A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.
Recorded forms
Beannchar· Irish · main form · validated name
Bangor· English · main form
Place & story
People & connections
Comgall, Columbanus and Gall
Bangor Abbey's official heritage account identifies Comgall as its founder in the sixth century. The community became a centre of learning, and two of its most important associated figures, Columbanus and Gall, carried monastic traditions into continental Europe. Their careers connect Bangor with places including Luxeuil, Bobbio and the Lake Constance region. These associations concern the early religious community; they do not mean that the present church building stood in its founders' lifetime.[3]
The Antiphonary
The Antiphonary of Bangor provides a surviving connection with that world of worship and learning. The manuscript catalogue dates it to the abbacy of Colman, between 680 and 691, and locates the original in Milan's Ambrosian Library. It contains hymns, prayers and other liturgical material. Its Irish script makes it an important witness to early book production. The precise time at which it reached Bobbio is not recorded, so a confident story about a particular escape from Viking raiders would go beyond the catalogue's evidence.[4]
A church with several ages
The abbey site experienced destruction and renewal. The official heritage account associates a surviving wall with Malachy's twelfth-century restoration, while the tower, steeple and main church body belong to later phases. The surviving building incorporates these successive periods of construction.[3]
A working coastal town
Lewis's 1837 account describes Bangor as a seaside bathing place but also as a centre of cotton manufacture. Factories, weaving, sewing and ornamental work employed people in the town and surrounding parish. He names George Hannay among the early promoters of the finer branches of manufacture and records the involvement of Colonel Ward. Coal and timber entered through the port, while agricultural produce went out. This industrial and commercial town belongs beside the better-known story of its abbey.[2]
Both censuses use the same 2015 settlement boundary. These exact counts cover usual residents in the settlement, rather than local government districts or historic counties. Other NISRA tables may use approximate counts.
View population figures
BANGOR — Settlement 2015 (N11000564) — census population
placenames