Sitting just off the main road between Lisburn, Co Antrim and Hillsborough, Co Down is the townland of Blaris. David Adams knows it well: it's where he was born and raised.
Growing up, my friends and I ranged far and wide across its lush fields and meadows in search of adventure. We played in its streams, swam in its rivers and climbed every tree sturdy enough to bear our weight. We robbed its orchards and fruit gardens and, with the casual cruelty of children, captured every living creature we could lay our hands on. We didn't own a blade of Blaris grass between us, but it was ours for all of that.
We were aware, from an early age, that Blaris had a little bit of history about it too - that real adventures had actually taken place there. We knew that King William and his army camped on our flat green fields at Blaris on their way to the Boyne. Or rather, the troops camped at Blaris while the great man himself stayed two miles up the road at Hillsborough Castle. And it was from there - after Sunday worship and a presentation to the local vicar of a few, still surviving, mementoes of his visit - that he marched off to victory and into history.
And, if that weren't enough, during the second World War Allied aircrews had set out from those same flat fields - our fields - to do battle in the skies over Europe in defence of freedom and democracy. We knew as well that some of the airmen who had left from Blaris didn't come back alive. The row of grey headstones standing solemnly to attention in the little graveyard at Eglantine Parish Church told us that.
As children those headstones spoke to us of barely imagined distant places such as South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Canada and, to our young minds, of the middle-aged men in their late teens and early twenties who lay beneath them.
Oh yes, Blaris has a bit of history about it all right; in fact, it had more history about it than I was aware of then. It seems that some time between King William passing through and the Royal Air Force setting up base the local historians at Blaris must have dozed off. What other explanation could there be for all those years of not knowing - of it not even being hinted at - that four young men had been executed there?
Four men shot to death on the flat fields of Blaris - our fields - and we didn't know a thing about it! The townland I thought I knew so well held secrets that even young boys looking for adventure couldn't have imagined.
From at least the early 1700s Blaris was home to a military barracks. Stationed at Blaris Camp in 1797, among other regiments, was a detachment of the Monaghan Militia. A senior officer, Col Charles Leslie, was deeply disturbed to learn that Presbyterian radicals from Belfast had persuaded a number of his soldiers to swear allegiance to the United Irishmen. Leslie assembled his men and promised to seek a pardon from the Lord Lieutenant for those who admitted their involvement in the conspiracy.
More than 70 soldiers confessed to taking the oath and after a time were duly pardoned. The four men who had sworn the others in, and were therefore deemed to be the ring-leaders, were not so lucky, however. Peter Carron, Daniel Gillan, and brothers William and Owen McKenna were taken to Belfast, tried by court martial and found guilty of "exciting, causing, and joining in, a Mutiny and Sedition in the said regiment", the Monaghan Militia. They were sentenced to be shot at Blaris Camp.
On the day of the execution, the Monaghan Militia and various other units slow marched the 10 miles from Belfast to Blaris escorting two carts carrying the prisoners, their clergy and their coffins. And that's how it came about that at Blaris on May 17th, 1797 at precisely 1 p.m., four young men, kneeling on their coffins, were shot to death by firing squad.
After the execution, the assembled troops were marched slowly past the bodies as they lay on the ground - grim warning indeed, if any further were needed, of the penalty for rebellion.
There are hundreds of little historical snapshots of the 1798 Rebellion lying scattered about the unionist heartland of Northern Ireland. They are for the most part, as at Blaris, either ignored or forgotten.
That is a great pity. The human tendency to pluck history out of its proper context and then pass judgment based on contemporary loyalties has ensured that the story of that turbulent period has been almost entirely wiped from the collective memory bank of Northern Protestants.
The central role that many northern Presbyterians, both laity and clergy, played in the formation and leadership of the United Irishmen - and in the 1798 Rebellion itself - doesn't sit easily with the political allegiances of that community since then.
But history should neither be denied, nor distorted beyond recognition by being viewed through a modern prism. As people of their own time, the men and women of 1798 belong to none of us - and yet, as part of our collective history, they belong to us all.
I still live within a mile of Blaris and still don't own as much as a blade of its grass; but I, and it, are so much the richer for that bit more of its history being revealed.