There is some doubt about the date of the first church on the site because authoritative records from the pre-Reformation period either have not survived or are inconclusive. Rev. James O’Laverty, believed that the Pope Nicholas Taxation of 1306 provides evidence for the existence of a church at Lambeg. The churches listed in that taxation do not include the name Lambeg but it does appear in a ‘terrier’, a list of lands belonging to the Bishop, of approximately the same period. The churches in the area are listed in the same order in both documents but the name Cloncolmoc in the taxation is replaced by Lambeg in the terrier. O’Laverty therefore believed that Cloncolmoc, ‘the meadow of St. Colman’, was the original name for Lambeg although Reeves disagreed believing that the site of Clomcolmoc was in the neighbouring parish of Drumbeg.

Two nineteenth-century sources, Lewis’ Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) and the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland (1837), refer to a tradition in Lambeg that it was also the pre-Reformation site of a Franciscan monastery and a nunnery. A State Paper of 1601 and Archdall’s ‘Monasticon Hibernicum’ (1786) provide some evidence to support that tradition.

The earliest date for which there is definite proof of a church on the site is at the end of the 16th century. A church at Lambeg is clearly marked on a 1598 map of Ulster which is now held in the British Museum. However by 1657 ‘Lambeg: a small chapell or parish church’ was ruinous according to an Inquisition of that year. The parish was united in the same year with the parish of Blaris, i.e. Lisburn, until 1737 when a new chapel, built on the site of the 1657 ruin, was consecrated. That building was enlarged in 1824 and entirely rebuilt in 1849 with the tower now the only remaining part of the 1737 building.

The fertile land of the Lagan Valley was part of the manor granted in 1611 to Sir Fulke Conway. English tenants, mainly from the north of England according to Rankin, were brought by Conway to settle on his estate. It is suggested that they also brought experience of textile making with them. The first bleach green in Lambeg was established, close to the church, in 1626 some years after those settlers arrived. Fagan relates local information that the village ‘is said to have been founded in 1676’ (from a date stone on an old house). The village was built close to the concentration of bleach greens along the banks of the Lagan where it flowed through the parish.

Quaker families from the North of England settled in several places in the Lagan Valley from about 1654 onwards during the Cromwellian Commonwealth. They also brought experience of textile making and made an important contribution to the early development of the linen industry in the area over forty years before the arrival, in 1698, of Louis Crommelin and the Huguenot families from France and Holland. Many of those families settled in this part of the Lagan Valley. The Huguenots brought skills in improved bleaching techniques and the manufacture of fine linen fabrics which led to a significant development of that branch of the linen industry in the Lagan Valley in the 18th century.

The location of Lambeg, close to Lisburn, which became a major centre of the linen industry and beside the River Lagan, which supplied abundant water power in the period before coal, was a major factor in the economic developments which took place in the parish. Equally important was the fact that the main lines of communication along the Lagan Valley – the old coach road from Belfast to Dublin, the Lagan Navigation Canal to Lough Neagh and, in the 19th century, the Ulster Railway – ran through the parish.

The history of the parish outlined above is reflected in the names on many of the older gravestones in the churchyard. According to a report, in the ‘Belfast News Letter’ on Friday 22nd June, of the consecration of the new church building in 1849 the Bishop referred in his sermon to the ‘ancient burial place having on its tombs the names of old English settlers and some of the Huguenots’. Twelve years earlier Thomas Fagan, when compiling his report on the parish for the Ordnance Survey Memoirs, listed 48 surnames on tombs and headstones among which were several distinctively English, Scottish, Irish and Huguenot names.

