Postcards from Portrush: Climbing the stone bins, spear guns, & other harbour adventures

This Portrush series, walking from Croc-na-mac on a lap of the town, looking at Postcards from the Sumptious Selection from Sheila Brown’s Exquisite Emporium as we walk along.

Me, I played golf and badminton and tennis at the recreation grounds. I ask around for some harbour stories, and Garry McIlwaine replied, “Hi, David! You got me at a good time…….    I’ll jot down a few memories and hopefully the others will add their stories too, to pack around those class postcards.”

Reading of the tales of Garry McIlwaine and his buddies as they played and swimmed and climbed at the harbour, a reviewer writes, “Oh! It is a delight!! It is like reading a chapter of the Famous Five or the Secret Seven! I love their adventures. Typical boy stuff I suppose, but Wow!! I can imagine it all in my head. Such wonderful descriptions xxx”

Remembering their times as lads playing around the harbour, Garry writes, “It seems like us group of lads knew every stone in and around the harbour and Ramore Head, particularly the ones that combined to provide stairways (rock-steps) to something exciting, new, or even better, ‘Forbidden!’ One of the biggest voodoos in our family was to ‘Go within a hundred miles of the Black Rocks or Ramore Head, or the Stone Bins’. Punishable of course, but only if you were found out!

Left, Portrush poster; and Right, Maureen Kane tells me that she jumped over the wall at the back of the Yacht Club, grazed her hands on the glass-shards, in pursuit of this photo.

“At 10 or 12 years of age, my lads’ group visit to the harbour invariably ended up in some sort of a ‘test’. Peer pressure sent common sense packing, freeing opportunity for our risk-taking to be exercised. We dodged big waves on the harbour back wall. No matter what state the tide presented, we rock-stepped (or rock-laddered) onto the wee beach at the Ramore Bar. From there, after skimming the best flat stones in Portrush or the best weathered glass bottle bottoms, we would see who could climb farthest horizontally along the old harbour wall. The right approach would have been to start at the deep end near the rickety bridge and scramble towards the shallow. Not us. The test always resulted in stinging finger tips, grazed knees and damp socks but never ever with a dry winner.

“The ultimate test was to scale The Bins: not as high as the Black Rocks or parts of Ramore Head, those stone bins at the harbour looked so much more manageable. There was even an iron ladder going from the roof of the little control bunker – where we could still gain entry and flick the big elevator switch – all the way to the topmost metal shutes which directed the stones into particular bins.

“Me, I NEVER got more than half way… no matter how hard Stephen Leslie, Derek Finlay or my brother John tried  to coax or cajole me, I never did. At just about half way, that ladder would take on a life of its own – shaking, wobbling, even bouncing! All I could do was freeze and cling on for dear life. Neither up nor down would I / could I go.

The saving grace was that, me being last to try to go up, the others would need me to go down so that they could!

Those moments always remain vivid in my worst nightmares or when in class, I would heve read ‘The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler’ to my P6 and P7 youngsters.

“Rocksteps weren’t always about height. 

“At the harbour, Crawford Rankin’s little clinker rowing boat was accessed via one set of rock-steps close to the lifeboat. They led down to a large flat rock – Crawford had a man’s name for it – from where we would set sail on our voyages of discovery.

Postcards – 1956, & 1960s

“On foot, the harbour area had its attractions. By water it was so different. Crawford, Haslett Knox and I would usually end up being a boarding party on to one of the RAF boats. (That always puzzled me as a boy: ‘RAF boats??’) Ending up on the raft by not swimming was always exciting, even if you knew that if things played out to script, one of you would be abandoned there for a laugh!

“Crawford’s boat gave us access to two great spaces not reachable on foot when the tide was in: under the lifeboat house and under the harbour wall (the part past the bins was held up in these days by wooden posts). In there we would gaze at winking anemones, grazing limits, clouds of darting sand eels, silvery mullet and spider crabs (velvet) which disguised themselves on the dimly lit boulders. There was even  the chance of spotting a lobster. Seeing these creatures alive in the water rather than  in a creel, at the bottom of a boat or on a menu – we were a real, living Jacques Cousteau expedition!

“Rocky mearn (wrasse), which introduced me to float fishing, were always an interesting catch, with their magnificent coppery scales flashing and glinting ‘on their way up’.

David Martin, with Crawford Rankin, on a Causeway cruise, a handful of years back

And an even better way to see the marine life……: “Whilst shivering ourselves back from numbness after a swim day at The Raft, I was totally awe-struck at the sight of a rubber clad snorkler surfacing.
With a spear gun.
A spear gun with a good-sized flapping  ‘Lithe’ attached!”

(David: one time I signed up to do a First Aid course at work. It is really not my thing, but I was Brave and went.
The first session started gently with how to deal with choking, asphyxiation, food trapped in your throat, artificial respiration. Then the video showed a beach scene, with the scuba diver with his big spear gun, it accidentally firing and the guy lying on the beach harpooned in the chest, blood spurting.
Luckily someone else in the room fainted and the video was stopped before I passed out. The spear gun story here has too many memories of that scene!!)

“Anyway, back to the story: soon after, a summer money visit to Joe Mullan’s (‘No worms or mackerel today, Garry?’) saw me kitted out with the trendiest sky blue and fizzy yellow snorkel, mask and flippers.  At home I snapped off the floaty water stopping clunky thing from the top of the snorkle and set to work making my own spear.

An advantage of poor 1970s Portrush TV signals and ferocious seaside storms was that there was quite an endless supply of 4 or 5 foot metal fallen TV aerial rods to be had. We did our best to fashion them to form swords or nettle bashers. Even a blow pipe! The aerial metal was light but pliable. A flattened end was easily filed into a perfect barbed spear head. Being lightweight and hollow, a little snag of roof lead (another story?) beaten into the end helped with one-handed control during the hunt.

At the harbour beach, I was dressed and ready: my short little flippers were easily managed going forwards but I just had to roll back into the water… that’s the way real frogmen with real full lenght flippers did it.
When in the water, face down and breathing settled – a world like no other awaited. 
Those crystal waters. 
Sand sparkling jewel-like. The swaying weed-clad ropes of moored boats. No sound other than a distant Seagul outboard or your own breathing through a rattly plastic tube.
You were always sure to spot a crab or two, scavenging far too far away from safety. A gentle  poke would be met with a display of raised open nippers and a threatening spring up towards you. Quite a statement from those wee green rascals!
I was after flatties. 
Snorkeling was sense-heightening, making it difficult to breathe steadily. Beautifully camouflaged in the sand, the dabs were elusive. Once your focus was in, however, they cheated themselves with  tiny, tiny little plumes of sand from their gill slits or their barely discernable bulges around the eyes.
The act of ‘spearing’ turned out to be just a bit more tricky, with one timely tail flick propelling my prey safely from the target area. A great deal of poke, miss, flick, follow would take place.

Although I can never underestimate the initial elation, pure joy or sense of victory at my first ‘kill’, there were three sobering realities.
First, I had strayed well out of my depth: at that age I  would never normally have risked swimming from the harbour beach to the Queen Elizabeth on my own.
Second, when back in my depth and with flippers grounded, I surveyed my prize. All I can say is that I was totally underwhelmed.
I had patiently selected my kill, aiming for something take-homeable, something plate-sized to be proud of.
Unfortunately I  hadn’t factored the magnifying effect of my mask and the clear harbour water. What I had at the end of my spear was a 5 or 6 inch tiddler, not the monster I’d thought I’d stalked and cornered near a concrete mooring stone.
Third,  ‘victory’ was graphically tactile: every minute sensory aspect of  that moment of domination was transmitted along that spear and into my soul. It was intensly  personal. There was no rod-line-reel in buffer between me and the act. No time to adjust mindset from hunter to victor. 
That connection was instant and brutal.
At the dead end of the spear life had gone: glistening skin was  parched  and wrinkling. 
At the living end, a confused boy was weighing things up in more ways than one.

1959 postcard, to Master Lawrence Brown in Magherafelt, “You should be here to fish!”

“There were two main sets of rock-steps we would use to access the bottom of Ramore Head. By far the more exciting was the set to the back of the harbour office, up the lane past the Harbour Bar. Up-and-over brought us to a calmer-than-most place at the base of the cliff.
But being right beside the outlet for untreated sewage at the big round harbour ‘chimney’ had its downside, however!!!

