Local victims of Belfast Blitz remembered on 85th anniversary
Friday 24 April 2026
Mid and East Antrim Borough Council is commemorating locals who lost their lives 85 years ago in the Belfast Blitz through a civic programme of events.
This May, there will be an opportunity for everyone across the Borough to take time and remember those who lost their lives in 1941.
Mayor of Mid and East Antrim, Councillor Jackson Minford said: “It is an honour to commemorate those who lost their lives on our shores during World War II. The four German air raids took the lives of 987 people of all ages. As a council, we want to support the families of those victims who were born within the Borough and the public to remember their loved ones.”
On Tuesday 5 May in Ballycarry, there will be an official public commemoration at the village war memorial at 11.00am. Wreaths will be laid by the Mayor and Lord Lieutenant to remember all those who lost their lives in the Blitz. Pupils from Ballycarry Primary School will lay poppy crosses at the graves in Templecorran Cemetery of the seven members of the Hutchinson family and 80 year-old John McCready.
John McCready was born at Glynn village in the 1860s and was a butter and egg provision merchant in Belfast in 1901. He died in his home at Upper Meadow Street on April 16, 1941.
Sarah Kennedy was born in Ballycarry on 30 August 1894 and married William Hutchinson in September 1922 at Sinclair Seamen’s Presbyterian Church in Belfast. William was a painter and decorator from his home at York Street in Belfast. William and Sarah died alongside their five children during the Belfast Blitz – Willliam aged 39, Sarah aged 46, their eldest daughter Elizabeth Kennedy Hutchinson (Lily) aged 17 and her younger siblings Sadie, Rita, Martin and May.
Everyone is also welcome at a commemorative event in Ballycarry Community Centre at 7.30pm on Tuesday 5 May. Mark Wigton from the Northern Ireland War Memorial will deliver a talk on the Blitz and there will be storytelling and song from the wartime era from Sharon Dickson and Geoff Hatt.
On Wednesday 6 May at 7.30pm, the commemoration moves to Ballymena, where the Services Club will be the venue for an evening featuring Sharon Dickson and Geoff Hatt, and a talk on Ballymena victims of the Blitz by Nigel Henderson of History Hub Ulster.
We have also partnered with the Northern Ireland War Memorial to offer talks on the Blitz to a number of schools across the Borough. Historian Adrian Hack has already delivered talks to several schools in Carrickfergus on the town in the Second World War as part of this Belfast Blitz civic programme.