Seven villages, one stroke of a pen, 1958
A town built by Act of Parliament
Most Irish towns grew out of a crossroads, a monastery or a port over centuries. Newtownabbey was created in a single act on 1 April 1958, when the Newtownabbey Urban District Act (Northern Ireland) 1957 merged the villages of Whiteabbey, Whitehouse, Whitewell, Jordanstown, Glengormley, Carnmoney and Monkstown into a new council area. The name was chosen for the medieval White Abbey at Whiteabbey, the only sliver of pre-19th-century history the area had in common. By the 1970s the population had passed 50,000 and the seven villages had been swallowed by housing estates, dual carriageways and the Abbey Centre shopping mall. The result is a town with no single centre — drive from Glengormley to Whiteabbey and you cross three or four old village edges without ever being told.
A flax mill that became a town hall
Mossley Mill
The mill at Mossley dates to the early 1800s — first a bleach works, then a flax-spinning factory under the Campbell and Barbour families. At its peak it was one of the larger linen mills in south Antrim, supplying yarn to the Belfast trade. It closed in 1995. The borough council bought it in 1996, restored the stone shells of the old buildings and reopened the site in 2000 as the civic centre — council offices in the main mill, the Museum at The Mill in the spinning block, and Theatre at The Mill, a 400-seat venue, in the converted weaving room. It is the rarer case of a Victorian industrial building still being used rather than mothballed.
The university that left
Jordanstown
From the early 1970s until 2022, Jordanstown was a campus town. The University of Ulster's largest site stood on the Shore Road, with around 13,000 students, the engineering and built-environment faculties, and the Sports Institute of Northern Ireland. Teaching moved out in stages and finished in September 2022, when the rebuilt Belfast campus on York Street opened. Most of the Jordanstown buildings are now closed; only the Sports Village — the running track, the swimming pool, the strength facility used by NI's Olympic athletes — is still in regular use. The town is still adjusting to losing the daily flow of 13,000 students.