Northern Area Plan 2016
Ballymoney Borough: Ballymoney

Ballymoney is a typical Northern Ireland market town which acts as an important local service centre providing a wide range of retail, health, educational, community and social services for the town’s population and its significant rural hinterland. Ballymoney town is the third largest settlement within the Plan area and is the only town within Ballymoney Borough. With numerous housing developments over the past decade, there has been an increase of 11 % in the population of the town to 9, 009 by 2001.

Within the Regional Development Strategy’s Spatial Framework for Rural Northern Ireland, Ballymoney is recognised as a local hub and is strategically located along the Northern Corridor, which links Belfast to Londonderry. Due to its location, the town has excellent road links to all parts of the region, particularly the north, the north west, and the gateways of Belfast, Larne and the International Airport. In comparison to other towns of a similar size in Northern Ireland, Ballymoney is well served by both regional rail and bus services. Ballymoney is 75 kilometres from Belfast, 55 kilometres from Londonderry and 58 kilometres from Belfast International Airport.

In the 15 years from mid 1988 to mid 2004, a total of 1,382 new dwellings were completed in Ballymoney. There has been major residential expansion throughout the town but in particular to the north on the inner side of the by-pass between the Knock and Kirk Roads, and to the south between the Bann and Bravallen Roads.

Little is known about the origins of Ballymoney, except that the original settlement developed around two Celtic forts. In 1603 the first planters, lowland Scots, arrived in the Ballymoney area, developing the town to such an extent that it had an adult population of 149 persons by 1659. The town, by the 1830s, had acquired all the public buildings that would then have been expected in a market town of this size. This included five churches, a market house, the bridewell (jail), schoolhouse, grain stores, an assembly room and two hotels. The railway from Belfast reached the town in 1855 and with the opening of the narrow gauge line to Ballycastle in 1880, Ballymoney achieved the status of a railway junction for the next 70 years.

It was not until the Post-War period with large-scale erection of public authority housing creating new suburbs south of the railway and between Market Street and Kirk Road, that there was a significant expansion of the town. This coincided in the 1950s and 1960s with the attraction of substantial manufacturing employment, which greatly extended Ballymoney's historic market town function.

While Ballymoney has maintained a steady manufacturing base over the years, its retail function has been subject to increased competition from the neighbouring towns of Coleraine and Ballymena. The town has, however, experienced a recent upsurge in the housing market which, coupled with a number of successful town centre regeneration initiatives and its strategic location, have made Ballymoney an increasingly attractive and popular place to live.

In 1994 a Conservation Area was designated in the central part of Ballymoney, the boundary of which is shown on the Ballymoney Town Centre Map. Detailed guidance on development within the Conservation Area is provided in the Ballymoney Conservation Area Design Guide booklet. On the basis of this supplementary planning guidance considerable progress has been made in the past decade in enhancing the Conservation Area, particularly the commercial core, with sympathetic repairs and inappropriate superficial alterations of previous years replaced by more appropriate building detail.