Prior to the relaxation of penal laws in the nineteenth century the burials of people of all denominations usually took place in a common graveyard for the parish which was often attached to the established church, the Church of Ireland. For this reason several Quakers were buried in Lambeg Churchyard. Fagan and Marshall (History of Lambeg Parish) also refer to the burial of Roman Catholics, ‘from the mountains’, taking place until the early nineteenth century when a new burial ground was opened at Hannahstown Chapel in the adjoining parish of Derryaghy. According to the local information he had received, Fagan related that these burials eventually ceased when verbal abuse ‘by their Dissenting neighbours’ increased because of their objection to the ancient Irish custom of keening at the funerals. Fagan included the epitaph on the tomb of ‘the Reverend John Mullan …parish priest of Derryaghy and Befast ….(who) … died 15th September 1772, aged 80 years’ in the OS Memoirs. That tombstone had been ‘long since lost’ by 1933 when Marshall wrote his history of the parish although another tombstone in memory of Fr. Magee, Fr. Mullan’s predecessor, had been found in the late 1920s but has disappeared since 1933.

The uncommon surname Teeling was among those listed by Fagan. It is a pity that no record of Teeling burials has survived but the available evidence suggests this was the Roman Catholic family who lived ‘near Lisburn’, probably somewhere between that town and Lambeg, in the late eighteenth century and which was connected with the events of the 1798 Rebellion. Luke Teeling, a descendent of an Anglo Norman family from Co. Meath, had settled in the area by at least 1774 when his older son Bartholomew was born.

Luke was an important linen draper in the town and also had a financial interest in bleachmills in Co. Down. He was an ardent liberal, a supporter of the Volunteers and a home ruler who was elected to represent Co. Antrim in the 1793 Catholic Convention but he was not a member of the Society of United Irishmen. Bartholomew was among the earliest recruits to the society and participated in the French invasion of Ireland in 1798 for which he was later hanged in Dublin.

Charles, born 1778, the younger son of Luke, was not a member of the United Irishmen but was the first person detained by Lord Castlereagh on 16 September, 1796 under warrants to arrest the leaders of the society in Ulster. The arrest took place close to the Teeling family home when Castlereagh left Lisburn Castle, the home of his uncle the Marquis of Hertford, to travel to Belfast where he intended to arrest other leaders of the society. Luke was arrested in 1798 and detained for some time while Charles was detained until 1802. There is no later evidence of the family living in the immediate area but it is probable that Luke is the tenant of that name recorded in Ballycarngannon townland in the 1829 Tithe Applotment Book for Drumbo parish.

Inscriptions on two headstones provide some local information about the growing desire of many Methodists, in the early nineteenth century, to form a separate church. Originally the Methodists were members of evangelistic societies within the Established Church and were required by John Wesley, an ordained priest of the Church of England, to attend the local parish church and receive the sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion there. Wesley therefore would only commission ‘preachers’ solely for that purpose but after his death the demand grew for the appointment of Methodist clergymen to administer the sacraments. The changes taking place at this period are exemplified by the inscriptions which use the words ‘Wesleyan Preacher’ to describe the status of John Johnston, at his death in 1803, and the title ‘Reverend’ to describe John Bredin at his death seven years later. One part of the Methodist Church separated totally from the Church of Ireland in 1816.

The Standard Edition of John Wesley’s Diary (edited by Nehemiah Curnock and quoted in Gallagher’s book ‘John Bredin’) records that he drove from Belfast at midday on Sunday 10 June 1787 and had dinner at Chrome Hill before fulfilling preaching engagements at Lisburn. Mary (1759-1832), the wife of Richard Wolfenden, was a granddaughter of Louis Roche, one of the original Huguenot settlers. She was a Methodist and had helped to nurse Wesley at her sister’s home at Derryaghy when he was seriously ill on a previous visit to Ireland in 1773. Mary’s brother in law was Edward Gayer, a Huguenot, who was Clerk to the Irish House of Commons.

During his visit John Wesley interwove the branches of two beech saplings at Chrome Hill as a ‘sign of the union between Methodism and the Established Church which should never be broken’. The beech trees still stand close to the main entrance to the house. It seems particularly appropriate that in 2002 the Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of the Church of Ireland, and the President of the Methodist Church in Ireland came to this historic place to sign the new covenant between the two churches first separated almost two centuries earlier.

