“You must see the Giant’s Causeway”

I guess that every house in Northern Ireland and every visitor to NI has a photo of them at the causeway. There’s ours, about 1980: me mam & dad; and two brothers. They both had those Peter Storm nylon-y sweat-y anorak things, in their uni days. The BBC are filming at Queen’s; my brother appears in the background of the TV program, wearing his anorak; later my Dad gives him a fiver to go and buy a new coat.

Left: Me man & dad, about 1980 The brother on the left got the fiver to replace his Peter Storm jacket.
Top, right: The delightful, astonishing causeway stones
Bottom right: view to the Skerries off Portrush (All photos: courtesy Me)

In the 1880s Portrush is pretty lowly. Great for walking and bathing I’m sure, but maybe not many other attractions. As the trains develop, the Giant’s Causeway gets a star billing for excursions to the coast. “Portrush to a large degree owes its fame from the nearness to the Causeway, and most visitors get there with the thrill of being on the oldest hydro- electric railway in the world.” In its first 7 months the tram carried 47,000 people, nearly all locals, benefitting from the train and tram prices.

I imagine the causeway in those 1800s years was pretty inaccessible, an end-of-the-world sort of place – a dirt road for the main road, and a dirtier dirt track down to the causeway, to a few fishing shacks.

The 1800’s, early 1900’s
Left/ Causeway engraving, French, 1827 (Ref. David Rumsey Historical Map Collection),
Right/ Rosemary Purdy, my old primary school buddy, on the pony and trap with her grandad, Alec, taking people to see the causeway as forerunner to Dalriada Kingdom tours

W M Thackeray, in his Irish Sketch Book, 1842, writes about the Causeway:

“It looks like the beginning of the world, somehow: the sea looks older than in other places, the hills and rocks strange, and formed differently from other rocks and hills—as those vast dubious monsters were formed who possessed the earth before man…When the world was moulded and fashioned out of formless chaos, this must have been the bit over—a remnant of chaos!”

Going back further, Hervey, the Earl Bishop, in the late 1700s, was a keen vulcan, and built his Downhill estate so that he could go and study the rocks on the coast more easily. (His work earned him a jolly good Fellow of the Royal Society.) His italian buddy did sketches and Hervey circulated the engravings to his learned European contacts, as the first marketing of the causeway – he put the Giant’s Causeway on the map.

There is so much written about the Causeway that I can’t gush any more:

“The wide world has heard of the Giant’s Causeway…”
“Ireland might well have been built for nothing else but to present the Giant’s Causeway. It lifts us to the sublimities. It will be the last pillar of earth to crumble.”
“You must see the Giant’s Causeway …there is nothing in the world like it.”
“To go to Portrush without seeing the Causeway is like going to Egypt without seeing the Sphinx!”

The 1930’s.
Left/ Advert, Kane’s hotel at the Causeway (Northern Whig & Post, June 1938)
Centre/ NI Tourist guide, 1930s, “Ulster for your holidays“
Right/ Afternoon trains from Belfast to Portrush and tram on through to the Causeway – but this is 1938, and next to the Causeway advert is news of aerial bombardment and blitzkreig in the spanish civil war, and of the league of nations trying to hold it together but it is prep for war

For something unusual, I love the orange 1930s tourist leaflet, ‘Ulster for your holidays’, with information about the good old days when it could say,

“The Tourist Association would like to draw the attention of the traveller, moreover, to the fact that Northern Ireland or Ulster, as it is generally known, is part of Great Britain, and consequently there are no restrictions regarding Customs while travelling in the North of Ireland.
….Intending visitors are advised that they can book from almost every large station in England, Scotland and Wales to every large town in the North of Ireland.“

About the Causeway, it enthuses:

“A visit to the magnificent caves of Runkerry and Portcoon, by boat, ought not to be omitted from the programme: but visitors should not take this trip without experienced boatmen.
“The Authorised Charges Payable to Guides.
Short: Causeway, organ, amphitheatre: 3/-
Long Course: above and land cave: 4/-
“Visitors are particularly requested not to pay fees to any but authorised Guides wearing badges, and to report to Mr. C.R.C. Leech, Secretary, any cases of incivility or attempts to overcharge.
“Visitors to make their own terms for hire of boats.”

