First Ahoghill Presbyterian Church

History

Little is recorded of Presbyterians in Ahoghill before October 1654, when a group there was supplied with sermons from Antrim by ministers who had come over from Scotland for periods of six months at a time. Permission to elect elders was sought and this was carried out in 1657, and the congregation's first minister, John Shaw from Scotland, was called and ordained on 30 June 1658.

A stone in the vestibule of the former meeting house recorded that the building was rebuilt in 1762 in the second year of the ministry of James Cumming and in 1857 in the sixteenth year of the ministry of David Adams, who had been ordained in the congregation on 8 June 1841. The meeting house built under Adams opened on Tuesday 24 August 1858. The congregation's own history is unable to say whether this was the third or fourth meeting house it had used.

The 1859 revival followed, and the congregation records a resulting increase in numbers. At one meeting the crowd was such that hundreds could not gain admittance and the gathering was dismissed for fear that the galleries would give way. Two pillars of the gallery sank a couple of inches into the ground and remained visible for the next 150 years.

The congregation marked its 350th anniversary with a mission in November 2004.

The building

The meeting house of 1858 served the congregation until 1 September 2013, when the last service was held in it. A new church, built in the manse field, opened on 7 September 2013, and the former meeting house was converted for use as a medical practice.