History
| Historical population | ||
|---|---|---|
| Year | Pop. | ±% |
| 1821 | 2,943 | — |
| 1831 | 2,741 | −6.9% |
| 1841 | 3,116 | +13.7% |
| 1851 | 2,849 | −8.6% |
| 1861 | 2,531 | −11.2% |
| 1871 | 2,560 | +1.1% |
| 1881 | 3,006 | +17.4% |
| 1891 | 3,834 | +27.5% |
| 1901 | 5,903 | +54.0% |
| 1911 | 7,776 | +31.7% |
| 1926 | 13,311 | +71.2% |
| 1937 | 15,769 | +18.5% |
| 1951 | 20,610 | +30.7% |
| 1961 | 23,862 | +15.8% |
| 1966 | 26,921 | +12.8% |
| 1971 | 35,260 | +31.0% |
| 1981 | 46,585 | +32.1% |
| 1991 | 52,437 | +12.6% |
| 2001 | 58,388 | +11.3% |
Bangor has a long and varied history, from the Bronze Age people whose swords were discovered in 1949 or the Viking burial found on Ballyholme beach, to the Victorian pleasure seekers who travelled on the new railway from Belfast to take in the sea air. The town has been the site of a monastery renowned throughout Europe for its learning and scholarship, the victim of violent Viking raids in the 8th and 9th centuries, and the new home of Scottish and English planters during the Plantation of Ulster. The town has prospered as an important port, a centre of cotton production, and a Victorian and Edwardian holiday resort. Today it is a large retail centre and a commuter town for Belfast, though the remnants of the town's varied past still shape its modern form.
Read more about this topic: Bangor, County Down
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“... in a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps the underground aquifers flowing; it is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
“The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)