Portrush, 1960s – the Swinging Sixties!

Oh, black and white photographs – so awesome, so emotive, such quality, such great class – so precious!

I think of the 1960s as being the black and white era, of style, of Twiggy, of so-gorgeous high quality photographs like of the ones above of the family in Portrush, of dinner dances at the Arcadia and Fawcett’s. And TV was black and white too, though fuzzy, but both migrating to colour over that decade. In Portrush, there is big news and changes and upheavals, moving from 1950s austerity to colourful years of holidays and travel and town developments and wild birthday parties at Dhu Varren.

I’ve written before of 1960s toddler days at Portrush with my big teenage cousins Heather & Carol.

Not all Portrush days were sunny summer though – in fact, the decade blows in with ferocious weather, with big floods at Dhu Varren in August 1960 – Janice Finlay Stewart tells me of being a few years old at the time and of being confined to her bedroom upstairs, unable to play outside. And my brother had to be collected and carried home from primary school, my dad wearing police galoshes and wading through the flood waters.

And in October it was the big Portrush lifeboat rescue of the Argo Delos, with RNLI award ceremony the next year. And the west strand sea wall was being built, below, with those storms being its first test!

And tourism that summer was also battered by a big seamen’s strike, leaving many visitors stranded and unable to return to the mainland, and expected visitors unable to arrive. Mr Fawcett arranges charter airplanes to shuttle guests to and fro, via Nutts Corner airport.

The 1960s and unions flex their muscles on behalf of their members: British heavy industry faces competition and decline from the big wartime and empire days of ship-building and shipping and of thousands of workers streaming over the Lagan bridge after their shift. But at least strikes were for good ordinary honest things like jobs and pay and conditions, and not about bringing down the Stormont government.

TVs were big and chunky and clunky. Ages spent reaching around the back to twist H-Hold and V-Hold until a black and white image appears out of the snowstorm. Then we could watch BBC, Blue Peter or Jackanory or Morecambe and Wise or Pot Black or the test card. And I sat on the corner of the fireplace – I can see the TV better from here! ….a sign that I would soon be at Robert Miller’s the opticians for specs.

If the 1940s were wartime years and aftermath; and early 1950s were rationing and austerity; the 1960s seem to me to be a Happy Decade, of having money in your pocket, of travel and holidays, of ‘We’ve Never Had It So Good’ that Macmillan didn’t say. Of colourful fireworks at Ramore hill. and other developments like go-karts on the East Strand.

Go-karting, started on the east strand car park in 1961, great fun I’m sure. But what sticks in my mind most of those times was one grey damp Friday evening, the commentator trying hard to get us warmed up by prompting us to clap loudly at the end of a race. But it was just a miserable cold damp Portrush summer evening.

We got the taste for karting though and Dad built us an awesome go-kart, old wood and good ol’ pram wheels. Croc-na-mac Square had just been built and pavements were lovely and smooth…. Wow look at this go-kart, look how fast it can go! And it can turn on a sixpence!! we yelled as we yanked the streering rein around to do a fast turn – but so fast that the front axle sheared off. That go-kart hadn’t lasted long before the Martin boys ruined it.

Another Saturday evening motor sport activity was the stock car racing at Aghadowey, with its spontaneous scripted “Clown pot-pourri” humour in-between the races, and of getting carried back to the car on dad’s shoulders.

The 1960s was big developments and changes for the harbour too. The new owner in 1963 spruces up the facilities for big ships, and a regular container service starts that year. But there is competition from the port of Londonderry, and there are reports of big ships having difficulty getting into the harbour in rough weather. That company is bought over in 1964, the service operates to Preston for some more years but then it stops completely in 1968. I think that is the end of the harbour as a commercial port.

The two photos above are the end of some things, in 1963: left, of the Dunluce Castle, the regular Belfast to Portrush steam locomotive, being polished up for its last journey to the Transport museum in Belfast.

And right, the newspaper article reports on the harbour being prepared for the big container ships, with the rowing boats, the raft and changing huts being cleared away. It is just my guess, that if you are an 880 ton vessel entering the harbour, that you don’t want anyone swimming nearby; and conversely, the yeuck oils from big ships’ propellors make it not great for swimming.

