Mid Antrim Museum & Heritage Service

Mid-Antrim History

The history of Mid-Antrim has been created against a background of national and international events, which influenced the lives of individuals and communities. This interweaving of near and far, past and present, created the patterns of identity found in the area today. The Braid Museum in Ballymena has permanent exhibition galleries covering area history from the Stone Age, through to early Christian and Medieval periods and up to the modern era of the Home Rule Crisis of 1912-14, the First World period and comtemporary imapct of the Troubles. The Museum regularly hosts touring exhibitions of a wide variety of cultural, historical and visual arts based topics. Please refer to the Braid internet site for up-to-date details.

The Braid Museum has a wide-ranging and varied community outreach programme, to work with Schools, Community Groups, individuals, as well as partner heritage organisations and other Museums, to develop touring exhibitions, to imporve the quality of life for the people of Mid Antrim, to inform, raise awareness of heritage and to develop community education for a wide audience. Centenary exhibitions on the Home Rule Crisis 1914 and of First World War events and their local impact on Mid Antrim have recently been created. Other recent projects have included working with residents of local Nursing Homes suffering with Dementia. The Museum is presently delivering a Heritage Lottery funded project on industrial heritage, to develop an interpretative hub in Carnlough, to support guided and self-guided tourism in teh Glens of Antrim. Volunteers have made a valuable contribution to projects such as "On the Brink 1914-16" to deliver guided tours to sites of rememebrance and to research life-histories of people from Mid Antrim, caught up in the conflict.