Church of Ronan Finn, founded before 699
Lann Rónáin Fhinn
The original name of the place is Lann Rónáin Fhinn — the church of Ronan Finn. Ronan Finn is the saint who, in the medieval Irish tale Buile Shuibhne (The Madness of Sweeney), curses the king Sweeney for throwing his psalter into a lake, sending him mad on the battlefield of Magh Rath at Moira in 637. The monastery at Magheralin is recorded from the 7th century. The founder is given as Colman or Mocholmoc, who died in 699. Heavy walls on the north side of the present graveyard are read by some as the remains of his monastic enclosure, and by others as the ruin of the 13th-century parish church. The ambiguity is the truth of the place.
1841 and the medieval ruin
Two churches on one ridge
The current Church of Ireland parish church — Holy and Undivided Trinity — was built on the ridge in 1841 to the design of the Dublin architect William Farrell. Nave first, then a chancel and north transept added in 1891 by Sir Thomas Drew, and the northeast tower in 1898. It is built of local basalt with sandstone facings. The medieval parish church it replaced is still there, ruined, in the old graveyard east of the present building. The earliest stones in the graveyard date from 1709; the parish registers run from 1697. Walk the two churches in one visit and you have the whole story of Magheralin in a hundred yards.
Born at the Old Rectory, 10 February 1851
Father Dolling of Portsmouth
Robert William Radclyffe Dolling was born in the Old Rectory at Magheralin on 10 February 1851, the elder son of the local landlord Robert Holbeach Dolling. 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, published in London in 1896, and still cited. He resigned in 1895 over the Bishop of Winchester's refusal to license a third altar for masses for the dead, and died in 1902. The village of Dollingstown, one kilometre east on the A3, was laid out on the family estate and carries the name.
A polka about linen weavers
The Ducks of Magheralin
'The Ducks of Magheralin' is an Irish polka still played at sessions across Ulster. The ducks are not waterfowl. They are the linen weavers of the village, who lubricated the moving parts of their looms with duck grease and ended up with the nickname. The local football club, Magheralin Village FC, still play in the Mid-Ulster Football League under the name — 'the Ducks' — and run an annual Duck Race. A small village picking up the old joke for its own football club is no small thing.