The graveyard contains many tombstone monuments bearing the names of families who helped to establish and develop the textile industry in the parish. Some of those tombstones, especially those made of sandstone, have weathered badly and as a consequence some names or even whole inscriptions are no longer legible. However, fortunately, William Cassidy made a record of the inscriptions in the churchyard in 1937 although he noted, even then, that many headstones were in an advanced state of decay. Three inscriptions which are now illegible or have disappeared since that date provide valuable, if somewhat limited, information about early families. These inscriptions recorded the 17th century deaths of ‘Margret (sic) Willson, wife to Daniel Savage, died 24 April 1626’ and ‘John Markes, died 30 August 1689, aged 34 years’ and the later deaths Richard Simpson (1788), Anne Simpson (1789), possibly his wife, and George Simpson (1817), perhaps their son.

The earliest documentary evidence of the textile industry in the parish records the setting up of a bleach green in 1626 by John Williamson. Unfortunately there is no Williamson family burial ground in the churchyard comparable in size, information or chronological spread to those of the other linen families. In 1937 Cassidy recorded a family burying ground with only one name, ‘John Williamson’ on the inscription but it cannot now be found. Limited details of this very old family can be found on gravestone inscriptions on five separate burial plots but, disappointingly, they only contain enough information by which a few members of one mid nineteenth century family can be related. The male line of the family came to an end in the 1830s and their textile business was taken over by the Richardson family which had expanded into Lambeg from its original 18th century base in Lisburn.

The name Wolfenden, reputed to have been of Dutch extraction, first appears in the parish on a gravestone bearing the date 1693 which is now the earliest date in the churchyard. Marshall suggests the family came to Lambeg at some date after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 although it could have been as early as the 1660s when the Lord Lieutenant attempted to promote the linen trade industry in Ireland by encouraging settlement of those with textile skills.

The inscriptions on the Wolfenden family plot, which are still legible, provide information about five generations of the main line of descent of the family. Unfortunately there is little information about the original settlers, husband Abraham (no record of birth, death or age) and his wife Jean (simply the years 1650-1693). Thereafter for three generations there is a wealth of information about dates, ages, maiden names of spouses, occupations (linen draper) and even a character reference (‘an ornament to her sex’).

At some stage during the late 17th century Abraham Wolfenden purchased the bleach green between the old Belfast-Dublin road and the River Lagan at Lambeg. He probably built the house, originally named Lambeg House, beside the old road and close to the ford on the Lagan. There is a tradition that King William, on his way south to the Boyne in 1690, was entertained in that house by Abraham while awaiting the repair of his carriage which was damaged on crossing the ford. The family linen business prospered in the 18th century and expanded to include the manufacture of blankets and paper on another site beside the Lagan about 1750. An interesting although much weathered and incomplete headstone inscription, listed by Cassidy, records the death in 1774 of ‘Peter C_____ master papermaker who exceled (sic) aged 62’, who may have been the manager of the paper making business.

There is a tradition, unsupported by documentary evidence, that the family was responsible for the building of the new chapel at Lambeg in 1737 when the parish was separated from the union with Blaris parish. In 1825, the family business, which by then included the manufacture of cotton, calico and muslin, was relocated to Dublin and at some time in the early 1830s Lambeg House was sold. The last male Wolfenden recorded on the gravestone inscriptions is John, died 1829 aged 41, son of the third Richard and his wife, Mary, died 1832 aged 83. It seems likely that the sale of the house and the textile works followed upon those deaths. There is another large and more modern burial plot in the churchyard with the inscription Wolfenden but no further information is recorded on it.

The purchaser of Lambeg House and the former Wolfenden business at Lambeg was Richard Niven of Manchester who had discovered the use of bichromates for the fixing of colours in the textile printing process. Niven renamed the house Chrome Hill to commemorate that discovery. There is one gravestone with the simple inscription ‘Richard Niven Chrome Hill’ however there are two tablets inside the church which provide a little information about Richard (died 1866 aged 79), his wife Eliza (died 1899 aged 86) and possibly their daughter Bessie (died 1861 aged 18). The name, slightly changed to Nevin, survives as the name of a terrace of houses built for workers in his factory. It is also possible that Jane, Richard and Eliza’s daughter, married a descendent of a Bullmer, one of the original Huguenot families who settled in the parish.

