Larne - History

History

The coastal area around Larne has been inhabited for millennia, and it thought to have been one of the earliest inhabited areas of Ireland, with these early human populations believed to have arrived from Scotland via the North Channel. The early coastal dwellers are thought to have had a sophisticated culture which involved trading between the shores of the North Channel and between other settlements on the coasts of Scotland. Archaeological digs in the area have found flintwork and other artefacts which have been assigned dates from 6000 BC onwards. The term Larnian has even been coined by archaeologists to describe such flintworks and similar artefacts of the Mesolithic era (and one time to describe Mesolithic culture in Ireland as a whole).

The oldest known recorded Irish name for Larne Lough was Loch Ollarbha or Inbhear nOllarbha (Ollarbha Rivermouth), from Ollarbha the ancient name of the Larne Water. It is also recorded that the Roman Emperor Serverus described how, in 204AD, a Roman slave galley bound for Scotland was blown off course and took shelter in a place that they called Portus Saxa (the Port of the Standing Stones) - this is thought to have been Larne Lough. The ancient Greeks also had knowledge of the Antrim Coast and Ptolemy, the astronomer and geographer of the 2nd century AD, referred to Islandmagee on one of his maps.

In mediaeval times Lathar, daughter/son of Hugony the Great (according to legend, High King of Ireland and reputed ruler of much of the British Isles), was reputedly given a small territory by her/his father which stretched along the Antrim coast roughly from Glenarm to the Inver River - this territory was thus called Latharna (the lands of Lathar). The area where the modern town sits was known in Irish as Inbhear an Latharna (meaning the "river mouth of Latharna") and in English as Inver Larne or simply Inver. (The territorial name of "Latharna" was only applied exclusively to the location of the present town in recent centuries.)

The area at one point came under threat from Viking raids. Viking burial sites have been found in Larne, and artefacts such as Viking-type swords found in Larne have been dated to the tenth century AD. It is generally thought that the Vikings established a base at Larne for a time, and that the Norse name for Larne Lough was Ulfreksfjord (named after one of their Norse kings). According to Snorri, the Norse historian, Connor, King of Ireland, defeated the raiding Orkney Vikings at Ulfreksfjord in 1018. This suggests that some of Anglo-Norman names for the Larne area, such as Wulfrickford had a Norse origin.

In later Anglo-Norman records the name for Larne Lough was spelt as Wulvricheford, Wulfrickford, Wokingisfyrth, Wolderfirth, Wolverflete, Ulderfleet, Ulderfleete and Wulfricchford in various records, eventually settling down to Olderfleet. P.W. Joyce in his Irish Names of Places states that it is probable that in the first element of "Olderfleet" is the ancient Irish name of the Larne water, Ollorbha, with the second element being a corruption of the word "fiord" (a long narrow arm of the sea, running up between high banks or cliffs, as on the coast of Norway)

In the 13th Century the Scots-Irish Bissett family built Olderfleet Castle at Curran Point. In 1315 Edward the Bruce of Scotland (brother of Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland) landed at Larne with his 6000 strong army en route to conquer Ireland, where Olderfleet Castle was of strategic importance. Edward saw Ireland as another front in the ongoing war against Norman England.

In 1569 Queen Elizabeth I, Queen of England and Ireland, appointed Sir Moyses Hill as the governor of Olderfleet Castle. It was seen as strategically important for any Tudor conquest of Ulster. Following the 17th century Union of the Crowns of Scotland, England and Ireland under James VI & I many more settlers would have arrived to Ulster via Larne during the Plantation of Ulster. The area around County Antrim itself, however, was not part of the official 17th century Plantation; instead many Scottish settlers arrived in the area through private settlement in the 17th century (as they had also been doing for centuries before).

During the 18th century many Irish emigrated to America from the port of Larne. A monument in the Curran Park commemorates the Friends Goodwill, the first emigrant ship to sail from Larne in May 1717, heading for Boston, New England in the modern United States. Boston's long standing Irish roots can be traced to Larne. As with western and southern Ireland and unlike some areas of north–east (Antrim, Down, Louth and North Dublin) and eastern Ireland (South Dublin, Wicklow) this was a town stricken by the Irish Famine of the mid 19th century.

In 1914, Loyalists opposed to the Home Rule Act 1914 prepared for armed resistance. In an episode known as the Larne Gun Running German weapons and ammunition were transported into the port of Larne in the dead of night and distributed throughout Ulster. This event marked a major step in cementing the right to Ulster Unionist self-determination, with the recognition of such a right ultimately leading to the creation of Northern Ireland.