Churches and Graveyards

There are three churches especially associated with Doagh. Only one of them is in the village itself – Doagh Methodist Church. The other two – Kilbride Presbyterian Church and Kilbride Church of Ireland – are located outside the village, but are still inextricably linked to it.

Doagh Methodist Church

In 1738 John Wesley and his brother Charles started the movement that soon acquired the name of Methodism. John Wesley made his first visit to Ulster, where the movement had already established itself in many of the major towns, in 1756. He visited Ulster regularly for the rest of his life. By 1778 a Methodist Society had been established in Doagh.

It seems likely that John Wesley himself visited Doagh in that year. He recorded in his journal that while travelling between Ballymena and Carrickfergus in June 1778, ‘We rode through a small village wherein was a little Society. One desiring me to step into a house there, it was filled presently, and the poor people were all ears while I gave short exhortation and spent a few minutes in prayer.’ Though Wesley does not state that this incident occurred in Doagh, this would have been the village he most likely passed through on his way to Carrickfergus.

Doagh Methodist

In 1799 the Methodist Conference gave its sanction to the building of a meeting house where the present building now stands. In the same year a young man arrived in Ireland from America. His name was Lorenzo Dow and he was a candidate for the Methodist ministry in America.

On coming to Doagh he was initially opposed by the officer of the guard, but on the Sunday the military parade was cancelled so that the soldiers would have the opportunity to hear him. He preached to the soldiers in the out-houses of Fisherwick House.

In the late 1830s the Methodist meeting house in Doagh was described as a single-storey building with a slated roof, but ‘in bad repair’. Externally it measured 21 feet by 18 feet with 2 small oblong windows and a door. Meetings were held in it every Sunday morning and every Tuesday evening. There was regular preaching in it once a fortnight conducted by a Methodist ministers, but the other meetings were taken by laymen.37 At this time there were about 70 members.

In 1844 a new Methodist meeting house was built in Doagh on the same site as its predecessor. The date-stone reads:

Wesleyan
Methodist Chapel
Holiness becometh
thine house, O Lord,
for ever
1844

Kilbride Presbyterian Church

Around 1840 the Carrickfergus Presbytery became aware that Presbyterians living in Kilbride were willing to be formed into a congregation. At this time Presbyterians from the Kilbride-Doagh neighbourhoods belonged to the Presbyterian churches of Donegore, Ballyclare and Ballyeaston.

The Presbytery authorised a series of meetings in Doagh, but the response to these was disappointing with very small attendances. The matter was held in abeyance for a number of years.

At the end of August 1844, the Carrickfergus Presbytery encouraged congregations to establish prayer meetings in areas where they had not previously existed. It seems that meetings for prayer were established at Brookfield at this time. According to oral tradition, these meetings were held in the loft of a weaving shed close to Brookfield House, then the home of James Watt who had purchased Springvale Weaving Mill.

It seems that one of the early encouragers of the Brookfield meetings was Thomas Lyle, the manager of the Springvale Weaving Mill, who would later become one of the first trustees of the property of Kilbride Presbyterian Church. Rev. William Raphael of First Ballyeaston was also heavily involved in what became a recognised missionary station.

In February 1846 Mr Raphael informed the Carrickfergus Presbytery that those who gathered for services in Brookfield were anxious to become a congregation in their own right. He had already secured the approval of the Home Mission in having a young man placed in this area to provide regular preaching. In May Mr Alexander Barklie, the son of James Barklie who farmed at Ballynure and Rashee and was related to the Barklies of Kilbride, was appointed to preach at Brookfield and his initial experiences were very positive. By this time serves were being held in the schoolhouse adjoining Kilbride graveyard.

Following a meeting in October 1846 it was agreed to continue with Mr Barklie’s services for another six months and to immediately establish a congregational committee. Henceforth the embryonic congregation was known as Kilbride, not Brookfield. Barklie also conducted services in Doagh every other Sunday evening; the venue may have been a building known in former times as ‘The Tabernacle’, to the rear of the Torrens Memorial Hall.

On 4 November 1847 a memorial signed by 120 heads of families was presented to the Carrickfergus Presbytery requesting they be erected into a congregation. The request was granted. Back in July of that year William Orr, a licentiate of the Dungannon Presbytery, had been appointed to have oversight to the missionary station here. He was ordained minister of the new congregation on 14 March 1848.

A plot of ground adjoining the schoolhouse and old graveyard having been secured from Robert McClelland, a meeting house was built under the direction of William Lawson, who had been born in Kilbride, and later moved to Ballyclare. The meeting house was opened on 13 March 1849. The first five trustees of the church property were Thomas Lyle of Brookfield, Thomas Wilson of Drumadarragh, Charles Bryson of Ballybracken, John McClelland of Ballyvoy, and William Lawson of Ballyclare.