My big brother Jim writes: “One big change is swimming. Any chance I got, early 60s, I was in the harbour, often twice a day enjoying diving boards, raft, swimming under RAF patrol boats…..” But he bemoans, “Now, all the emphasis is on exercise, keeping fit, losing weight – but there is not a diving board or raft to be found in the Triangle. And we never heard of wet suits. Now the kids have to have a wet suit to go paddling on the beach. At least wild swimming is becoming more common. I’m usually along the front with the dogs around 7am each morning and regularly see wild swimmers in the Herring Pond.”

Speaking of emphasis on losing weight, a nice mother and me activity, pre-school: coke ice drinks, my favourite! Above, mid-60s adverts for Morelli’s, for Divito’s – “Our chef’s a genius, but he needs practice!” – and for Mrs. Ananias’s.

Sad news of the death in 1964 of Portrush golfing legend and club captain, Jackson Taggart, Keith’s grandad, who was key to the new clubhouses on Bushmills Rd; and in 1967 the destruction of the oldest Portrush dwellings around the harbour, including Ramore House, the biggest property in the town where visitors like Sir Walter Scott stayed on their Ireland tours.

On the positive new developments side, 1962, Jack Fawcett was obviously a big entrepreneur and high-flyer, and bought a light aircraft with it flown over from Boston, a 16-hour flight. Lyn Fawcett tells me of Jack’s love of aviation, and of flying to Jersey and Italy for holidays, and to race meetings to see their horse run. He reckons the only tourist flight was during an airport strike, with two guests needing to return on urgent business in England.

Flying was glamorous – and risky. A second plane for Jack took off from Newfoundland, but the extra fuel load for the long Atlantic flight became unstable and it crashed and exploded in a fireball.

Flights like Jack’s planes flew into Nutts Corner airport, replaced in 1963 by (RAF) Aldergrove airport for public flights. A big treat out was to go and see the planes from the public viewing gallery. Other Portrush developments, 1966 (below) was gearing up for the new university – whilst elsewhere, one of the great train robbers is arrested, the Moors murderer trial is in progress, heavy industry is declining and there are plans to re-nationalise the steel industry. Oh and price fixing and cartels: men, if you are thinking of haircuts these days, there was a shocking 12% price increase to 4s.

It must have been a weekday, me pre-school, about 1966. I see out our front window that the milk float van has to brake suddenly to avoid a car smash, but its load of empties has smashed into a million pieces of glass over the new road corner! My mum tells me to phone dad at the police station.
The curious days when our home phone was an extension of the police station’s – press ‘0’ to connect to the station switchboard, and a voice answers:
Hello, Portrush Police Station.
Hello, can I speak to Sgt, Martin please?
Speaking.
Hello, this is David Martin speaking. Can I speak to Sgt. Martin please?
Speaking.
(Me, confused. well I was only 5 or something.) This is David Martin speaking. Can I speak to Sgt Martin please?
Speaking.

Like one of the broken computer games that get stuck in an infinite loop.
Must have got sorted after a few loops though, and dad sends over a few constables, maybe Albert K or Noel or Gordon B, and we lend them our yard brush and dustpan.
Such a weight of glass and the yard brush is returned to us, in pieces.

My cousin Heather describes the decade as, “An explosion of music with the Beatles, Stones, Cilla, Gerry and the Pacemakers (so sad to hear he died), Lulu – the list is endless. Every teenager carried big ghetto blasters on their shoulders listening to music everywhere they went, and portable radios.”

And above, the 1969 newspaper captures the joys of live performances: The Marmalade band are due at the Arcadia but they get a late invite to be on Top of the Pops – who can say No to Jimmy Saville? They are in a jam, but arrange after TOTP arrange to fly straightaway to Aldergrove. I wonder if they made it on time?
(And newspapers that same day announce the end of the halfpenny piece. And it has the regular Spot the Ball competition – a dad hobby, putting an ‘x’ on the photograph, guessing where the players are looking at the ball.)