“On the other hand, that area was a great place to rescue lost buoys and mussel-clad flotsam but it was primarily THE plumb fishing spot with scavenging glashen, flatties and doggies gathered in the briny soup. (On calm days, Crawford would row round there giving us the certainty of a good catch without having to take on the seaweed with a good cast.)

Another brilliant childhood friend who always loved going spinning off the rocks behind the head was Johnny Millar. He and I fished there with our home made spinners, once  even, bagging a two and a half pound white sea trout. Johnny’s dad was a man of few words, but not that evening when our cstch was paraded. And his lovely mum … as usual, she wouldn’t be happy if I didn’t head home  feasted to the gunwales!

Fishing boat entering the harbour – painting by David Patton, based on 1968 photo by his brother Torney

“Hanging around with David McAuley (Jelly) always had potential for ‘fun’. I’ll leave it to him to tell you about his exploits in his dad’s very fancy Rover 2600.

“When two groups of friends had a common member, there were times when the groups combined. One fabulous day we played tig on top of, over, around the walls and buildings of the old RAF huts, just before they became the yatch club. We definitely took our lives in our hands but we survived.

“The really interesting thing was that we returned the following weekend for another session of roof top tig but it wasn’t quite the same, and it petered out in no time. Strange.

“Jelly was always edgy: you could rely on him to lead you into some sort of ‘trouble with a small ‘t’. His house, with that space station designer interior, faced directly over the recreation grounds. Walkers over Ramore Head and white-washed bowlers on the recreation ground greens sometimes saw (or heard) their worlds collide with ours: you see, Jelly had the biggest set of record player speakers that I had, and still have, ever seen in somebody’s house. 

“All I’ll say is that with expert timing, superb volume control, an open window and a glint in the eye,… neither  “Smoke on the Water” or “Radar Love” proved to be of any benefit to the delivery of that vital end-saving wood!

“So, happy days around the harbour. And yes, and we also did with the Brittannia, collect fossils, race our bikes around these paths at break-neck speeds. We did watch the fireworks, pipe bands, tennis competitions etc.etc., but I guess you will get lots of stuff like that! Best, Garry”

And Karen M, reviewing this blog says, “Oh it does remind me of those tales, Secret Seven or Famous Five, of childhood adventures, danger, climbing, swimming, stone steps and caves, skullduggery around every corner – and adults oblivious to it all!“

Portrush Tales – ‘Postcards from Portrush’ series:
(I) the Story of Eglinton St.
(II) the West Strand & Harbour
(III) Harbour Tales
(IV) the Recreation Grounds, renewed
(V) Landsdowne & Lower Main St.
(VI) Diving at the Blue Pool
(VII & VIII): East Strand, to the Causeway

90 blogs of ‘Portrush Tales’, Index is here.

Cyril Davison – a Tribute

30th June 2022: David Martin, Sheila Brown, and Cyril & Margaret Davison

In the summer it was a pleasure to meet Cyril & Margaret Davison again. They were really marvellous, set up badminton at Portrush when I was a kid, working to get the Kelly Hall refurbished and courts marked up to play there, and got the badminton club up and running and doing rather well in the area leagues. Jonny Dobbin says about the 1991 photo below, “That was the year that I won the most improved player in the Ballymoney and District league. Cyril coached me – and he was the reason that me and others from the club achieved local, district and country honours.”

Jonny Dobbin & Cyril Davison, 1991; Cyril & Margaret Davison, 30 June 2022

The Kelly Hall was used too for bowling and the Church Lads Brigade and other activities under the auspices of Holy Trinity church, Of the Holy Trinity Badminton Club, Cyril Davison started it up in about 1970, and I started playing there when I was still primary school age. It met first in Dunluce St hall – I guess that site became the Gold Rush arcade. The club was amazingly popular, so much so that Cyril had to arrange us in pairs, lined up either side of the hall, hitting the shuttlecock across to each other – as he said, it was the only way to ensure that everyone got a chance to play and practice.

“Members of the Holy Trinity Badminton Club, Portrush,
pictured with trophies won in a very successful season.”

The club then moved to the Kelly Hall when it was refurbished. The club developed really well and there were a few of the teams at various levels in local leagues, with awards like in the photograph above.

Audrey Macbeth: So sorry to hear the news. Remember him as a great friend from my early badminton years. Deepest sympathy to Margaret and family Audrey Macbeth (Donegal)

League match nights, and regular club nights – and some mucking about nights. One evening we were warming up before a game, knocking the shuttle around. One comes over and I swish at it. Unfortunately my partner Kathleen Diamond reaches to catch it, to start serving to start the match. But both her hand and my badminton racquet suffered in the collision. But at least me delivering the ‘Tele meant that I had pocket money to buy the replacement.

Katy Diamond: Cyril was a great coach David as you know. I used to dread being his mixed doubles partner lol as you were afraid of making a mistake. He will be sorely missed.
Sharon Kennedy: “Katy, I loved being his doubles partner , I just served then darent have moved a foot back from the net and Cyril had the whole court covered making it look effortless 

I look for photographs of the badminton club but do you remember the 1970s, the days before mobile phones and not a million photographs of everything? I had only found the one photograph of the club, above, and then Clive Shorter produced a few more, of 1977. But David Downs says, “If only we had camera phones back then, knock knees Martin wouldn’t want any images around a badminton court even if he was OK at it.”

Anthony Chambers: What a great and enthusiastic man. Loved playing badminton at the Kelly.

That photo, below right, of me practicing in our house, about 1974. My knock knees pose must have been good enough to earn those little medals and prizes, encouragement for improvement over the year
My regular playing group was that under-16 team shown on the left (and all the lads were golfing buddies too – though I have no idea why Andy H has a shuttlecock on his nose). It was great tragedies that Sandra C and Janette K, school classmates, were taken away too early from us.

George Shorter remembers Cyril’s great humour. “I always remember Cyril walking into the Kelly Hall and asking ‘Can anyone ride a bike?’ If you replied Yes enthusiastically, he replied, ‘Well come and help me get this stuff out of the car.’

Rosie Oates: So sorry to hear this news. Cyril was such a great coach, and the badminton club at the Kelly Hall was such a huge part of growing up – I still hear his coaching tips even now! He made such a difference to so many. My deepest condolences to Margaret and family.

League matches meant traipsing around to badminton clubs at back-of-the-end-of-the-earth places – Hoescht social club, the Strand club in Portstewart, Aghadowey, …. One hall out in the country somewhere, so narrow there was just room for the badminton court, with about 1mm separation to the wall. Cyril and Margaret willingly going with the teams when required.

Heather Kennard: “What a character he was Margaret, so sorry to hear this.”  
Jonny Dobbin: “Very shocked and saddened to hear this news.”
Sheila Brown: “Lovely tribute to Cyril real sportsman sad loss to everyone remember Margaret  ”
Carol Mcfarland: “Such a gentleman. So sorry to hear this. Love to Margaret and family x”

About 1977, and into the dizzy heights of the Minor C league, and photos include Tom Hentry, George Harkness, Tommy Peters, Eva O’Neill, Sandra and Heather Crawford, Thelma, and Cyril & Margaret, Sammy & Sadie and ‘the splendid array of trophies’
(all badminton newspaper cuttings courtesy Clive Shorter. But oh dear I can’t remember all the names, let me know of any blanks !!

An annual feature of the club was the 24 hour badminton marathon, for fund-raising. They were great fun, and especially the lovely cooked breakfast on the Saturday morning. We really appreciated the effort everyone put in to support the activities. Badminton marathon, early hours of the Saturday morning, I always remember, Mr Sam McGuinness come along, just sitting quietly watching, but just such as encouragement that he took the time to come out and support the event.

George Stewart: “Cyril was also a brilliant footballer, he played with me in winning the Works league with Monsanto. Condolences to the family.”

A story from me? It is Easter holidays from school. One afternoon, me and Kyle and George and Mark McC get the Kelly Hall door key to go in to play for a few hours. Oh, nuisance! the bowling mats are spread out. We push them over to one side and set up the badminton net so that we can play.

Later, the caretaker tells us: she had spent hours doing the laying out the mats and vacuuming them, to perfecto bowling green flatness for the match that evening. And we had just pushed them over to one side against the wall, and then pulled them back after our games. She had to do the preparation all over again. And we got the rollicking.

Ken Mcallister: “We used to watch the caretaker lock up after setting up the net for the evening, and Denny Mcaleese and I watched him putting the key under the mat. Two hours playing badminton – pure luxury.”

About 1977: Sammy & Sadie Kane, Clive Shorter, Cyril & Margaret, Tommy Peters, Thelma, Elaine Adjey, and oh dear but I can’t remember all the names – well it is 45 years ago !!

