YOU MIGHT EVEN HAVE
BEEN IN ENGLAND
The following impression of Lisburn is taken from the book
entitled ‘Ireland Illustrated’ by Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall. They visited the
town around the mid-nineteenth century.
Lisburn is a pretty and flourishing
town on the Antrim side of the River Lagan. It consists principally of one long
street, at the eastern side of which is the picturesque and interesting church,
containing two very remarkable monuments, one to the memory of Lieut. Dobbs,
who was killed in an engagement off the coast with the famous Paul Jones, the
other to that off the great and good Jeremy Taylor, sometime Bishop of Down and
Connor, who died here in the year 1667. There is probably no town in Ireland
where the happy effects of English taste and industry are more conspicuous than
at Lisburn.
From
the Drum Bridge and the banks of the Lagan, on one side, to the shores of Lough
Neagh, on the other, the people are almost exclusively the descendants of
English settlers.
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Arrived
Those in the immediate neighbourhood of the town were chiefly Welsh, but great
numbers arrived from the Northern shires and from the neighbourhood of the
Bristol channel. It is interesting to trace their annals from existing facts;
which may be easily done, even where they not duly recorded. In the village of
Lambeg, situated only a few perches from the Belfast road, the old English games
and pastimes were regularly celebrated on Easter Monday within the last twenty
years. The English language is, perhaps, spoken more purely by the populace in
this district
than
by the same class in any other part of Ireland. The names of places are modern:
as Soldierstown, English-town, and Half‑town, Stoneyford, etc, etc. and
the people of all ranks have, for their stations, high ideas of domestic comfort,
the neatness of the cottages, and the good taste displayed in many of the farms,
are little, if at all, inferior to aught that we find in England; and the
tourist who visits Lough Neagh, passing through Ballinderry, will consider to
be justly designated 'the garden of the North'.
The
original pursuits of the adventures of Plantation, have been transmitted from
father to son; those who settled from the cider counties having variably an
orchard of some extent attached to their dwellings.
The
multitude of pretty little villages scattered over the landscape, each
announcing itself by the tapering spire of a church, would almost
beguile
the traveler into believing that he is passing through a rural district in one
of the midland countries of England.'
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