Whose name the village carries
The Dolling family
Rev. Boughey William Dolling came to Ulster with Bishop Percy of Dromore in the late 1700s and served as rector of Magheralin parish. His descendants became landlords of the Magheralin and Dollingstown estates. Robert Holbeach Dolling — at one point High Sheriff of Londonderry — was the landlord whose son built the village. When Robert junior came of age in February 1872 he visited the family estates and there were, in the language of the time, "enthusiastic proceedings on the part of the tenantry". The village is the family's name on the map.
The slum priest who came out of Magheralin
Father Dolling of Portsmouth
Robert William Radclyffe Dolling (1851–1902) was born at Magheralin in February 1851, the elder son of the landlord. He went up to Trinity College Cambridge, took orders, and accepted the charge of St Agatha's, Landport — Winchester College's mission in the worst of dockside Portsmouth. His ten years there became the book Ten Years in a Portsmouth Slum (London, 1896). He resigned in 1895 over the new Bishop of Winchester's refusal to license a third altar for masses for the dead. Dolling died in 1902, and the village his family built outside Lurgan kept the name.
Lann Rónáin Fhinn
Magheralin and the monastery
Dollingstown belongs to the ancient parish of Magheralin, from the Irish Machaire Lainne — "plain of the church". The original name was Lann Rónáin Fhinn, the church of Ronan Finn, a saint from the medieval Irish tale Buile Shuibhne, The Madness of Sweeney. A monastery is recorded here from the 7th century with a succession of abbots through the 700s. The present Holy and Undivided Trinity church at Magheralin stands on the old monastic site, with the ruined medieval walls still visible on the north side of the churchyard.
Founded 1979 at the Railway Tavern in Moira
Dollingstown FC
Dollingstown Football Club was founded in 1979 by a group of locals who had been meeting up for a kickaround. The first home ground was at the Railway Tavern in Moira, and the club joined the Mid-Ulster League in Division 5. Promotions came steadily; the first trophy was the John Magee Cup in 1992–93. By 2008–09 the club was in Intermediate A and went on to win five Intermediate A titles in a decade. In 2013–14 they beat Brantwood 6–4 on aggregate in the play-off and went up to the NIFL Championship. For a village of two thousand on the Lurgan road, that is a good record.