The situation of this town has a lot of potential to grow and become a city. As there quiet a few small settlements, which are now interlocking with Ballymena such as Broughshane and Galgorm.
Ballymena’s Background History
Ballymena started off a small village on a crossing point on the river Braid, the ford at Harryville Bridge. There were trading routes, which were from the north and south, east and west; these were known as the route ways. Here was the ideal location for buying and selling items. As Ballymena is located in the central of Co. Antrim it ensured that the farmers from the surrounding areas could all have the chance to trade and buy here.
In the 17th Century Ballymena received a charter from the King stating that they could hold a market twice a week for the local farmers. This was a key factor in the development of population in Ballymena. Not much later after that a local mill was established which produced wheat and oats. There was also a large linen factory established. This factory became the leading producer of linen in Ireland, but today the factory has been closed due to modern development. In the later 1800’s another mill was established, this was the Braid Water Spinning Mill. This is when the sphere of influence affected Ballymena. The population was on a constant increase and so was the industry.
New work attracted people to the town and they built terrace houses to support their families. At the same time there was a railway line built from Ballymena to Belfast. At this time in Ballymena’s population growth there was a vast increase of 1000 people.
Gallagher’s factory was established in 1945, and then thirty years down the line Michelin was established. Michelin proved to one of Ballymena’s major factories. Also in 1945 there was another significant increase in the population. This is when Ballymena was recognized as a key settlement in Northern Ireland. In 1985 the population had increases to 32,000 people; that had been an increase of 18,500 people within a forty-year period.
By this time Ballymena was attracting all sorts of people with all sorts of business, but then the Fair Hill market closed down. This showed that the town was moving on from its pre dated trading and was moving forward to the retailing centres.
The town had to accommodate with the increase in population so new services were provided and new roads were built. The most resent road was the M2 to Belfast, which opened early 2002. Ballymena could now adapt to the new range of commuters and retail workers that have settled in the town.
Ballymena in Context
The settlements in Ballymena are mostly comprised of linear and nucleated settlements. The linear settlements are like ribbon developments as the can be long and narrow in shape. They are set out in a long line for communications. Whereas the nucleated settlements are places where the houses are clustered are a gathering point or like a central point. The top centre of Ballymena is very nucleated and it covers a lot of land. There are more dispersed areas of land in the eastern side of Ballymena.
Ballymena provides a wide range of services. These services rang from the taxi office to the postman. There is wide range of transport available for all the needs of the community.
Urban Field
Or better know, as the sphere of influence is the settlement, which draws people into Ballymena from the surrounding settlements. A town like Ballymena can lure people to shop there from up to six kilometres away. Cities like Belfast can draw people in from 60 – 70 miles around to use the services it provides.
Below shows the sphere of influence for Ballymena:
Methodology
On my project in Ballymena I want to find out how far people travel to use the various services. Or how the population has been affected by the growth in industry. To do this I could use a choice of methods, for example:
- Questionnaires
- Mapping
- Correlation
- Yellow Pages
- Census
- Spearman Rank
Questionnaires give me the most up to date results and a direct source of information. Mapping would give me an idea on far the people would travel to get to work or school, or to do there weekly shopping. Although I cannot get this years result of the Census, I could still get the population increase of the last 10 years. From this I could take an average and interpret my results.
I decided to take the question air as my first source of information. I decided to take a direct approach and make my questionnaire as simple and as constructive as I could. I also had to settle on a day and a time where I could get the most reliable results. The busiest days of the week are Friday and Saturday. I decided to do it on Friday, lunchtime, as this would probably be the best time to catch all of the people. Furthermore I had to have some sort of significant asking process. I designed a theory that I would ask every fifth pedestrian that walked by me, despite what gender they were, or what age they were.
I also collected all the information that the other students in my year obtained, as this would give me a different array of results and widen my range of answers.
On the questionnaires there were 10 questions starting with their gender, age, how far away do they live from Ballymena, where is there nearest town? Then I asked them to rate these services in Ballymena: entertainment, sport, shopping traffic, car parking. Their choice’s ranged from very poor to very good.
I think that this questionnaire will ensue reliable statistical information.
This shows the number of males and females asked the questionnaire.
This graph shows the age of the people interviewed.
Other results from the questionnaire:
This shows that the majority of people thought that the traffic was in a very poor state. Shopping was ranked first in the very good category. This shows that the shopping services are at a very high standard.
