placenamesHarryville
Harryville’s social history includes a congregation’s purpose-built hall and a family who taught generations of Irish dancers.
The name
A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.
Recorded forms
- Harryville · English · main form
Place & story
The Iron Hall in Waring Street
A Sunday school in Harryville’s Orange Hall preceded the erection of a dedicated gospel hall in Waring Street in 1926. Built of corrugated iron with an internal lining, it became known as the Iron Hall. The congregation’s own account records its replacement by a larger building in 1959 and another extension in 1981, when membership had reached 143. [2]
The McConnell dancers
Agnes McConnell grew up in Harryville in a family connected with the linen mill: her mother was a spinner and her father a fitter. By the late 1920s she was running a dancing club in Railway Street. Her dancers appeared at the 1929 Ballymena festival as the Shamrock team. Later, the Braid Water Recreation Club’s dancers practised in the mill canteen and competed under her tuition, including during the 1951 Festival of Britain. [3]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Antrim
- Barony
- Antrim Lower
- Civil parish
- Ballyclug
- Coordinates
- 54.86094, -6.27649
- Logainm ID
- 118041 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Harryville. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Harryville Gospel Hall: Our History · Harryville Gospel Hall
- The McConnells of Ballymena and Irish Dancing, 1 October 2017 · Angeline King
- Harryville Gospel Hall on Larne Road, as photographed in 2013 illustration: based on a Harryville gospel hall, Ballymena by Albert Bridge. AI-assisted watercolour and ink adaptation; cream paper margins added, incidental clutter omitted and fine details simplified. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2026-07-01. How this page was prepared.