As well as at the Kelly Hall, Cyril also did badminton coaching at the primary school, including to Jonny Dobbin in the mid-80s. The badminton strip and the football strip are surprisingly similar! (“Those horrible sports strips for all sports. Absolute nipple wreckers!” , says Jonny.)

Photos, 1986. Sports strip, similar between badminton and football teams?
Cyril also taught badminton at the primary school, teaching Jonny in the mid-80s. Badminton. Starting back row left. Jonny Dobbin, Miss Steele, Richard Hassan. Front row from left. Shane McDonald, Richard Kettyle, Peter Smyth, Stephen Mckenzie
Football. Starting back row left. Richard Hassan, Jonny Dobbin, Edwin Burgess, Rowland Robinson, Nigel Smyth, Miss Boyd. Front row from left. Peter Elliott, Shane McDonald, Peter Smyth, Jason Quigley, Richard (Archie) Kettyle, Stephen Mckenzie, James Allen

Cyril was heading towards retirement in the late 1990s, with some months back and forth to Spain, continuing to coach badminton to kids in Spain. Jonny Dobbin, back in Portrush after uni, stepped up to take the club forward in the late 1990s.

Raymond Mcneill: “Well done Cyril & Margaret! An account of badminton days gone by. When the Saturday night at the  was brilliant, ending with fish & chips and Match of the Day!  it!!”
David: yup, agreed! Battered sausage and chips at the Dolphin, on the way home!

On the left: winners of the Ballymena & District League & Cup, 1999: Clive Shorter, Jonny Dobbin, Cyril Davison, Steven Hastings; front: Sharon Kennedy, Margaret Davison, Margaret Weir
Right, back row: ladies Sharon Kennedy, Margaret Davison, Margaret, Pamela Smyth
Front row: William Snelling, Stephen Hastings, Clive Shorter, Jonny Dobbin, Tommy McCarroll

Left: the junior members who represented Ballymoney and District at the Jack Wilson Trophy (all Ulster under-17 years old badminton districts) – Andrew Harte, Johnny Dobbin, Anne Hopkins, William Snelling, Aslan Bucukoglu
Anne Hopkins. “Yes me in centre. I was only around 13 at the time and don’t remember much about it but I remember going to Donegal and playing badminton in the tournament.”
Right: the Junior badminton club in 1991. Back row left to right: Alan Stewart, Steven McMinn, Jonny Dobbin, Cyril Davison, William Snelling, Chris Graham, Richard Weir. Front row: Rosemary Payne, Katherine Snelling, Claire Mclain, Anne Hopkins, Andrea Weir

Jonny records, “Cyril & Margaret were so awesome, they coached at the badminton club from about 1970, and they taught me at primary school sports as well, in the mid 80s. So appreciative of Cyril’s coaching, and that Cyril was the reason that me and others from the club achieved local, district and country honours.”

Aslan Bucukoglu: “Thanks for this article. I play 3 times a week during the season in Edinburgh and I remember him every time I step on the court. Deepest condolences.”

Karen McQuilkin: “I was so sorry to hear of Cyril’s passing. I have so many wonderful memories of playing badminton at Trinity Hall. Cyril was the heartbeat of the club, and I am very grateful to have been coached by him. Sending love to Margaret and family. x”

Geoffrey McKillop: “Cyril was a real gentleman, a unique character, someone I knew very well back in the late 70s early 80’s … A great badminton player in these times, very involved in Holy Trinity in Portrush at that time along with Margaret his lovely wife. Both of them were very giving of their time & gave so much back to their community.. Really sad to hear of Cyril’s passing & sincere condolences to Margaret & Mark on their sad loss… “

When I played in the 1970s, badminton club nights were Wednesdays and Saturdays. The Church Lads Brigade, CLB, with folks like buddy Kyle Miller, met in the hall as well, on Fridays. And George Shorter in Hamilton Place says he was in those two organisations and also in the Bowling club – he was in the Kelly Hall every evening of the week. At least as important as badminton skills, I’m sure that tact and diplomacy are important parts of any town or church activity, like with the Kelly Hall where so many different groups and users were vying for the hall. But I think Cyril and Margaret, and Sammy and Sadie Kane, were really great at just ensuring everything went smoothly. I think it was Sammy that pulled together a few bowling evenings, where the badminton folks would play the bowling club. As you would expect the bowling club won, but at least my rink managed one draw, our best result. I remember at that evening that Sammy spoke about the value of church togetherness and of the younger and older folks being together. Sammy was also a leader in the CLBs as well and the lads appreciated his leadership, with courtesy and respect.

Nicola Taylor: “Cyril taught my brother and me at the Kelly Hall as well. Condolences to his family and friends.”

Steven McMinn: “I am still playing today and coaching the kids in the local area. It would not have been possible without him. Thank you Cyril, for everything.”
Geoffrey Niblock: “Cyril did a massive amount of work for the badminton clubs in the area.”
Carl Kennedy: “So sorry to hear. I bumped into Cyril and Margaret on the West Strand prom for a chat a couple of weeks ago. I am so glad thatI did now. I’ll always remember the end of season celebration parties at our house fondly. Condolences to Margaret and family from Sharon and I.”

And the example of contribution to the community too: sometimes with Cyril’s coaching would be interrupted as he heard the fire station siren and dashed off to serve the community. And the club played variously in Coleraine and Ballymoney and Ballymena district leagues. Jonny says of lots of late nights through the week and lots of inter-district events at the weekends, and really appreciated that senior members gave up a lot of their time to ship the younger players around the church halls of Ulster and then up to Belfast for the ‘majors’ games.

Steve McMinn: “Great article David. I played for Cyril and Holy Trinity for years and extremely honored to have been mentioned in the article. Since then I have played badminton all round the world. I recently moved home, where I still play and set up the local kids club at UUC, now called ‘Smashers’. I’m pleased to know that Cyril had recently found out that I was coaching the kids club and I was hoping to re-connect. I hope that gave him great satisfaction, as it would not have been possible without him. Thank you for sharing his story as I talk about him all the time, and I am glad he gets that recognition for all his work. With thanks, Steve.”

Sheila Brown: Margaret I am so sorry that my friend Cyril your lovely husband and soul mate passed away yesterday He was such a kind helpful person and will be sadly missed by you and family circle.
My prayers and thoughts are with you at this sad loss.  

So, years of playing and coaching badminton at the Kelly Hall in Portrush and of supporting the Coleraine and Ballymoney and other leagues and clubs in the area, and their work and service in the community. So much respect for Cyril and Margaret Davison, for the parts they played in training up youngsters in badminton skills with others following on in coaching in various places based on their example, and all with the life lessons from their example too.

Cyril Davison, 3rd November 2022.
———
Newspaper cuttings & photos, courtesy Clive Shorter, Jonny Dobbin, David Martin

Her Majesty the Queen – Silver Jubilee visit, 1977

The passing of our Queen, 8th September 2022. She has been there for all of our lives, a constancy, a bedrock. We all have memories of seeing her, of being in the crowd as she went past, of being outside at Buckingham Palace or wherever, or of being at an event where she and the royal family were, and it gladdened our hearts. Whatever event – ours was the invitation to the Party in the Park, her celebration in 2002 at the Palace – the photo, the selfie, the invitation, her warmth and smile – treasured memories.

Queen, Coleraine 2014 – photos copyright Maureen Kane

The Queen’s Silver Jubilee, 1977. A week of celebration for the Silver Jubilee, with Monday 6th June, beacons lit all around the kingdom, including at Dunluce Castle. Classmates in the Dunluce School choir sang there, that evening. But the weather was foul, cold and wet, and Zoe A remembers the choir huddled under the chimney stacks in the outer part of the castle during the worst of the weather. Sheila K “remembers the lighting of a beacon-bonfire in the field at Dunluce Castle – it was enormous, and that the scorched ground was there for a long time after. There were street parties all over the town, and a special Jubilee medal-coin given out to us.” Allison C remembers that “there was a huge street party for the kids on Ramore St. though with the weather it was held in Fawcetts Hotel, and they got silver pendants presented to mark the Jubilee. Even though I was young, still at primary school, I remember this time so well.”

