Quaker meeting houses connected to Antrim
Quakerism had its origins in the northwest of England in the mid seventeenth century. William Edmunson established a meeting in Lurgan as early as 1654. Quaker meeting houses in the Bann Valley area that were formed in the mid to late seventeenth century and included Toberhead, Dunglady and Coleraine in county Derry and in Co Antrim - Ballynacree (on the Vow road near Ballymoney), Lower Grange near Portglenone and Antrim town. Ideally weekly meetings were to be held in each of these regional locations (often in a local home) and then representatives were to be sent to the monthly meeting held in Antrim, which was the regional hub for Quakerism in the area. All of the local Quaker meetings struggled to survive in the region because Presbyterianism had become strongly embedded in the Bann valley from the Ulster Plantation. Most of these regional outposts struggled on throughout the eighteenth century but diminishing numbers caused by an outflow of emigrants and local decay saw