But Rosemary Purdy, her in the pony and trap photo above, tells me that the boat tours faded out in the 60s.

The 1960’s
Left/ The number of visitors to the causeway fell from 1890s heyday of 100,000, to 33,000, and the Causeway tram stopped in 1949. There is great affection and living memories of the little shops at the Giant’s Causeway, but the causeway is so unique, the facilities for visitors a bit lowly, and ready for a revamp
Centre/ “NI Premier Captain Terence O’Neill formally opened the Giant’s Causeway and a ten mile cliff path as a national park. Lord Antrim was also in attendance.” RTÉ 24 June 1963
Right/ 1969 – the last visit by our English & Scottish relatives before the Troubles; we don’t see them for the next 25 years

Our Scotland and England relatives come to visit every year and we often do the causeway coast trip. Our house is full of relatives – Linlithgow, Liverpool, Wolverhampton, London – as a kid I’ve to sleep on the sofa downstairs.

In the morning I go to my own bedroom to get a change of clothes. I walk in on my brother & wife in an intimate position.
Their next visit, they ask Dad if there is a key for the bedroom door lock.

The 1980’s
Left photos: the Causeway visitor centre, 1986, under council management
Top right: Handsome! Me, more hair, bit funny glasses, 1982 (photo: Lesley wants the credit that she took it, but she did cut off my feet)
Bottom right: Magnus unveiling of UNESCO status at the visitor centre, 1986

But as the Troubles begin, the mainland visitors hesitate about visiting N.Ireland, only returning after the peace process in the 90’s.

The 2000’s
Left/ just as things were doing great in the peace dividend, year 2000 and the council’s Causeway visitor centre burns down. The Noughties decade is spent negotiating who will take it forward
Centre/ Big visitor centre, construction 2011
Right/ Icons! olympic flame, on the Giant’s Causeway – 2012

To me, the Causeway is the bell-weather, the fortune-teller, of NI tourism and its prosperity. This chart is Causeway visitor numbers – but it could just as well be NI visitor numbers, or the state of the NI economy and development, or the state of the peace process:

100,000 visitors in the 1890s, reducing to under 40,000 in the late 1940s, and the causeway tram closes.
(* The “growth” in visitor numbers for the few years after 2005 seems to me to be a ploy to boost the sales value when seeking a new owner.) And, there are no figures for visitors during the 50s and 60 and 70s but I assume the numbers are pretty low, tens of thousands.
And it is my own guess of the tiny number for 2020, demolishing the NT’s financial reserves that were built up in the aberration years of the million-visitors

The Causeway is NI’s crown jewels: it puts us on the map. In the days when one could travel abroad, or met someone from abroad, if I say that I come from Portrush – well, some people, a few, would recognise that name.
If I say that I come from near the Giant’s Causeway – everyone knows where I come from.

The council visitor centre in 1986 was designed for 200,000 visitor numbers; the big NT visitor centre is a big step-up for 500,000 people. I don’t like the visitor centre myself but the building and NT’s international marketing lifts NI onto the world stage, after the Troubles and the Good Friday agreement. Several years of million -visitors -a -year levels raised NT reserves to high levels but the number of visitors was as a big overload on the Causeway environment. But even those levels of NT funds have been unable to cope with the decimation in tourism in Covid-2020. It will need many years to recover to the visitor levels of a few years ago.

Causeway school, built 1914 (Photos: courtesy, Me)
Antony Macnaghten describes himself as the ‘last man standing’ of the clan and gives super tours and stories of how the family supported the school and helped to shape the Causeway Coast

And finally, to mention the Macnaghten family. They built Runkerry in 1887, and the school in 1914. The last member of the family, Antony, gives more info and stories than my skip through history.

And so early, in these first few days of 2021, this episode ends with, “A merry Christmas and Happy New Year” from “the majority of Mr Macnaghten’s neighbours.”

PS Please do add your comments, preferably nice ones – I know this subject is very thorny for some people – it would be appreciated. David xx