And explosions of colour too, with colourful photographs (and so-cool shirts) from late 1960s. That photo on the right, maybe one of the first colour ones in our family, about 1968. Dad was pretty handy and built that tent out of scrap wood from the ‘coal shed’ out the back. (We changed from coal in the early 60s, but to dad’s annoyance we still called it the coal shed 20 years later. (Some names just stick, like the ‘New Road’, though was built in 1950s).) The tent was a great play area with the neighbours. That summer was so hot though, we thought it would be cool to cut a nice square hole in the roof for ventilation. Really clever idea, huh? I am not sure if it helped ventilation at all – but one thing for sure, when it rained……

And do you remember cassettes? Christmas presents for a few years from Dad, story tapes that he recorded, like brer rabbit and other stories.

In the town, Harold Alexander is appointed tourism and entertainments officer, in 1966. He was the big man in Portrush tourism for years. I see the innovation early the next year, of a ‘Portrush week’ in Edinburgh, and Harold and my dad a great supporter of Tufty club for road safety, and of Barnardos fundraising, etc. I imagine him with Norman Hillis, my Dad, Norman Cameron, etc, meeting with Jimmy Molloy in the Harbour Bar, Sunday afternoons, chatting about the development of Portrush for visitors.

So, the 60s began with the big seamen’s strike affecting tourism, and floods and storms. Then great years, that my cousin Heather describes as, “Well the ’60s, it it was probably the best era to approach teenage years as it was before the troubles, and women were not as downtrodden as in previous decades. Not to forget how pop music escalated with the best groups ever and of course the flower power was in the ’60s. Nothing describes it better than the ‘Swinging ’60s.'”

At the end of the decade though, the Troubles led to the slump of tourism and the demise of holiday travel to and fro the mainland, for the next 20 years. The fin de siecle, the Happy Decade of the 1960s, is coming to an end. I describe my experiences of the next decade in “the Belfast Telegraph: Portrush and the sizzling ’70s.”

To round up the happy decade of the 60s though:

The 1960 article about the sea wall being built was beside a moan about technology about an abacus being faster than pencil and paper and faster than the known mechanical systems; the decade ends with the launch of the engineering marvel of Concorde – though with moan about the effect of booms on Dunluce castle. Other jumbo news, an elephant arrives at the Portrush Causeway Coast Safari park. And the thorny issue of Saturday opening of leisure facilities is now waived through – with the troubles, that is low on the concerns. And Portrush is gearing up for the catering college on Ballywillan road.

The 1960s: such great times had. So much social and industrial change: holidays, Aldergrove and flights, Sunday replacing the Sabbath, end of empire, the moon and Concorde, migration (Portrush landladies are asked, Would you allow coloured guests?), the harbour, the navy – upheaval! And ending with some splashes of colour, of wild parties at Dhu Varren, with a gaggle of screaming 11 year olds.

And an explosion of music and colour at Ruth Thompson’s birthday party photographs, Dhu Varren, early 70s. 11 year old girls’ party?? what a racket, I’m sure! Is that Janice, Caroline S, Andrine McW, Yolande a, Janette K, Cathy K, Belinda McD, Hilary McC, ……. ?

And, a lasting memory of the 1960s: of big brother’s Ford Anglia car, broken down in the lion enclosure in Benvarden safari park, with the monkeys leaping on the car bonnet picking peanuts and pulling the windscreen wipers off the car, and of lions sitting quietly, looking at us and licking their lips, waiting to pounce if you thought to go and shout for assistance….

Photos: Facebook, Remembering the Causeway Safari Park

PS Newspaper articles from BritishNewspaperArchive.com

PPS Oh, other episodes tell the story of the shanty town on the Portstewart road in the 1960s and typhoid, and of the Grieve needle factory at Glenamnus, and of the history of the harbour, the recreation grounds, me mum (Maud Martin) and dad (Sgt Martin), the Portrush lifeboat, dances at the Northern Counties and Fawcett’s, and music venues like the Arcadia, and other episodes. Enjoy 🙂 .