i893-94-3 *5 



The original town of Antrim stood near the Round Tower, 

 where also was, at one time, a large monastic church. Not far 

 from where the church stood, and in what is now the Steeple 

 garden, lies a large knee-stone with two indentations, one 

 deeper than the other. In the year 1 147, we are told the town 

 had a population of 600. There was doubtless a burying - 

 ground near the Tower, as human remains are occasionally met 

 with during gardening operations. When Ulster was settled 

 by people from Scotland and England, old Antrim appears to 

 have decayed, and a new town — Gall-Antrim, the Antrim of 

 the foreigners — sprang up. These " foreigners " brought new 

 thoughts, new customs, new modes of life with them. They 

 built the Parish Church, which bears the date 1596, and, in the 

 course of time, a Meeting House, which stood beside the road 

 leading from the present town to the station, which gave way 

 in 1 700 to the lately renovated Old Meeting House, which is 

 mother to that of Millrow, and grandmother to that of High 

 Street. While the grandmother has become wayward and 

 even heretical in its old age, the daughter and grand-daughter 

 have remained in the peaceful lines of orthodoxy. A number 

 of the followers of George Fox, that stern and staunch man of 

 the leather breeches and the inward light, formed a congrega- 

 tion here in the seventeenth century ; but it ceased to exist 

 about forty years ago. The Moravians at one time had a few 

 followers and a preaching-room in Antrim, but I have never 

 come directly upon traces of either. The Rev. John Cennick, 

 author of that fine hymn, sung at the present time in Antrim, 

 and commencing — 



Children of the Heavenly King, 

 As ye journey sweetly sing ; 

 Sing your Maker's worthy praise, 

 Glorious in His works and ways — 



used to come over from Ballinderry to conduct service here. 

 This was about the year 1740 or 1741. Following three visits 

 of the great apostle of methodism in the latter part of the last 

 century, a Methodist congregation was established here. The 



