Ballymoney ( , meaning 'townland of the moor') is a town and civil parish in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It is within the Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council area. The civil parish of Ballymoney is situated in the historic baronies of Dunluce Upper and Kilconway in County Antrim, as well as the barony of North East Liberties of Coleraine in County Londonderry. It had a population of 10,402 people at the 2011 Census. Ballymoney is located on the main road between Coleraine and Ballymena, with good road and rail connections to the main cities in Northern Ireland, Belfast and Derry. The Ballymoney area has the highest life expectancy of any area in Northern Ireland, with the average male life expectancy at birth being 79.9 years and 83.8 years for females in years between 2010 and 2012. Conversely, it was revealed in 2013 that Ballymoney residents are more likely to die from heart disease than anywhere else in Northern Ireland. The town hosts the Ballymoney Drama Festival, the oldest drama festival in Ireland, which was founded in 1933. The town also hosts the Ballymoney Show, which is one of the oldest agricultural shows in Northern Ireland and was founded in 1902. History 16th and 17th century In 1556, an account of an English expedition against the MacDonnells, a sept of the Scottish Clan Donald that lorded over a wide expanse of north and east Antrim known as the Route and Glynns, records "a bishop's house, which was with a castle and a church joined together in one, called Ballymonyn". Destroyed in the Irish Rebellion of 1641, no vestige of the bishop's house or castle remains, but a surviving tower of a church built in 1637 by Sir Randall MacDonnell is today the oldest structure in Ballymoney. In the wake of the devastation caused by the Tudor Conquest of Ulster, Sir Randall had invited settlers from lowland Scotland. Unlike the MacDonnells and the native Irish, the majority of these were not Roman Catholics, but neither did they recognise the episcopacy of the reformed church established under the British Crown. Conscious of their disabilities both as "dissenters" from the established church and as tenants at will, after two/three generations these Scottish Presbyterians began to leave in search of opportunity elsewhere. 18th century In summer 1718, people from Ballymoney and the surrounding area waved goodbye to five ships carrying Presbyterian ministers and their