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The city of Lisburn, which was originally called Lisnagarvy, is situated in Northern Ireland on the River Lagan, which is approximately 13 km (8 miles) southwest of Belfast. It is more than just a historic city; it is also a market town and a cathedral city.

The English, Welsh, and Scots settled the site in the 1620s as part of the Plantation of Ulster Scheme, which was the organized colonization of Ulster, a province of Ireland.

Lisnagarvy – or Lisburn -- was one of the towns that were attacked during the Irish Rebellion of 1641, an uprising in Ireland led by the Catholics, whose demands included an end to anti-Catholic discrimination, return of confiscated Catholic lands, and Irish self-governance. Unable to capture the town, the rebels burned it. It was then that the name of Lisnagarvey began to change to the name of Lisburn.

The Huguenots, who were a religious group of French Protestants who believed in the Calvinist, or Reformed tradition, were concentrated in the southern and western portions of France.

The Huguenot rebellions were a series of rebellions during the 1620s, where the Huguenots, led by Henri de Rohan, revolted against the authority of the United Kingdom and its throne.

In 1685, King Louis XIV began the persecution of the Huguenots, with the issuance of the Edict of Fontainebleau. The Edict ended the legal recognition of Protestantism in France. It also ordered the destruction of all Huguenot churches and the closing of those churches’ schools. In the end, the Edict forced the Huguenots to convert to Catholicism or become refugees and flee France.

French Huguenot refugees and linen workers came to settle in Lisburn in 1698. Soon, Dutch looms arrived, and the entire Ulster linen industry was essentially stood on its head as the town became one of the United Kingdom’s major linen manufacturing centres.

A second great fire burned the city in 1707. This time, the fire was even greater than that of 1641, and the great Lisburn Castle burned along with the other buildings.

In 1914, the chancel of the Lisburn Cathedral, which included the altar, choir, and sanctuary, was devastated by a bomb as part of the women’s suffrage movement.

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