A few months later and the royal family came to visit Northern Ireland, on Wednesday 10th and Thursday 11th August 1977. The Royal yacht Britannia sailed into Belfast Lough on Wednesday morning, and the Queen helicopter’ed to events around Hillsborough. The yacht sailed north overnight, passing the Causeway about 1am and a bonfire was lit on Ramore Head to welcome the Queen. The yacht came past the Skerries, escorted by HMS Fife and minesweepers and guided by Portrush lifeboat, and anchored off Ramore Head for the day.

Photo source: CC&GC

Sheila K, “I remember the day the royal yacht arrived. My dad, mum, sister and I went up Ballynacrea Rd before 6am to watch it sailing past the Skerries.” And Zoe A, “We watched the Royal Yacht from the White Rocks as it sailed in front of the Skerries. We couldn’t get to Ramore Head as it was packed so we sat below the car pack on the East Strand. The beach was off limits and we saw helicopters take off and land.”

Allison C: “I remember it well and the crowds gathered on Ramore Head to see the Royal yacht Britannia. I remember seeing the Queen in the royal red helicopter flying close to the edge of Ramore Head so that we could see her. Of course we waved like mad with our flags lol. I was always convinced we saw the Queen waving at us but that might be my childhood dream lol.”

Gerald McQ writes: “We were having an early picnic at the green area beside the old harbour bridge. Suddenly a crowd of people came charging down the harbour hill shouting, ‘The Queen is coming!!! The Queen is coming!!!’ We all rushed towards the quay – the old bridge groaned with the weight of so many people. Sadly she didn’t come to the harbour – even though it had been freshly painted and bunting a-plenty!! – but her helicopter took her directly to the University.

“Later we took a boat trip around the Royal Yacht, me wearing my new outfit for the occasion – brown flares and purple tank top… say no more!!! I was only 11 but I will never that wonderful day, of the sight of the Royal Yacht Brittania sailing past Ramore Head, the bonfire. A wonderful day.”

Wow, that she came came to N. Ireland in the 70s, the bad years. My English and Scottish cousins sensibly stayed away that decade. I think it says a lot for the Queen, her bravery, her sense of duty, her wish to see and meet and connect with all the peoples of her kingdom and Commonwealth, that she came as a duty of love in her jubilee year. And we all turned out to welcome her. But remember, the Portrush bombing inferno was only the year earlier, and as an indicator of the risk there were 4,000 police officers on duty, who gathered at Coleraine football pitch to start their duties and deployment. And for safety her overnights were on Britannia, traveling by helicopter to her venues, avoiding roads.

My Dad, Sgt Martin – as an aside, he was actually born the day before the Queen, in 1926 – was in the team responsible for her safety and security during the visit. Of course preparations in advance were hush hush – we didn’t know what dad was doing, just his long long hours out. He said later about driving back from one of the NUU meets to Portrush at 2 or 3am: an army patrol helicopter sees a suspicious car and shines its searchlight on him. Dad says it was night turned to daylight.

Strict security was everywhere. Caroline D says her Dad had his two big oil tanks down at the harbour, and was asked to either empty them or fill them completely, to prevent their misuse… And Nina W: “I remember it well as it was near the end of my school days. We lived near the NUU at that time and the army was out on foot patrol around the housing estate.” At the NUU a small bomb did go off somewhere around the university – she bravely over-ruled her advisors and went ahead witht he visit. Thankfully the events all went off peacefully and really successfully.

Photo above, arriving at the NUU, just after 11am. And right, Lynda D: “A photo from the Queen’s visit to the University of Ulster in 1977. My late dad Robin McAfee is in the top left corner in the glasses x”

Courtesy Allyson H: “David this is the invitation we got for the choir to sing at Dunluce Castle and at NUU, we all got one.”

My classmates in the Dunluce school choir were there at the NUU, as part of a Youth Festival, to greet her. Allyson H remembers “We as a choir from Dunluce school sang for them, I remember it well – I have a scrap book which I made all those years ago. I believe we sang Londonderry Air – ah the pipes the pipes are calling… The Queen, Prince Philip and Andrew did come over and speak to us… I recall Prince Philip asking us, Were we the choir that sang at Dunluce Castle? and we all excitedly said Yes! His kind reply was that it was such a foul night – and it really was! It had rained all day long! At the uni though, the sun shone all day and we had a ball…

“I remember as well that some of the guests – Mrs Mercer being one – got sick, food poisoning from the sandwiches which were provided that day. Some of the children ended up in hospital I think. Strange what you can remember!”

Rosemary P: “Yes I was in the choir along with Allyson, Marie, Jill, Jayne, Sharon, Andrea…… probably half of the class but I can’t remember who else lol! I remember being there, sun shining, standing in line and seeing Prince Andrew, who was actually very handsome at the time.

“So much respect for the Queen. Over a lifetime, my wee Mum just loved watching anything Royal.

“We also stayed a few years ago at Balmoral, at the invitation of brother in law who was the Queen’s personal piper. The Queen was in residence and we saw her out walking around with her dogs…. though from a distance xox”

Sharon R: “Hi David, Bob and I were just talking about the Silver Jubilee last night and how we had meet the Queen. We were so very excited to be singing for Her Majesty! After the bad weather at Dunluce, the day the Queen came to the university was really hot and sunny. The Queen and Prince Philip took time to speak to us and thanked us for singing that night at the bonfire, on such an awful night. There was a lot of excitement too as Prince Andrew was there – a handsome young Prince. We wouldn’t be so excited now to see him!!

“I don’t think we realised the significance of it at the time. I wish I could remember more now!”

Linda K: My father worked at the NUU and so along with families of other staff, my mum, my sister and I were up on the podium while my father was waiting inside the entrance. I gave Her Majesty a posy of roses and she spoke to me and then HRH Duke of Edinburgh also stopped to speak to us. My father was invited to the Garden Party that afternoon.

Back at Portrush, Pete D: “I was working in Barry’s in 1977, and remember well the Britannia out on the bay as I gazed from the big Dodgems & Cyclone windows. It was a scorcher of a summer. Mum and Dad were at the garden party at NUU as it then was.” And Caroline D says that they had a great view of the yacht out in the bay, from their house on the Portstewart Rd, but their guest house was so packed with visitors that they didn’t have much time to look!

People flocked to witness the occasion. During that day, boats took sight-seers for trips around the yacht – but kept back at a suitable distance. Fred W, “I remember going out into the bay, in a boat that I had built, to see the Royal Yacht but got turned back by the security services as we were getting too close.” Fred was fortunate, as Stephen H says, “Out in my Dad’s boat watching it all and nearly got run over by the Royal Navy as we got too close!” And Mike S says “me and my dad sailed around Brittania in his sailing dinghy, RN patrol boat very quick to warn us off when we ventured just inside the half mile exclusion zone!” And Sean S, “was lucky to go out on the Press Boat which was i think an ex-RN minesweeper. Anyway, it was allowed inside the exclusion zone and i saw the Queen on deck …. A wonderful memory!”

Kerry G writes, “In the summer months we ran a boat hire business, using our wooden jetty along from the Teas and Ices. That day, me and my brother William decked out dad’s salmon coble with flags and bunting. Most people had never seen the Queen or anything to do with her and they were hungry for a look. The Maritime authorities had granted us temporary licences to do the runs, limited to 12 passengers at a time. It was a lovely calm day, and we ran trips out to the royal yacht all day long. It was a really great day.”

Left: launches & tenders sailed from the jetty at the lifeboathouse; Right: Gregg’s boat (photo courtesy Kerry Gregg)

Later in the afternoon, tenders collected invited guests from Portrush harbour jetty next to the lifeboathouse, and transferred them to a royal reception on board the yacht. (Shane E says that “When the tenders came into Portrush harbour someone (unnamed) ‘borrowed’ a royal boathook and forgot to give it back. It used to hang above the bar in the Lobster Pot.”)

Sheila K says, “Our neighbour John Hurst was chief librarian at NUU and during the day he gave the Queen a guided tour of the libraries – including that wonderful modern tool, the microfiche machine.

“In the evening I baby-sat their two children while John and his wife Teresa attended a reception for local dignitaries, on board the yacht.” As with so much of our affection for the Queen, “Thereafter a lovely photo of John and the Queen took pride of place in their home.”

Many people have memories of being with or seeing members of the royal family. Beth L remembers that year: “I was Head Girl in 6th form at Coleraine High School. Along with the head boy of Coleraine Inst. and my art teacher, Miss Abernathy, we were flown by some civic group or other to London to celebrate the Silver Jubilee. We attended the luncheon at the Guild hall with the Mayor of London – but  what I remember most is that it was my first ever flight, and of being mortified of being with a boy that I did not know (and still can’t remember his name, even now!).

