This study is an inquiry into Ulster Protestant culture from the 1850s to the 1870s. It explores expressions of Ulster Protestant identities by analysing features of the local economy and of social and power structures in the mid-Antrim district, centred on the town of Ballymena. This dissertation shows that a density of the district's social, cultural and commercial institutions was situated in Ballymena. The rural regions of the mid-Antrim were areas of high Presbyterian demographic concentration and were central to many important social, economic and cultural developments in the district, including religious revival, reorganisation of the local linen trade and agrarian agitation. The centrality of the rural dimension in local institutions, ideologies and identities is demonstrated through an analysis of the links between Ballymena and rural mid-Antrim. In seeking to understand social and cultural developments in post-Famine Ulster, this study demonstrates the importance of exploring the networks in which dialogues between town and townland were situated.