placenamesMilltown
Baile an Mhuilinn
This Milltown lies in Kilbegs near Antrim town, with a history connected to the United Irishman William Orr and a surviving tradition of graveyard carving.
The name
These Irish name elements are associated with this record in the Logainm glossary.
An element’s translation is a clue, rather than a complete explanation of the name. Its form and meaning depend on local history and the full Irish name.
Recorded forms
- Baile an Mhuilinn · Irish · main form · validated name
- Milltown · English · main form
Place & story
William Orr’s birthplace
William Orr was born at Milltown in 1766, on the O’Neill estate near Antrim town. His father, Samuel, combined farming with supplying the army, and the family belonged to the Old Light Presbyterian congregation at Mill Row in Antrim. William later farmed at Farranshane and Toome, with income also coming from a small bleach green. He joined the Antrim Volunteers and, around 1794, the United Irishmen, contributing occasionally to their newspaper, the Northern Star. [2]
The legacy of “Remember Orr”
Orr’s prosecution for administering a United Irish oath to soldiers became a defining political case of the 1790s. Convicted in 1797, he maintained his innocence, while several jurors later sought clemency and claimed they had been intoxicated during the trial. The execution went ahead at Carrickfergus on 14 October. The slogan “Remember Orr” spread through memorial objects, ballads and political gatherings, and was taken up by United Irishmen during the 1798 rebellion. [2]
A winged cherub in the graveyard
Milltown graveyard preserves a distinctive example of local memorial carving: the headstone of Henry Canning, decorated with a winged cherub. The Ulster Historical Foundation highlighted it during research commissioned into the historic churches and burial grounds of Antrim and Carrickfergus. Its work, focused on the Plantation to the post-Famine period, drew attention to the value of these individual carvings alongside the inscriptions. The Milltown stone is a small but tangible survival of that commemorative craft. [3]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Antrim
- Barony
- Toome Upper
- Civil parish
- Antrim
- Within
- Kilbegs
- Coordinates
- 54.72746, -6.26134 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 135821 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Milltown. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Orr, William: biography a 7132 · Desmond McCabe, Dictionary of Irish Biography
- Historic churches and graveyards of Antrim and Carrickfergus · Ulster Historical Foundation
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2021-05-26. How this page was prepared.