“Three years later as a rebellious university student, I wanted no part of going to Buckingham Palace with my parents and sister when my Dad was honoured as a Commander of the British Empire (CBE).

“I regret that to this day.”

Left, meeting new PM, Liz Truss, only a few days ago;
Centre, Queen, 60th birthday portraint, 1986,, from National Portraint Gallery image courtesy Beth;
right, Coleraine 2014 – photo copyright Maureen Kane

Me, well I am not one to boast but here’s a photo of me, below left, 1987, my first job after graduation, looking down the microscope at a silcon chip wafer. That’s my buddy King Charles there, well, Prince as he was then, opening Plessey’s shiny new facility at Plymouth. (But he moaned about the design of the building, that it clashed with the nearby Dartmoor national park scenery.)

Later, 2002, by pick of the draw my daughter Ailsa and I got invitations to Party in the Park, 2002 – her 50th anniversary. We got to walk on Millennium bridge – it wasn’t as wobbly as it had been – and on the red carpet at Buckingham Palace. Our seats in row ZZ – the very back row – and the royal family were those dots away over there. Still, being right at the back meant we could look over behind to see Bryan May doing his guitar of the national anthem on the roof of the palace. (Actually it was my wife Lesley’s name which was drawn, but she stayed with our youngest Euan in Hyde Park and took him for a McDonalds burger, while me and Ailsa ate from our Fortnum and Mason’s lunch basket in the Palace. I really don’t know what she complains about.)

My cousin has pride in her invitation to a palace garden party in 2014 and writes, “I remember this day like it was yesterday and the cheeky wink that I got from the Queen.” And Maureen says, “25th June 2014, I stood for hours at Coleraine Town Hall to see her and took loads of pics. The parade was amazing – it must have been Royal Guards but don’t quote me on that as I’m not sure.

Maureen writes, “They were laying a wreath and ladies from a WI were dressed in period dresses. Oh yes it was WWI centenary. My grandfather had been in WW1 and I wanted to be there.”

Linda K /below right photo): “Special canapes and buffet, served in the Town Hall. I am on the left, wearing a loaned mauve original servants uniform.”

Maureen continues, “Then later, I forget the year [it was 2016], I went to Bushmills, stood on the road near the Diamond and saw their car passing on their way to Royal Portrush. Then I came back home as the Queen and Philip were reportedly to drive past Crocknamack Road – and they did, on their way to the Railway Station in Coleraine! Lovely to know that she passed us, on our own road, so closely.”

Five visits by the Queen to the area, but her Silver Jubilee visit: I was there. Maureen K asks, “That day in 1977, do you remember it? There was a helicopter outside the Police Station – I have a bad photo of it. And Sandra and I – like everyone else in the area – went to Ramore Head to watch Britannia. I remember a man there, sitting wth a hanky tied with four corners, to protect his head from the sun – like you see in postcards – Sandra and I giggled at that!”

After my day’s summer job working in the White House, in the evening I went with my brothers to see. Ramore Head was just a seething crowd of happy people! The photo about is courtesy Lucy S and she asks, “Does anyone else remember ‘I am Sailing’ by Rod Stewart being played over the tannoy or was it just my memory playing tricks on me?”

I see Portrush lifeboat there in the photo, accompanying the royal yacht to its moorings. Trish G reckons her dad Billy Lee was cox’n.

After the events at the NUU and then the reception on board the royal yacht, the Queen gazing out from the yacht at the end of the day, at the black mass on Ramore Head and wonders, I didn’t think that any trees could grow in such an exposed headland? Those are your people, your Majesty.

Hillsborough Castle, NUU, garden parties, receptions. The whole trip: amazing, wonderful.

Then, her duties done and fulfilled so wonderfully, on Thursday the 11th August 1977 – and again, 45 years later, on Thursday the 8th September 2022 – her Majesty the Queen Elizabeth slipped away from us, quietly and peacefully and gracefully.

Same age as at my mum’s passing a few months ago, aged 96. The rock, the stability, the constancy, always there. Someone writes, “I’m finding the whole thing very sad and overwhelming, an air of uncertainty after the loss of a nation’s lifetime constant … as if things weren’t tough enough in the world at the minute.” Grieving, still the baton is passed on to Charles, and from Boris to Liz Truss. The world moves on and we go forward, with anxiety, but perhaps some hope too.

Allyson looks at the Dunluce school choir in the Silver Jubilee photograph, flags waving, and says, “I remember exactly where we were, where that photo was taken: it was in the Ulster University grounds, just off the roundabout, where the halls of residence are now. We had been standing all day, in the sunshine, and then we sang – and she came over and chatted with us! and we had a ball.

“What do they say, about being in just the right place at just the right time? I pass that spot every day and I still think about that day – the day we met the Queen.”

—————–
With thanks to –
All contributors!
Photos courtesy & confidential: Maureen Kane, Kerry Gregg, David Martin, Linda Kapur, Lynda Doshi
Newspaper clippings, source: BritishNewspaperArchive.co.uk
BBC news reels
https://www.causewaycoastandglens.gov.uk/news/royal-visits-through-the-years

“Portrush Tales” – to The Farthest Shore – Michael White (Part II)

“I remember Pantomime performances by Rossi Duke and Rodney Byrne. One scene on the final night, the fairy called out for her magic wand, left behind unintentionally in the wings, and was instead handed a toilet seat by Rossi Duke – it was memorable.”

Michael White, now over 50 years in New Zealand, opens up his Pandora’s box of memories and of photographs and writes about his wonderful teenage years in Portrush.
Previously, Part I, Portrush Tales – from The Other Side of the World, describes his family arriving in Portrush and the friends that Michael forms. He continues the story in this episode…

February 1956. Age 13. Dad transfers from Belfast to the old Northern Bank in Portrush. Family moves to No. 2, Strandmore, Portrush…
March 1961. Age 18. Left Portrush for Surrey in England to join the Civil Service…
July 1970. Age 28. Boarded SS Australis at Southampton, bound for Auckland in New Zealand.

Michael writes, “I loved Portrush. The two very long beaches, the harbour, the summer, Dunluce Castle and the Giant’s Causeway in the distance, and time with my friends. Winter, with the wildness of the sea and the chill. And the contrast to the summer, the packed holiday atmosphere of the town, the Arcadia…..

Summer job at the Arcadia
On the outside of the Arcadia dancehall were several kiosks selling all sorts of summertime goodies. There were “American Ices” which served a sugary and creamy dollop, seaside funny hats, plastic toys and buckets and spades. Everyone was on holiday in the summer and the kiosks were all very busy! From 1958, when I was 16, I ran the popcorn and candy floss kiosks, and my friend Maureen McKillop ran the postcards one, next door.

Maureen McKillop from Bushmills who looked after the postcards kiosk at the Arcadia; Michael White at popcorn. 1960

Bert Blundell was the owner of the Arcadia and also of the amusement arcade on Main Street. He would stand on the steps of the Arcadia on summer days, wearing his grey suit and polaroid type glasses, with hand clasped around his very generous midriff, surveying his empire. His silver Rolls Royce car, number plate BB100, would be parked above the steps down to the Arcadia, sitting there no doubt as his symbol of commercial success. I think he was English, sometimes seeming distant and austere and not very approachable, yet affable enough when I got to know him.

Bert added an electric popcorn machine to his fleet of equipment and he offered me the chance to operate it and sell the popcorn. He told me to clean the machine with hot water at the end of the day and so on the first day, I filled the sink up with hot water and dumped it in, little realising the effect on the electrical parts! I did not get sacked but I learned a valuable lesson about water and electricity. Sam Bell, the Portrush electrician was called in to rewire it, and I was shown how to wash it properly and not give the electricals a bath!

Ladies’ Bathing place, on the left; the Arcadia , with my candy floss Kiosk at the top of the steps down to the beach, below the sign “Self Service Cafe”; Maureen McKillop’s postcard Kiosk was to the right of mine.

Pat Moynihan from Portumna in County Galway was the walkabout manager for the kiosks and a ‘bouncer’ for the dancehall in the evenings. He was not very tall, had a shock of curly red hair and always dressed in a checked sports jacket, cavalry twill trousers and what we called brothel creeper shoes. He was a lovely guy with a great Galway accent and when I was working in the popcorn kiosk, he used to call out to me from his position in the middle of the promenade, if he saw a pretty girl, “Michael, an opportunity for you is approaching from the port side.”

