History of Doagh

The village of Doagh as we know it today seems to have had its beginnings in the mid 1700s. The Belfast Newsletter of 5 July 1757 carried the following advertisement:

That at Doagh there are now a parcel of houses built by William Agnew Esq. very commodious for tradesmen, with good gardens and five acres of land or three to each house …; the same to be let and to commence the first of November next, to any person of good substance and character, that can be well recommended. … If any person incline to build a house for himself, he shall be accommodated with 12 or 14 acres of land; and if the person desire said William Agnew to build said house, it shall be done of said dimensions, according to the rent agreed on.

Doagh continued to grow in the years after this, if not spectacularly, then steadily. A map from the collection of the Marquess of Donegall shows Doagh in 1767-70.⁵ The street plan of the village has not changed greatly since then. The bleach green and graveyard are marked and also an area known as ‘Milking Hill’.

The expansion of retail opportunities in Doagh is reflected in the following advertisement that appeared in the autumn of 1791: ‘Robert and James Kirkwood respectfully inform their friends and the publick that they have opened a shop in Doagh: where they are assorted with the greatest variety of goods’.⁶

The goods in question ranged from tea, sugar and cloth to Jamaica rum, brandy, gin and ‘strong Dublin whiskey’. The Kirkwoods indicated that they were determined to sell their wares at prices as low as the longest established shops in the district. Tea, long the preserve of the wealthy, was by this time an important part of the Irish diet. The same could be said of sugar.

While on a tour round Ireland, Daniel Beaufort stopped briefly in Doagh in November 1787 and noted in his journal:

At Doagh which is 10 miles from Randalstown, Carrickfergus, Belfast and Ballymena and 11 from Larne – I was not delayed a quarter of an hour but got on with a fine stout pair of white horses. This little inn has a neat parlour, and the landlord, Will Harpur, is active, attentive and civil.⁷

Whilst still a young man William Galt, who was then the schoolmaster of the village was inspired with the notion of forming a book club and was supported in this endeavour by like-minded, enthusiastic men. In 1768 the Reading Society was established and had thirty members. Their objective appears to have been to promote the mutual attainment of knowledge.

They purchased and read books covering a wide range of subjects, e.g. literature, science, history, mechanics, divinity etc. They also acquired a pair of 18-inch globes. Together as a Society the members had the opportunity to acquire what would have been beyond their reach as individuals. The desire for knowledge spread throughout the countryside and several reading societies similar to that in Doagh were formed in Ballyclare, Ballynure, Roughfort and Parkgate.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century the Presbyterian population of Ulster became increasingly politicised and drawn into radical politics. Doagh was one of the areas where this was especially apparent. There were various reasons for this. In the late 1770s, when the regular army was in America fighting the colonists, a part-time military force was raised in Ireland to guard the island against possible invasion.

This force became known as the Volunteers and was mainly middle class in its rank and file membership, though often with officers from the gentry and aristocracy. A company was founded in Doagh that took part in reviews, or demonstrations, that became gradually more political as Volunteers called for parliamentary reform.

On 1 July 1790 a ‘very great number of people’ gathered at Doagh to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne.¹⁰ A bonfire was lit and afterwards a number of the leading inhabitants of the area adjourned to the book club. Chairing this gathering was William Harper, the proprietor of the inn in Doagh, and a remarkable number of toasts were drunk that indicated clearly where the political sympathies of those assembled lay. These included the Glorious Revolution of 1688, freedom of the press, annual parliaments and an equal representation of the people, the Volunteers, ‘President Washington and the Free States of America’, and the French National Assembly.¹¹

Influenced by the American and French Revolutions, some began to consider more radical solutions to what they believed were Ireland’s problems. The Society of United Irishmen was founded in Belfast in October 1791. Soon afterwards clubs were founded in Dublin and at a number of other places. The aims of the Society were parliamentary reform and the elimination of English interference in Irish matters.

Anyone suspected of being a United Irishman was arrested and liable to prosecution. In September 1796 John Alexander (also known as McCalshander) of Doagh was imprisoned in the county gaol and charged with high treason.¹² Alexander, who was a leading figure in the Sunday school and book club in Doagh, was a shoemaker.

There was a huge groundswell of sympathy for Alexander and in November of that year over 1,000 people assembled at Doagh to dig his crop of potatoes, and afterwards dug the potatoes of the mother of his apprentice who was trying to keep the shoemaking business going during Alexander’s incarceration.

The following year Alexander was released without standing trial. Alexander was more fortunate than William Orr, a farmer and United Irishman from Farranshane, who was executed in Carrickfergus in October 1797. His body would have passed by Doagh on its way from Carrickfergus to Templepatrick for burial.

Rebellion began in Leinster in late May 1798. On the night of 6-7 June it spread to Ulster. Many men from the Sixmilewater Valley took part in the Battle of Antrim on 7 June. However, the rising in the north lasted barely a week. There followed a series of executions; one of the last to be hanged was the most famous Ulster rebel of them all, Henry Joy McCracken, on 17 June. Doagh was one of a number of towns and villages that ‘suffered severely by the late disturbances, both by fire and sword’.¹³ Memories of this were still fresh when James Boyle of the Ordnance Survey compiled his memoir in 1839: ‘In 1798 a portion of the village was burned by the king’s troops, in consequence of the part which its inhabitants took in the insurrection of that year.’¹⁴

One of the greatest acts of cultural vandalism in Ulster’s history occurred at this time when the Doagh book club was ransacked by the Carrickfergus Fencibles and its 1,500 volumes destroyed. It was probably targeted because of Galt’s known involvement with the United Irishmen. Samuel McSkimin, the author of the well-known history of Carrickfergus, was among the soldiers present in Doagh on that day and shortly before his death in 1843 spoke of his deep sense of shame at what he had witnessed:

I was one of a company of the Carrickfergus Fencibles, who received orders to visit Doagh for the double purpose of searching for arms and arresting proscribed rebels. We entered the village, but not finding the objects sought for, those in command of the party ordered the doors of the clubroom to be burst open; and the work of demolition at once commenced. The windows and entire furniture of the house were broken in pieces; a pair of elegant new globes smashed to atoms; the library shutters, enclosing the books and papers, beaten in with the musket ends; and the books thrown into the street, forming a huge pile, were set fire to and burned.¹⁵

McSkimin himself tried to salvage a copy of Robertson’s History of Charles the Fifth, but a fellow soldier snatched it away from him and kicked it into the fire. ‘Never, either before or since, did I return home with a heavier heart’, recalled McSkimin, his regret compounded by the fact that it was here that he had received ‘the first rudiments of education’. The book club was revived after the rebellion and continued to exist until the middle of the nineteenth century.