BALLINTOY ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL SOCIETY
BALLINTOY'S HIDDEN HISTORY
On Saturday 2 February 2013 the society launched an exciting project called Ballintoy’s Hidden History, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund’s All Our Stories programme. Our project was established to explore and tell the story of three less well-known sites in the Ballintoy area, namely Templastragh Church, Ballintoy Castle and an eighteenth-century school at White Park Bay.
These were neglected aspects of our community’s heritage. Very little had been written about these important sites and there was a real danger that the stories local people had about them would be lost if they were not recorded. We were determined to rescue these hidden gems from obscurity and ensure they were given their rightful place in story of our local community.
From the outset, we realised that we needed to collect and record the stories and memories of local people, and present these alongside the information we would glean from archival sources and by surveying the surviving archaeology in our landscape.With the assistance of professional archaeologists from the University of Ulster at Coleraine and Queen’s University Belfast, we undertook a number of different activities between March and June 2013 to gather information about these sites.
