Gracehill is a small village three kilometres west of Ballymena that represents one of the best-preserved examples of a Moravian planned settlement anywhere in the British Isles. The Moravians — a Protestant denomination originating in Bohemia — established a series of model communities across Europe and North America in the eighteenth century, and Gracehill was their Irish settlement, laid out from 1759. The layout follows the standard Moravian pattern: buildings arranged in an orderly square around a central green, with the church at one end and separate houses for the "choirs" (the community's age and gender groupings) positioned around the square.
The village's most distinctive feature is the graveyard, which sits behind the church divided into four separate sections by gender and marital status. In Moravian tradition, the dead were buried in flat, identical stones regardless of social rank — the arrangement expressing the community's egalitarian theology. The effect, in a well-maintained green setting, is quietly striking: rows of identical small headstones extending back under the trees.
The village square, the church (which can usually be visited), and the surrounding listed buildings are in excellent condition. Gracehill was designated a Conservation Area and the houses are maintained to a standard that makes the planned character of the settlement still legible. It rewards about an hour and is one of those places that most visitors drive through without realising what they're looking at.