Rodney Byrne & Irwin Stewart, Mark Street 1960

I was making candy floss one day with a long queue of people at the window, when there was a bit of a fuss with someone pushing and shoving trying to get to the front, much to the irritation of others. I heard the noise and looked up from my machine to see my mother, elbowing and wrestling her way through the crowd. When she finally reached the front of the queue, she was angry, and I was instructed to get up to the house at once. I declined and carried on working and said I would come up when I was less busy, but she persisted until the people behind her told her in no uncertain terms to “Go away!” She said in front of everyone that she had found my collection of “dirty postcards” under my bed! The crowd roared with laughter, and there were a few cheers and comments from the people gathered around her. I remember being a bit embarrassed. She left when the laughter erupted. I did go up to the house about an hour later and under my bed she had found my postcards with colour cartoon drawings and printed below each drawing was a caption or saying which was usually rude, with some sort of innuendo. They were harmless in a way, and I had amassed a collection of the better ones which I wish I had now as they are worth some money.

Me on the East Strand in 2012, with my house indicated by the arrow over my left shoulder; and me on the steps of 2, Strandmore.

I went back to the candy floss, where the crowd had disappeared and told Maureen about it. She thought it very funny and offered to replace my ‘under the bed’ collection. I did not manage to rescue the postcards from my mother’s clutches though. As my parents spent all their spare and leisure moments at the Royal Portrush Golf Club where they were both good golfers, I suspect the postcards circulated there!

1950s British Railways posters, bringing the crowds to Portrush

CSSM, Sundays, & Church
Summers and the many visitors prompted the ardent preachers in Northern Ireland to come to Portrush. CSSM, Childrens’ Special Service Mission, was one of these, conducted by the large and corpulent Rev. Armstrong who preached his gospel on the East Strand, on the beach opposite our house. I joined for a while during the summer and enjoyed meeting others, helping build Armstong’s sand pulpit on the beach over which he would drape his sashes of ecclesiastical authority. Rev. Armstrong organised many sports activities which were a lot of fun.

We had to go to church on Sundays as it was expected of my father as a Bank official, and he could not take the Monday morning remarks at work about any non-attendance the previous day. Services at the Portrush Presbyterian Church were conducted by the Rev. Kyle Alexander, starting at 11am. After singing a few psalms and hymns and preaching the morning lesson to the under 5’s, they were ushered out to Sunday School. At 12:10pm, the Rev. Alexander would launch into his sermon. Occasionally my mother, much to my father’s gross embarrassment, would ‘slip out’ from the pew just before Rev. Alexander started, explaining that she had “forgotten to turn the oven on for the Sunday joint of meat”, nodding, smiling, and stopping briefly to whisper her excuse to people down the aisle on the way out. After a few Sundays she had to stop this as it was predictable every week, and I heard my father tell her that comments were coming back to him at the Bank.

I reminded my Dad of this many years later in Auckland, and he just nodded and smiled, saying that there were possibly others who wanted to do what she did, but did not have the courage! (Or the “brass neck”!)

Left: “This, I discovered tucked behind the lid of a cardboard box. The back of the photo says, ‘Brother Jeff and me, Arcadia promenade, 1959″. I was 17, Jeff was 12. It may be of interest or use. My brother might enjoy it if he sees the blog. Best, Michael”
Right, West Strand, 1960: Gerald Johnston, Brian Minihan, Brian Cunningham, Derwood Magill, Alan Rainey, Irwin Stewart, Rodney Byrne

One Sunday after church, when having been forbidden to go near the rocks and the beach before lunch, I jumped the rocks at Ladies’ Bay to beat the waves – but slipped and fell in, soaking my shoes and long trousers. I would have been 15. As a punishment when I got home, I was instructed to kneel on the floor and bend over my bed as my father gave me six strong whacks on my backside with a flat piece of wood, saying, “This is going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt you.” I am not sure that it did, but I was not going to let him see me brought to tears. And he did not. I stood up and stared at him as I held back the tears of pain, but fair enough, I was told not to jump the rocks and I paid the price.

Hard winters in Portrush
In contrast to the summer months, the winter months between November and March were cold and stormy, with the Atlantic roaring in all its fury, whipped up by the strong northeast winds. From the house, which faced northeast and straight out to sea, the scene was often dramatic with huge surf, or ‘Atlantic Rollers’ as we called them, tumbling around as far out as we could see.

I remember sand which had been whipped by the wind being piled up in the little porch to our front door, and my mother sweeping this regularly. Our lounge windows were continually covered with salt from the sea spray carried on the wind, as the house faced into the teeth of any North Easterly gale. Going up the Main Street in winter was a challenge sometimes, as the wind could be fierce, and if you did meet someone coming the other way, it was heads down into the gale. The wind would chill your ears and nose until they were almost numb, and it blew very hard.

the Station, February 1960

We watched television a lot during the dark evenings. ‘Sunday Night at the London Palladium’ with Bruce Forsyth, ‘Bonanza’, ‘The Cisco Kid’, ‘The Lone Ranger’, and rushing home from school to watch the cartoon show of Yogi Bear! In black and white of course – colour television did not become available until 1970, nine years after I left Northern Ireland.

In the yacht club down by the harbour we played snooker and billiards, and then would go to my friend Irwin Stewart’s house on Mark Street as his mother ran a three-storey boarding house which had a television in a large lounge. Many shops stayed open in the winter, however there were few people on the streets, and it was quiet. There were two cinemas on Main Street, one just up from Forte’s Cafe and the Majestic, further on up, and on the other side. I remember my father took us once around 1957 to see a war film, called ‘The Man Who Never Was’, recently remade into ‘Operation Mincemeat’.

Jack McConaghy at Boggs the Chemist, September 1951, with his new assistant, Sadie Douglas / Jefferson;
Tommy Kane, May 1960, with Ray McConaghy, along Croc-na-mac

Photography was a hobby that developed during those months. It fascinated me, I had read many books on it in the CAI Library, and I put my savings from the Arcadia summer job towards buying a Leica camera – still, the basic model was all I could afford in the shop in Coleraine. Whenever I was out with my friends and at school, the camera came too. It was my dearest possession.

Those days, no instant gratification of photos on your phone, instead I would take my black and white film to Bogg’s the Chemist on Main Street. A week later, the envelope of photographs opened with expectation and trepidation to see what I had produced…. Sometimes I was really pleased, but sometimes disappointment that “it didn’t come out.” Jack would review my photos with me, pointing out where I could have taken something into account, like the sun, shadow, light and contrast. As a young boy I liked Jack very much and appreciated his help and advice, friendship, and welcoming smile and banter when I came to the shop. An affable character, he was always good for a laugh, too! He became a great friend, and later years whenever I was home I popped into see him, as I did with Jean Ross in the confectionery shop across the street.

My interest spread to developing my own films and printing of the photographs. My parents allowed me to convert the “boxroom” at the top of our staircase into my darkroom. For advice, Jack told me where he sent my films and he put me in touch with Tommy Kane.

The Harbour, 1960. Photo taken by me with hand-held Leica camera, to capture the silhouettes with the sun going down over Moville and Donegal, on a summer’s evening. Film processed and printed by me at home in my darkroom.

Daytime, Tommy was on the buses with the Ulster Transport Authority; evenings, I could meet him at his family darkroom premises behind the hotel in Eglinton Street, near the old Catering College. He was a lovely man, with a long neck and a prominent Adam’s apple. Tommy was just as helpful in explaining the development side of photography, and what I needed, what to look out for, and suddenly I was into the world of development tanks, chemicals, enlargers needed to complete the printing process, and then buying the paper on which the film and each photograph was printed. I spent many evenings in the darkroom with Tommy, watching and learning, and like Jack, Tommy too was enormously patient and helpful. Many of my photos are included in this story.

Other technical hobbies, my friend Rodney’s elder brother, Gary, showed me how to build a “crystal set” which was a tiny, primitive radio receiver. I would shop around looking for the parts in Coleraine on the way home from school, and then solder bits and pieces together and connect the wires. It was successful and I listened through an old pair of earphones which I found in a second-hand shop, but the only station I could receive was Radio Luxembourg which broadcast in English from Luxembourg. It broadcast pop music and was supported by commercials, such as:
“The time by my H. Samuel Everite watch is now 10.15 p.m.—precisely!”
I used to listen to it in bed under the bedclothes.

