyglen parish was in existence in the mid-13th century, its rectory granted to Muckamore Abbey by Isaac, bishop of Connor between 1245 and 1256. The parish of Ballyhampton was listed in 1306–07. There may have been some strategic reason why Ballyhampton fell under the bishop's land, as it was unusually small for a parish. Neighbouring Killyglen, Larne and Carncastle were secular estates.
John Bissett junior at the time of his death in 1259 held part of the land in Carncastle: Dronach (Droagh), Villa trium fontium (Ballyytober), Milltown, Villa Hacket (Ballyhacket), Carlcastel (Carncastle) and Carkemechan (Corkermain). Hugh de Lacy had kept the southern part of Duncan of Galloway's land to himself after he disseized him around 1227.
In 1333, the lands of the earl of Ulster 'within the county of Carrickfergus' included Dunmalys / Drumalis, the main settlement.
Killyglen may have been set up as a manor and parish in the same period.
In 1315, Edward the Bruce of Scotland, brother of Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland, landed at Larne with his 6000 strong army — Olderfleet Castle was of strategic importance. Edward saw Ireland as another front in the ongoing war against Norman England.
The name Bissett was associated with Larne until at least 1532. Gerald Missett (Bisset) was the last provost at Inver Monastry, which housed friars of the 3rd Order of St. Francis. King Henry VIII seized Inver house in 1532, and according to an inquisition document from 1605, the remaining friars died at Olderfleet on 1 Nov 1602. The crown also seized church lands at Ballyshagg (Ballysnod), Barnudod (Browndod), Garrimore (Gardenmore) & Ballygrenlawy (Greenland). Ballyhampton, near Kilwaughter, was an independent parish in this period. Likewise, there were ecclesiastical centres at Glynn and Killyglen. The parishes of Inverbeg and Invermore combined in the 1600s —Inverbeg parish covered Antiville, Ballyboley and Ballycraigy.
Bisset influence in Larne continued through the Antrim MacDonnells, descendents of Margery Bissett, who married Eoín MacDonnell in 1399.
Larne in the 1600s
In 1569, Elizabeth I, Queen of England and Ireland, appointed Sir Moyses Hill as the governor of Olderfleet Castle. It was seen as strategically important for any Tudor conquest of Ulster. The area around County Antrim was not part of the official seventeenth century Plantation. Many Scottish settlers arrived in the area through private settlement.
In the 1600s, much of the land around Larne was owned by various Agnew families, including landowners, hereditary poets and hereditary sheriffs, who had received land from Randal MacDonnell. Larne was a melting pot of language at that time, with Irish, Scots and English co-existing. From the late 1500s until around 1700, the Ó Gnímh poets (often Anglicised Agnew, Ogneeve, Ognive and Ogneiff) were patronised by the MacDonnell and O’Neill dynasties. Their prominence is attested by land grants in Kilwaughter parish, including the townlands of Lisnadrumbard, Mullachboy (Rory's Glen) and Tobbermore (Rory's Glen), which were granted to members of the bardic line in the 1620s by Randal MacDonnell. The written work of the Agnew bards of Kilwaughter is still important to scholars of Irish. The original manuscripts are held in Trinity College, Dublin.
Around 1613, the Agnews of Lochnaw, near Stranraer, were also given land in Larne, Inver and Kilwaughter by Randal MacDonnell. The Lochnaw Agnews held the sheriffship of Wigtownshire and the office of constable, their office continuing until its abolition in 1747. A collection of townlands in Kilwaughter and Millbrook is still known as Sheriff's Land today.
Several authors have explored the idea that the bards and sheriffs were connected through MacDonnell clan kinship, but the research is inconclusive. One of the Agnew families owned Kilwaughter Castle and became major landowners in County Antrim. The castle was originally built around 1622 as a fortified house. It sits in ruins today.
Eighteenth-Century Larne
During the eighteenth-century many Scotch-Irish people emigrated to America from the port of Larne. A monument in the Curran Park commemorates the Friends Goodwill, the first emigrant ship to sail from Larne in May 1717, heading for Boston, Massachusetts in the New England.
Larne was also the first town in county Antrim to be taken by United Irishmen during the rebellion of 1798. The Protestant rebels from this area (almost entirely Presbyterian) filled Larne and engaged the government forces around 2am on the morning of 7 June. This surprise attack drove the garrison to flee the town, at which point the rebel force marched off to join up with McCracken and fight in the Battle of Antrm. The events were recorded by Larne author James McHenry.
Nineteenth-Century Larne
In the 1860s and 1870s, Antrim industrialist James Chaine purchased the harbour, rebuilt piers and quays and established the short sea crossing to Scotland, thereby transforming the port’s fortunes. The regular steamboat service between Larne and Stranraer commenced on 1 July 1872.
The town diversified into leisure-driven tourism under tourism pioneer and hotelier Henry McNeill, who promoted Larne’s coastal scenery and hotel accommodation to visitors from Belfast and beyond. The combined growth of ship-yards, harbour infrastructure and visitor industry laid the foundations for Larne’s emergence as a key industrial-maritime and holiday hub in the early twentieth-century.
Twentieth-Century Larne
Larne had mixed fortunes in the twentieth-century. Global events, such as the First World War and subsequent economic depression of the 1930s, were hard on working class people, but after the Second World War, Larne witnessed significant development, with road widening, the addition of a flyover carriageway to the harbour, the clearance of 'slum dwellings', and the creation of large housing estates, such as Antiville and Craigyhill. There were ups and downs within industry, the G.E.C. on the Old Glenarm Road closing and then re-emerging as F.G. Wilsons (subsequently Caterpillar). Textiles declined and pharmaceuticals emerged.
The addition of a larger power station at Ballylumford increased the industrial appearance of the town, as did the addition of three high-rise flats in the Riverdale area in the 1960s, but the Antrim Coast Road and eighty per cent of the wider countryside remain areas of outstanding natural beauty. Larne's role as a tourism hub, however, diminished in the face of such transformation. There were also changes as people looked abroad. A blow to tourism came with the IRA bombing of the King's Arms Hotel in 1980.
Twenty-first-Century Larne
Renewed confidence after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement gave the town a boost. While Larne's population has been fairly static, new housing developments have grown in scale, taking more of the old countryside townlands, like Ballyhampton. The vistas of countryside and sea and wide participation in sport, community groups and the arts mean that Larne remains a thriving town. The neglected sites associated with the McNeill Hotel and Laharna Hotel have been redeveloped and many independent shops are still thriving, but poor planning laws have had dire consequences in the historic Point Street/ Dunluce Street area. Improvements have been made, however, with the addition of larger shopping precincts at the heart of residential areas. Larne Football Club also benefitted from an investment by Purple Bricks. There are continual calls for regeneration.