The Richardsons, by 1800 a wealthy business family, whose burial plot is the most extensive in the churchyard, probably descended from a plantation settler family. At some date in the late 17th or early 18th century the family had become members of the Society of Friends. The Friends or Quakers strongly disapproved of marriages outside their religion and for several generations the family kept that rule as shown by a family tree recording marriages to partners from well known Irish Quaker families. Siblings Alexander (1835-1919) and Harriette Richardson (1847-1943) married siblings Susan (1838-1913) and Richard Grubb (1841-1916). Susan and Richard belonged to a well known and prosperous Quaker family from Cahir in Co. Tipperary. However it is evident from information on the gravestone inscriptions and wall tablets that some of the families became members of the Church of Ireland (‘Susan Richardson, 1863-1912, who worshipped in this church’).

The high number of first born male sons named Jonathan in the various families outside the main line of descent and the confusing name changes of their residences in Lambeg combine to reduce slightly the usefulness of the information on the gravestone inscriptions and wall tablets. Printed sources, essential in many cases to supplement gravestone inscription information, make it possible to construct a limited family tree over three generations for Jonathan Richardson (1804-1894) and his wife, Margaret Airth (1807-1889), and their children and grandchildren and including one of the Richadson/Grubb marriages named above.

The Barbours of Hilden, who were the last of the entrepreneurial linen families to move into the parish, originally came from Scotland to Lisburn in 1783. William Barbour leased, in 1824, a bleach green in Hilden which had previously belonged to Samuel De La Cherois. Samuel’s mother was Marie Madeline Crommelin, a sister of Louis Crommelin. William had married Eliza Kennedy a few years earlier in 1821 and they had 13 children. Three of their seven sons went to the USA to set up textile businesses. The gravestones on the elaborate and imposing monuments provide a wealth of information about the family in general and the main line of descent in particular.

The main line from William (died 1857 aged 78) to his great grandson John Doherty (1906-1937) can be traced fully and there is information about the families of two of Willliam’s sons who went to America and set up branches of the family business there. In addition to dates there are interesting and invaluable details which help to provide a wider family history including:

a) The family of another great grandson, also called John Doherty (1906-1966),

b) The marriages of John Milne and his younger brother Harold Adrian Milne to American cousins,

c) The deaths of John Milne’s i) only son, John Doherty, aged 31, without issue, in an air crash in 1937, ii) elder brother, Frank, aged 70, at sea in the Mediterranean in 1936 and iii) sister’s husband, Thomas Andrews, on the Titanic and

d) The origin of the forename Milne, given to John Milne and his male siblings, which came from the maiden name of their mother, Elizabeth Law Milne of Edinburgh.

In contrast the inscriptions on the five separate but adjoining Boomer burial plots contain little personal information but do provide records of this ‘Huguenot Family’ for almost three centuries from 1702. The earliest inscription records the deaths of the children of Gorg (sic) Bullmer, Lenord (sic) died 1702, Dorethy (sic) 1711 and his own death on ‘ November ye 14 1715’. The spelling of the surname changes over the years from Bullmer to Boolmer in the later 18th century and finally to Boomer about a century later. The French forename Rene was still in use in the family in the 1890s. The most recent inscriptions record the deaths of what appear to be two married couples in the mid and late twentieth century. Unfortunately there is not sufficient connecting information available on the inscriptions on the five plots to construct a family tree across the three centuries although some possible links could be suggested.

Apart from the names, family relationships and dates there are only two other pieces of personal information on the Boomer inscriptions which describe George, died 1757 aged 80, and Reney, died 1793 aged 80, as blacksmiths. Local tradition relates that it was a Boomer, possibly ‘Gorg’, who repaired the wheel on King William’s carriage. The King was surprised and pleased when the blacksmith responded in perfect French to his words of gratitude.

