Overview
The abbey that gave Whiteabbey its name is gone. Druim La Croix, a house of the Premonstratensian White Canons, stood on the abbey lands from around 1200, though some accounts hand its founding to the Knights Hospitaller instead. The last of its stonework was cleared in 1926, and it is 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 northern side of Belfast Lough, about five miles from 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.
The Glen and the viaducts
If you have an hour in Whiteabbey, spend it on the Glen. Use the signed public paths in Whiteabbey Glen for a quieter walk inland along the Three Mile Water. 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, are part of the railway landscape. When the channel into Belfast Harbour was widened the village’s trade fell away, and the arches were simply left standing. Keep to public paths and away from the tracks and structures.
Lanyon’s villa and the Whiteabbey 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 grounds into a tuberculosis sanatorium. It opened on 19 September 1907 and became Whiteabbey Hospital in 1947. The hospital grounds are not a visitor attraction, so treat this as a piece of local history to read about rather than a site to go looking for.
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, a case that is still discussed in Northern Ireland.
The shore
Whiteabbey sits on the northern side of Belfast Lough, and nearby Jordanstown Loughshore Park has open space by the water. Follow the council’s Newtownabbey Way map if you want a longer walk along the shore towards Hazelbank. The views look across the lough to the hills of County Down, and a morning walk by the water is the easy way to pair the shore with the Glen. Check the council’s pages for current facilities at the parks before you go.
Getting there
Whiteabbey station is on Station Road, on the Belfast–Larne line, which opened in April 1848. Translink lists step-free access and a ticket machine. Check the Translink journey planner for trains stopping there or for buses serving the village. Check signs and local notices for parking, as the council’s pages are the place to confirm current arrangements at the parks.
Nearby
- Antrim Castle – parkland, walled gardens and castle remains, a short drive south-west.
- Belfast Botanic Gardens – a quick train or bus ride into the city, for the Palm House and the terraced beds.
Trains from Belfast make the Glen and the shore an easy morning without a car; check the current timetable before you set off.