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Townland

Ballinderry

Baile an Doire

An antiquarian account places the first parish church in Ballinderry townland, beside Portmore Lough.

Recorded locationBallinderry54.54388° N · 6.26618° WInteractive map supplied by OpenStreetMap.
Recorded place location · Logainm.ie

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

  • Baile an Doire · Irish · main form
  • Ballinderry · English · main form

Place & story

A name beyond the townland boundary

Francis Joseph Bigger and William J. Fennell explicitly placed the old Church of Portmore in Ballinderry townland, rather than neighbouring Portmore. Their account distinguished this earlier village site from the later crossroads settlement and Upper Ballinderry near the railway station. The shared name thus connects several places whose histories should not be treated as a single village site. [2]

The ruin described by antiquarians

The authors recorded two surviving church gables, approximately sixty-three feet apart, within a burial ground resembling an island amid wet ground. They also noted two hollowed boulders in the graveyard. These are historical observations of the older site, separate from the better-known Middle Church and its surviving interior. [2]

Enclosing the burial ground

Quoting the parish records, Bigger and Fennell reported a resolution in 1834 to fence the old graveyard and provide an iron gate and pillars. The entry documents a decision to care for the burial place after the parish’s principal church had moved elsewhere. [2]

Geographic information

Place type
Townland
County
Antrim
Civil parish
Ballinderry
Coordinates
54.54388, -6.26618
Mapped area
4.78 km²
Logainm ID
62807 ↗

People & family history

Census figures refer to the matched historical census area for each year. Boundaries and spellings can change over time.

1901 census

219People recorded
52Households recorded

Most frequent surnames in this year’s matched records

  • Glover 22
  • Arnold 12
  • Hull 12
  • Higginson 11
  • Major 10
Explore the 1901 records ↗

1926 census

This year is outside the available dataset’s coverage. This does not indicate a population of zero.

Sources & further reading

  1. Logainm.ie — Ballinderry. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
  2. The Middle Church of Ballinderry and Bishop Jeremy Taylor: historical text, old Portmore church and1834 parish resolution · Francis Joseph Bigger and William J. Fennell, historical work transcribed by Lisburn.com
  3. Boundary geometry retains its source attribution and licence in the downloadable geographic record. Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors.

Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2019-06-27. How this page was prepared.