Fagan’s list of surnames on headstones includes another Huguenot name, Breadthwaite. The only headstone of that family surviving from before 1837, Israel died 1827, aged 78, records the name as Breaithwaite. There are only two other inscriptions of that name, from 1851 and 1930, on other burial plots which also record changes in spelling of the name to Breathwaite and Braithwaite. A low eminence close to the present main Belfast-Lisburn road was given the name ‘Brethwaite’s Hill’ on 19th century OS Maps.

The churchyard also contains several headstones with inscriptions recording two or three generations of nineteenth century families. The inscriptions on the two adjoining burial plots of the Magee family of Lambeg record, with dates, ages and relationships, two generations of the families of John and Edward Magee. Unfortunately there is no evidence to connect the two families although the proximity of the plots suggests that the families were related. There are three Magee burial plots in the late twentieth century churchyard extension but there is no evidence to link them to each other or to the much earlier families.

The inscriptions on two adjoining Morrison burial plots provide sketchy information from Robert, died 1839, aged 59 to a few late 20th century members of the family. The headstone on one of these plots records that Colour Sergeant Matthew Morrison died in 1858, aged 29, during one of the less well know campaigns of the British Army in the East Indies. Remarkably his remains, according to Cassidy, were transported home to Lambeg.

The name Chapman appears in Fagan’s list in the OS Memoirs and is also mentioned elsewhere in the same Memoirs where John Chapman is named as providing local information about the history of the parish. It is possible that John’s name appears on the inscriptions on both of the adjoining Chapman burial plots. The inscriptions record details of eight members of that family from 1791 to 1936.

The inscriptions on another set of adjoining burial plots record dates, ages and some relationships of the Gilliland family of Lisnatrunk from Elizabeth, died 1817, aged 86, to Margaret, died 1918, aged 57. Lisnatrunk is the name of one of the five townlands which comprise the parish of Lambeg. It is one of the very few townland addresses found on inscriptions in the churchyard. The same townland was also the home of the Campbell family whose inscription records full information about nine members of that family between 1843 and 1907.

There are Belfast addresses on a few headstones perhaps of people who were born in Lambeg and moved to live in the growing town. The Glenfield headstone inscriptions record details of eight members of a family which lived at Cromac Park, Belfast ranging from Francis, died 1843, aged 74, to his granddaughter Charlotte Seeds, died 1918, aged 61. Francis, a ship owner and chandler with business premises in High Street, Belfast, had leased land for his home from the Marquis of Donegall on what was later to become the Belfast gasworks site. The Combe family inscription contains details of four members of the family and the information that two of them were Justices of the Peace in Belfast.

There is much more information on the McComb inscriptions. One records very full information about George McComb, of Lambeg ,died 1864, aged 55, his wife Rachel, died 1897, aged 77, and their nine children the last of whom, Marcus, died 1921, aged 68. There is a separate headstone erected to the memory of George McComb by the operatives of Lambeg Bleach Company where he obviously held some senior position.

The inscription on the adjoining burial plot contains similarly full information about the family of Robert McComb, died 1897, aged 58, and his wife, Harriet, died 1894, aged 51, and their four children, the last of whom, Harriett McDowell, died in 1948. The second forename of their daughter Elizabeth Bailie, who died in infancy in 1871, provides a possible clue to the maiden name of her mother. There are some other examples, on the headstones, of this custom of giving the mother’s maiden name as a forename to at least one of her children. Unfortunately there is no evidence to link the families of George and Robert except that of proximity of their burial plots.

One of the most interesting incumbents of Lambeg parish was the Reverend Sumaurez Dubordieu. The inscription on his tomb contains only two pieces of personal genealogical information recording his death in 1812 at the age of 96. However it does provide evidence of the strength of the Huguenot settlement in the area since it records that he was also the minister of the French Protestant Church in Lisburn for much of the time when he was Incumbent of Lambeg. His eldest son, John, who was ordained for the ministry of the Church of Ireland, compiled the Statistical Surveys of Antrim and Down circa 1800 which have proved to be most valuable sources of historical information about those counties at that time.

