At 200 sq. miles, the parish of Ballyclare and Ballygowan is the largest in the North of Ireland; it stretches from the railway line near Corrs Corner to four miles from Lame, from Mossley to the Glenwhirrey Hills and from Templepatrick to the Star Bog. Within this area there are ruins of a number of old churches some said to be associated with the great abbeys at Muckamore & Kells.

By the Seventeenth Century, the Six-Mile Valley was largely settled by Scots Presbyterians and there were few, if any, Catholics living in the district of Ballyclare.

Before catholic emancipation, there were two Mass Rocks in use within the parish, one near the source of the Kells Water (off the main Ballymena/Larne Rd near the Killylane Reservoir); the other a few hundred yards from the present church at Ballygowan (pictured above).

By 1787 there was one huge parish covering much of East Antrim (the present parishes of Larne, Carrickfergus & Ballyclare) and the newly appointed parish priest Friar McCary constructed the first post reformation catholic churches in the district, the present church at Ballygowan and a temporary church at Carrickfergus.

In 1832 Bishop Crolly built churches in Greencastle and Ballyclare, even though there were only 6 catholic households plus a few servants living in Ballyclare. The first Ordnance Survey carried out shortly after reported that the building remained unfinished for some years as the congregation of about 90 was struggling to find the funds to finish the church. The total cost of the church was said to be £250 but to put this in perspective, it should be noted that the weekly collection for the poor was 2/6 which shows how hard it would have been for the parish to raise that amount of money.

The churches in Ballyciare & Greencastle were served by priests from St Patricks in Belfast - a priest would say mass at 9.00am in Greencastle and at 12.30 in Ballyclare. They must have been a hardy lot in those days and one former curate recalled that he often didn't get his breakfast until 3.00pm.

This 1832 church, the present parochial hail, which remained in splendid isolation outside the village until the Tir na nÓg National School was built in 1886, served the parish until the construction of the present church in 1911. In 1852 Ballygowan and Larne formed a new parish and in 1854 Ballyclare was incorporated into the parish of Greenisland and Whitehouse.

The modern parish of Ballyclare & Ballygowan was established in 1869 when the Larne, Ballymena and Whitehouse transferred the Ballygowan, Glenwhirrey and Ballyclare districts respectively to form the new parish. When the first parish priest, Fr John Kavanagh, was appointed on 4 July 1869 there were 675 parishioners, mostly living in the Ballygowan area; he remained until 1873 when Fr Patrick Farrelly succeeded him.

The next P.P., appointed in 1875, was Fr James O'Neill who died in 1900. (His remains were later transferred from the vault at the rear of the old Church to a priests vault under the former baptistery of the Sacred Heart Church.)

His replacement, Fr James O'Boyle, was to become the driving force behind the construction of the present Sacred Heart Church.

By the turn of the century, with the coming of the railways and industry, Ballyclare had grown in population to just over 2000; the parish had a congregation of 500 but the balance had changed with the majority now in the Ballyclare area - with only 120 souls attending Ballygowan. The church in Ballyclare had capacity of 170 so Fr O'Boyle set about raising funds for a larger church. He raised subscriptions in the neighbouring parishes and he even travelled as far as Glasgow where he raised £28.

A local Protestant solicitor, Edward Hill, whose father had earlier donated the site for the parochial house, donated the adjacent site for construction of the church.

The next P.P., Fr. James Marmion was appointed in 1907 and he saw the church completed and dedicated by Bishop Tohill on 11 June 1911. When all the accounts were settled, the cost of the building was to modern minds a remarkable £6000.

The great and the good of the diocese attended the opening with a special train from Belfast being arranged; the music was provided by the choir from St. Paul's Belfast and the collection came to just over £362.

The subject of the Bishop's sermon was "devotion to the Sacred Heart" and he remarked how appropriate it was to dedicate the church to the Sacred Heart in the month of June.

When the church first opened there was no Pulpit, Font or Stations of the Cross but Fr Marmion stated that he had an offer of Stations, which he would gratefully accept. The vestments and sacristy appointments from the old church were in such a poor state that they needed to be replaced. The church, which then stood in open countryside, had a capacity of 400 and was, constructed in Romanesque style from Ballycarry Quarries blue stone. The side windows were given by an anonymous donor, and the main and side altars were donated by Miss McMullan who was well known for her charitable works in the diocese.

Interestingly, the Irish News noted that the architects provided ample attention to the ventilation "with large ducts to circulate air under the floor and in the roof spaces" (which explains to long suffering congregations why the church was always draughty).

The church remained unheated until the 1940's when electric heaters were installed during the Second World War at a time when the church was being used by American and Belgian soldiers who were billeted in Ballyclare. These heaters had no thermostats and ran down the side walls and under the seats; young parishioners learnt quickly not to make contact or risk a nasty burn.

In the days before microphones and speaker systems the Pulpit stood part way down the church beside the 12th Station to allow the preacher to make himself more accessible to the congregation.

This would have been one of a number of things unfamiliar to a modern congregation; the mass was said in Latin with the Altar Boys responding on behalf of the congregation. As communicants had to fast from the midnight before; the Sunday Masses alternated between 9.30 a.m. and 11.00 a.m. - one week the early mass, with communion, was in Ballyclare, the next week it would be in Ballygowan.

Since then the church has been under the care of a succession of parish priests who are listed here. One of them, Fr Joseph Ivory, who served the parish for 18 years, is buried in the priest's vault.

It would seem appropriate to recall Bishop Tohill's original sermon "The very name of your (new) church - the Church of the Sacred Heart - proclaims to the present generation your love for the heart of your Redeemer, and will repeat it for future generations in this parish".

by Ted McCudden,
September 2002