Ballymena Academy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ballymena Academy (founded 1828) is a grammar school located in the County Antrim market town of Ballymena. It was founded in the early nineteenth century as a small provincial school for children in the town and surrounding agricultural hinterland. The school has progressed into one of the foremost secondary educational establishments in the UK.
The school currently has approximately 1200 pupils and 93 members of teaching staff. The school has 88 acres of mature grounds situated on the Galgorm Road, just west of the town centre.
The school motto is 'Tenax Propositi' meaning 'Steadfast in Purpose'.
Its current headmaster is Mr Ronnie Hassard who joined the school in 2004 after the retirement of Mr Peter Martin.
[edit] Coat of arms
The red hands are borrowed from the Adair family arms, who gave the one acre of ground on which the original school was built, itself represented by the blue rectangle below. The ant represents hard work. The badger on the crest, accompanied by a lamp representing learning, is a pun on 'Brocklamont', site of the new school buildings, with 'brock' being an archaic word for badger.
[edit] Notable alumni
- John Alderdice, Liberal Democrat peer, first Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly and now a member of the Independent Monitoring Commission
- Sir Roger Casement, British diplomat and campaigner for the Congolese natives turned Irish revolutionary, hanged in 1916 under the Treason Act
- Steven Davis, Aston Villa and Northern Ireland footballer
- Edgar Graham, Northern Irish Unionist political figure, assassinated by the IRA in 1983 at the age of 29
- David Humphreys, Irish rugby union star
- Peter Johnston Controller of BBC Northern Ireland (November 2006-present)
- Alan Montgomery Jones, prominent Ulster architect and Vice President of the Royal Society of Ulster Architects, 2002-06
- Sir George Quigley, Permanent Secretary of four departments the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) : Manpower Services (1974-76), Commerce (1976-79), Finance (1979-82) and, Finance and Personnel (1982-89); subsequently Chairman of the Ulster Bank, Bombardier Aerospace Shorts, and the Northern Ireland Economic Council (1994-98)
[edit] External links
 |
This Northern Ireland school-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