Robinson Crusoe, pantomime, 1961: Alex Diamond and Tony Kane; Rodney Byrne

The streets were quiet in wintertime but local drama and music and other such groups were busy. The annual pantomime was put on by the local Church of Ireland drama group, in December and into the first week or so of the new year, and was a highlight of those winter months. I couldn’t take part as I was not a member of that church but enjoyed helping where I could. I did take a few photographs, and about a year ago posted a photo of three people whose names I couldn’t remember on to a Facebook page on Portrush and replies came from two people saying they were relatives who were amazed at seeing their uncles in panto costume, some 60 years later.

I remember performances by Rossi Duke and Rodney Byrne. One scene on the final night, the fairy called out for her magic wand, left behind unintentionally in the wings, and was instead handed a….. toilet seat, by Rossi Duke – it was memorable.

1960. summer, me at the west strand; right, Christmas

We celebrated a White family Christmas, 1960, at Portrush. My parents and brother Jeff are standing there in front of the tree, a Mr and Mrs. Green, their son Denis and a friend of Jeff’s, and a Matt Gilfillan in the left corner. Me, I had finished school in June 1960, and in limbo had some months helping out in classes at Inst before and after my interview in London for the Civil Service, in November.

In that interview, me with my Senior ‘A’ Levels in languages, I asked to be considered for the the Immigration department. And just before Christmas a very official OHMS envelope arrived, confirming that I was appointed as…. a trainee Tax Inspector with the Inland Revenue! I was 18, and this would be my last carefree family Christmas at home, before I would start work in Surrey, in March 1961.

Left, Geraldine, Irwin, Angela, Pat and Derek Watson in 1960, with “props” for the occasion!;
right, February 1961,

During those winter months as teenagers, we would gather in various homes listening to the new records. A few experimented with smoking cigarettes but it did not appeal to me and I never did. There was some beer, but I cannot remember any of us getting drunk and certainly any sort of drug had not been heard of. Some of us in our group of about 10, as we got a bit older, started pairing off into couples and it was good fun to find out that “She has dropped him and is now going out with ———-.” The photo above right is February 1961, the month before I went to England, me with Sandra Quigley at the Boathouse in Coleraine.

I left Portrush in March 1961 and went to England to join the Civil Service, visiting back to see family and friends in the summer, and then for Christmas.”

David writes: The BBC has recently been celebrating with Sadie Jefferson on her 71 years, since 1951, of working at the same chemist location on Main St. in Portrush. Looking for photos of her at the chemist for the BBC articles, Jack McConaghy’s son Ray has just found this previously-unseen photo in Jack’s photo albums. Sadie of course on the right; in the centre is the pharmacist, Jack McConaghy.

The young man on the left was unknown to us.

Last week, I received the memorabilia from a Michael White, celebrating his 80th birthday in New Zealand, and writing up his teenage Portrush story. He mentions doing some photography at Bogg’s the Chemist.

Ray looks again at Jack’s photo album. It is meticulously captioned, and says,
‘Dec 1961 [Jack McConaghy] with Sadie & ……..Michael White ‘.

It is amazing!!! Michael had visited the shop to see Jack when home for his first Christmas from England. The photo was taken with Jack’s box Brownie camera, by the then owner of Boggs Chemist, George McCann (‘I seem to remember a shortish baldheaded man, also in the shop’) and it was in Jack’s possession. Now, 61 years later, Michael is seeing this photo for the very first time, and is so delighted, it representing the years of friendship with Jack.

And Sadie remembers: “I so enjoyed reading the blog! Michael worked with us on his summer school holidays. He was a lovely young man. He went to Coleraine Inst. After he left us to go to university [well, Civil Service in England] I lost touch with him. I was amazed that he ended up in NZ !!  I can’t believe he is 80 now. I knew his Dad,  he was in the old Northern bank next door to the shop. He was a gentleman.”

Michael continues: “The next year, 1962, my Dad was transferred back to Belfast and I lost contact with N. Ireland and Portrush for some years. In England in the 1960s, I met Jacqui, my future wife, at a party in her Nurses’ Home at Kingston Hospital in 1966. Her parents had just emigrated to New Zealand and she was under stern orders to follow on completion of her training in 1968. Instead, we married in 1968 and she stayed while I completed my accountancy course at Night School.

Then, after 6 years with the Inland Revenue, after some consideration we set off in pursuit of a huge adventure and the challenge of a new life in a new country. We boarded the SS Australis at Southampton on 3rd July 1970.

Six weeks later, Jacqui and I sailed into Auckland in 1970. I was greeted with some reserve by my new parents in law, who were miffed that I had not asked them for their daughter’s hand in marriage!
Well, I replied, You weren’t there.

Michael White, today, and with six of my 12 grandchildren at “Hobbiton” from ‘Lord of the Rings’, in the northern half of the North Island, about under 2 hours drive south of Auckland; 80th birthday celebrations

There followed for me an interesting and successful career in finance and financial management. Our family grew, four children, until sadly my lovely Jacqui died in 2006 at the age of 59.

“This is “Takapuna Beach,” 5 minutes drive from where I live, 15 minutes drive from the city centre.”
Hmm…. which is better: New Zealand, or the East Strand?

I now look after myself in a very pleasant retirement village near the beach on Auckland’s North Shore.

It may be many years and miles away from Portrush but the ties are still there. I met a couple from Bangor and mentioned that a friend from Portrush, Liz Clarke, had moved to Bangor with her family. They knew her and told me that she was married and living in New Plymouth in New Zealand. We caught up and have been good friends with her and her husband John since about 1972.

I have returned to the ‘Port’ several times over the years from my New Zealand home. Having just celebrated my 80th birthday, I have really enjoyed gathering up my memories and my photographs of teenager years in one of the best places on Earth, one of the best phases of my life, and I hope that you have enjoyed them too.”

Part I – “Portrush Tales” – from The Other Side of the World – Michael White
Part II – “Portrush Tales” – to The Farthest Shore – Michael White

Links to related “Portrush Tales” blogs –
The Swingin’ Sixties!
Portrush, Easter – My Day in Barry’s, Barry’s and the Wall of Death
1600s – a Century of Trouble (about Dunluce castle)
“You must see the Giant’s Causeway”
Sunday School Excursion to Portrush (day trips to Portrush, 1950s)

With thanks to……
Michael refers to Rodney Byrne’s “Vintage Port” with superb descriptions of characters, events, and life in general in and around the Port in the 1950’s
Photographs courtesy Michael White, Ray McConaghy, Pauline Hunt, David Martin
Postcards from Sheila Brown
Archive photographs from History of Portrush Facebook group

“Portrush Tales” – from The Other Side of the World – Michael White (Part I)

Portrush folks, as you know, are pretty canny. Be it loving the beauty of Portrush and not wanting to leave, or going off for education or work and coming back later, or going elsewhere and settling – whichever, never losing the connection with ‘Home’.
These ‘Portrush Tales’ are being read in 66 countries of the world – I guess where Portrush folks are now living or working or holidaying, but still wanting to keep in touch.

Countries (in red/pink) where folks are reading Portrush Tales (nobody in Greenland though, or Russia.)

Some Portrush people move away as far as Coleraine or Ballymoney or places like that. Me, the last handful of years I’ve been in Munich, about 1,200 miles from Portrush. More impressive is Michael White – in Auckland, New Zealand, the other side of the world – ten times further away, 12,000 miles distant. He just celebrated his 80th birthday; it is over 60 years since he left Portrush but he looks back to his teenage years there in the late 1950s, the formative years of his life, and remembers…… 

My 1956 letter to my aunts written at the age of 13  (Betsey was our Corgi dog,  and Charley, having been dug out of the furniture van, was my tortoise !! )

“February 1956. I was 13. We moved from Belfast to No. 2, Strandmore, Portrush, as my father had been transferred to the branch of the Northern Bank in the town – then, next to Bogg’s the Chemist and opposite Forte’s ice cream parlour.

Michael White – Arcadia 1960, and today

I clearly remember the journey by steam train, and the letter to my aunts talking about the trip up. Dad was waiting at the station for my mother, my brother Jeffrey, and me, and I remember our walk from the station to the house, which was in a terrace of semi-detached houses owned by a stern looking lady, Mrs. Stewart, always accompanied by her live-in friend, Miss Holbrook

The glorious view looked straight out over a low-walled front lawn to the East Strand and the Atlantic Ocean, stormy and brutal in winter, the Giant’s Causeway, with Scotland’s Mull of Kintyre and Campbeltown far away in the distance.

