Overview
The abbey that gave Whiteabbey its name is gone. Druim La Croix, a house of the Premonstratensian White Canons, stood beside what is now Whiteabbey Hospital from around 1200 – though some accounts hand its founding to the Knights Hospitaller instead. The last of its stonework was cleared in 1926, and a grassy mound with an interpretive sign is all that marks the spot today: a Scheduled Historic Monument with almost nothing left to see. Come for the walking and the shore, not the ruins.
The village sits on the eastern side of Belfast Lough, five miles north of the city, where the Three Mile Water runs down off Carnmoney Mountain to the sea. It was folded into Newtownabbey in 1958 but still reads as its own place, with a short run of cafés and bars near the water.
The Glen and the viaducts
If you have an hour in Whiteabbey, spend it on the Glen. The path picks up the Three Mile Water and follows it inland, close to the bank through shaded stretches, up to the Bleach Green viaducts – tall stone railway arches from the days when a bleach works and a coal-loading pier here fed Belfast’s growth. When the channel into Belfast Harbour was widened the village’s trade fell away, and the arches were simply left standing. They are the best thing to point a camera at in Whiteabbey. The path is level and easy, good for families and runners alike, though the stone surfaces near the viaducts get uneven.
Lanyon’s villa and Ireland’s first sanatorium
In 1850 Richard Davison, Conservative MP for Belfast, commissioned Sir Charles Lanyon – the architect of Belfast City Hall, Queen’s University and the Custom House – to build a country villa on the old abbey lands. Lanyon delivered a two-storey Italianate house with a stuccoed front, arched upper windows and a balustraded balcony, then bought it himself in 1862 and lived there until his death in 1889.
The Belfast Union bought the estate in 1904 for £5,000 and, banking on the clean coastal air, turned the house and its thirty acres into Ireland’s first tuberculosis sanatorium. It opened on 19 September 1907 with room for 311 patients and became Whiteabbey Hospital in 1947. The villa is derelict now, but its outline and stone balustrades are still visible from the footpaths around the grounds.
Two darker corners
Whiteabbey turns up in the record for two bad days. In 1914, during the Home Rule crisis, suffragettes burned Abbeylands, the Victorian home of Sir Hugh McCalmont, causing £20,000 of damage. And in 1952 nineteen-year-old Patricia Curran, daughter of the judge Sir Lancelot Curran, was found stabbed to death in the grounds of her home, Glen House – one of Northern Ireland’s most contested murder cases, and one people still argue over.
The shore
- Whiteabbey Beach – a short sandy stretch looking across the lough to the hills of County Down, fine for a morning walk or a low-tide paddle. The hulks of three old vessels lie along this coast, scheduled monuments in their own right for their national significance.
- Loughshore Park – landscaped lawns with a playground and direct access to the water, busy with dog walkers and picnickers on a fine day.
- Victoria Park Lake – about a mile inland, open around the clock, with a calm lake, walking trails and free parking. Good for birdwatching and a quick leg-stretch.
Getting there
Whiteabbey is five miles north of Belfast on the A2. Whiteabbey station, on the Belfast–Larne line since April 1848, is a five-minute walk from the village centre, and Translink Metro buses serve the Shore Road. Free parking sits at Loughshore Park and near the Glen trailhead; Victoria Park Lake has its own free car park, and there is street parking along the Shore Road. Public toilets are at Loughshore Park.
Nearby
- Antrim Castle – parkland, walled gardens and castle remains, a short drive south-west.
- Belfast Botanic Gardens – a quick train or Metro ride into the city, for the Palm House and the terraced beds.
Whiteabbey station is a five-minute walk from the water and trains from Belfast run through the day, so the Glen and the shore make an easy morning without a car.