It is believed that a Mussen family came, with the Wolfendens, from the Netherlands to Lambeg in the 17th century. The only records of that name in the churchyard are on the gravestone inscription on the ‘The Family Burying Ground’ of Samuel Young of Lisburn. There is very full information about Samuel, died 1889, aged 63, his wife, Margaret Mussen, died 1903, aged 72 and at least six of their children. The name Mussen was given as a second forename to at least two of their children. A son, Mercer, died at Paterson, New Jersey where he may have been working in one of the Barbour textile companies and another son, Richard, died in Cuba.

Another inscription with full information about a family of the late 19th and early 20th century is that of James Barnes, died 1927, aged 82, his wife Sarah, died 1923, aged 76 and their seven children, who died between 1876 and 1927. There is however much less useful information on most headstones erected after the 1920s which is possibly a result of the economic depression of the 1930s and the increasing costs after 1945. Two exceptions to that pattern are the inscriptions, in the 1921 extension to the churchyard, on the Grant and Orr burial plots which contain full information about three generations of both families buried there covering roughly a span of a century.

The most arresting monument in the churchyard is the broken column raised to the memory of Essy Pelan who, according to the inscription, ‘died on the anniversary of her birthday, 1st March 1833, aged 21’. There is a sad romantic tale which explains the shape of the monument over her grave. Essy’s lover emigrated to America intending to earn a large sum of money and then return to Lambeg to share his life with her. While he was in America Essy was told that her lover had transferred his affections to someone else. Although this proved subsequently to be untrue, Essy believed the story and on his return her lover discovered that she had died. According to local tradition she was buried in her bridal dress and her bridal wreath was laid on her grave.

The inscription on the Pelan burial plot beside the monument records the names and years of death of those who were most probably her parents, George and Jane, and siblings although there is no kinship information to support that suggestion. There are three other Pelan burial plots in the churchyard, two of which are situated together in the older part of the churchyard with inscriptions recording nineteenth century families. The inscriptions provide years of, and ages, at death and relationships of the families of Francis of Lambeg (Lisnatrunk townland according to his will) and Francis of Belfast. The remaining plot is situated in the 1921 extension of the churchyard but there is no evidence, on the inscription, other than the name to link those buried there to the other families. The name Stoupe, said to be of Huguenot or Dutch extraction, is recorded on the most recent Pelan inscription.

The surname Pelan is most uncommon. One early 20th century source suggests it was Anglo Saxon in origin and possibly a variant spelling of the name Palin. It might possibly have been an alternative spelling of the Irish name Phelan but there were eleven tenants named Pelan in the 1860 Tenement Valuation of Belfast and six in the valuation of Blaris parish. Pelan was also the name of a soap and candle making firm in Lisburn listed the Co. Antrim Directory of 1888.

• Archdall, Mervyn, Monasticon Hibernicum, Dublin, 1786.
• Barber, Henry, British Family Names, London, 1903.
• Best, E.Joyce, The Huguenots of Lisburn, the story of a lost colony, Lisburn, 1997.
• Cassidy, William, Lambeg Churchyard, Inscriptions on Old Tombstones, Belfast, 1937.
• Crawford, W.H., The Huguenots and Ulster 1685-1985, Lisburn, 1985.
• Day, Angelique and McWilliam, Patrick (eds), Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland, Parishes of County Antrim II 1832-8 Vol 8, Belfast, 1991.
• Gallagher, Robert, John Bredin, Belfast, 1960.
• Green, E.R.R., The Lagan Valley 1800-1850, London, 1949.
• Lewis, Samuel The Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, Dublin, 1839. Marshall, H.C., The Parish of Lambeg, Lisburn, 1933.
• O’Laverty, James, An historical account of the Diocese of Down, Vol I, Dublin, 1880.
• Rankin, Kathleen, The Linen Houses of the Lagan Valley, The story of their families, Belfast, 2002.
• Reeves, William, Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Down and Connor, Dublin, 1847.
• Stewart, A.T.Q., The Summer Soldiers, The 1798 Rebellion in Antrim and Down, Belfast, 1995.
• Teeling, Charles, Personal Narrative of the Irish Rebellion of 1798, London, 1828.