View of the East Strand from Strandmore, Christmas 1961

The house was accessed off Causeway Street and along Craigvara Terrace to the flight of steps leading down to the promenade. Halfway down the steps on the right is the entrance to Strandmore – a bit further and you came to the shop, a rather smelly confectionery shop run by a Miss Dick. She would remove the cat which slept on the chocolate bars. If I got my feet wet when jumping the rocks at Ladies’ Bay, she let me dry my socks in front of her electric fire before I went home! It did nothing for the chocolate!!

Our house was narrow, two storeys. Downstairs was the kitchen, a small separate dining room and the small separate “front room” or lounge, all with fireplaces. There was a small, enclosed back yard with the washing line, and coal house to store coal which was delivered in black sacks which the coalman would hoist on to his back from the back of the truck on the street, stagger down the alleyway from Causeway Street and back pathway to the yard, and with a swing off his back, would empty the sack. He might have had two or three sacks to deliver to us and then on to the next house. He was covered in coal dust, black from head to toe, and I distinctly remember that before lorries, a large Clydesdale horse would pull the coal cart along Causeway Street. One of my jobs was to chop sticks or kindling for the fire from old wooden orange boxes, and I would do this in the yard. To keep meat or other food fresh, the food was kept outside in the yard in a cabinet with a perforated door, and this was called the “meat safe.”

Our house was the first of the 2 storey semi detached; with my brother Jeff, taken in May this year

Upstairs there were three bedrooms – a double and single at the front and a single at the back. Next to the bathroom and toilet at the top of the staircase was a “box room” or storeroom, which in later years I used as a dark room for my photography hobby.

The house at Portrush in the mid 1950s had neither fridge nor freezer nor washing machine. My mother did all the washing by hand, then put the clothes through the mangle in the yard by inserting the clothes between two large wooden rollers mounted on an iron frame and turning a side handle to rotate the rollers, squeezing out the water. We changed clothes and had a bath once a week. Hot water for a bath came from a wetback behind the kitchen range which was an enclosed fire on which pot and pans could be heated, instead of the gas stove. If the fire in the stove wasn’t lit, we had no running hot water and my mother had to boil a kettle of water for my father to shave each morning. This would be left for him at the foot of the stairs. The fire was lit once a week, so that we could have our weekly bath! Showers? We had never heard of showers.

Left: early 1900s photo – Boggs the Chemist on the left, then the Northern Bank (before mergers and its re-location up Main St). Right: my Dad, Louis White, Cashier at the Northern Bank in Portrush, from 1956 to his transfer back to Belfast in October 1962 (photo 1970, visiting us in New Zealand).

School & good friends
The afternoon of the day that I arrived, I made friends with a boy of my age who lived next door, Gerald Johnston, and Rodney Byrne who lived in the last house in our terrace. They both went to Coleraine Inst and I was due to start there the day after we arrived in Portrush. My other close friends were Irwin Stewart and his future wife, Penny Trench, now living in Denver, Colorado, and Alan Rainey, who sadly died at far too young an age.

At one time, and I cannot remember the reason, Gerald and I fell out. He sometimes took a delight in practical jokes which often were not funny and seemed always to be to his advantage. Somehow, we had to sort out our disagreement, whatever it was, and Rodney and Irwin arranged that Gerald and I settle it in the flat area in the sand dunes off the East Strand, by fighting it out. We did so, I won the scrap, and friendship was reinstated.

Upper Sixth, Inst – Irwin Stewart, Alan Rainey, Michael White, Rodney Byrne

My long grey school trousers were made of a rough serge type material which was very itchy, and so uncomfortable that in the end I wore my long pyjama pants underneath to make it a bit easier. When we changed for PE (or “Gym” as it was known), some guys used to laugh that I wore my pyjamas to school, but a few others thought it was a good idea as they had the same problem of itchiness. Soon, several boys wore their “jammies” underneath their school trousers.

My school shirts for Coleraine Inst had separate detachable collars which were sent away to the laundry and came back starched. These collars were extremely stiff, uncomfortable to wear, and were attached to the shirt by a stud which went through a hole in the back of the collar and the shirt at the back of my neck. If a collar was a bit worn and starting to fray on the top edge, being starched so stiff it would chafe and rub my neck, hurting all week, as I had to wear the same one. I hated them.

I would borrow a lot of books from the library in the Town Hall but homework dominated the evenings during the week. , as I had work to do on at least five subjects, plus occasionally I had to learn a four or five verse poem by perhaps either Wordsworth or Keats, or a piece from one of Shakespeare’s plays, and be able to recite it in class the next day. Failure to do so, would incur a detention after school. I remember learning the item during the half hour journey on the bus to school in the mornings.

Summers at the Port
Portrush earned its business from visitors from Scotland and England and other parts of Ireland during the summer months of June to August. In the 1950s it was the mecca of the North of Ireland, and the population of the town would swell to such large numbers that the streets were crowded, families and kids with buckets and spades crammed the two beaches, the amusement arcades were packed, the bingo halls were busy, the boarding houses and hotels were full. The seas were calm, the sun shone, and we had all the fun of a popular seaside town in the 1950s.

Arcadia 1950s

Our house was built into the side of a hill, and down a long flight of steps to the seafront was the Arcadia Ballroom. There were dances every night in the summer between June and September from 8pm to midnight, to the music of Dave Glover and his Showband. Couples would waltz around under the mirrored rotating ball hanging from the ceiling, or jive to all the latest pop tunes of the 1950s. Sometimes summer afternoon dances were put on if it was wet, and I would sneak in and watch the drummer in the band with admiration. He was Ernie Hicks, known as “Ernie Hicks behind the Sticks,” and occasionally during the interval, or when the place was a bit quiet, he gave me lessons on the drums.

Frank Moore, from the local photographers, dressed in his white coat with “Grimason’s” written on the back in red and his cheesecutter cap, would pace up and down the East Strand promenade below our house with his Leica camera in its brown leather case hanging around his neck, mingling with crowds on the promenade and calling out very importantly, “Holiday snaps, get your holiday snaps, ready tomorrow at Grimason’s at the Blue Pool.”

The Blue Pool was a local attraction with a large inlet from the sea in the rocks, with mounted diving boards and spectator areas where perhaps once a week in the summer evenings, local teenagers would give public diving displays to the great enjoyment of the crowd. My friend Derwood Magill was a great performer and very good off the high board, and for a few years he was always introduced over the public address system as ’13-year-old Derwood Magill’. His speciality was a twist with a pike and a tuck, entering the water with barely a splash.

Rodney Byrne, Irwin Stewart and Michael White, Portrush 1961
Right, diving display at the Blue Pool

A permanent attraction in the town was Barry’s, the funfair run by the Trufelli family. I had a summer job on the dodgems when I was sixteen, collecting the money and freeing up ‘traffic jams’. Barry’s was full of attractions like the Waltzer, the Big Wheel, and the Wall of Death, where motor cyclists rode their machines round and around from the floor to the top of a very high circular wooden wall, going so fast around the walls that they maintained their position at the top by centrifugal force, almost at right angles to the floor.

Barry’s was packed in the summer and on entering the place, the noise of everything was incredible, together with the smell of electricity from the overhead electric contacts of the bumper cars. These contacts were on long poles attached to the back of the cars and would spark and fizzle with blue and white flashes of electricity from the metal ceiling when it was in full swing. The noise from all the machines was deafening.

West Strand, 1960, From left, Michael White, Gerald Johnston and Irwin Stewart

Summers were a lot of fun for us as we grew up to be teenagers and discovered music. Bill Haley and the Comets with ‘Rock around the Clock’ had just come on the scene around 1955, then followed Cliff Richard and the Shadows with ‘Living Doll’, Elvis Presley with ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, Buddy Holly with ‘Peggy Sue’ and ‘Rave On’, Roy Orbison with ‘Only the Lonely’, and Connie Francis, the Everly Brothers, Ricky Nelson, and many others. Barry’s had a myriad of slot machines and several juke boxes, and we would gather around, put a threepenny coin in the slot, the mechanism would come to life, select the 45 rpm record from the stack, drop it on to the turntable, and as teenagers we would have 2 minutes 30 seconds of listening to our favourite tune.

‘Skiffle’ was a popular form of music in the 1950s with Lonnie Donegan as the most popular English recording star of that genre. Five of us formed our own skiffle group in the 1959 summer, with my friend Derwood Magill (of Magill’s Grocery Shop just off Main Street at the northern end of the town) who was very good on the guitar and as vocalist, but we had to make some other instruments. We played on the promenade just below Rock Ryan, above Ladies’ Bay. I was on the double bass, which was an old large square plywood box called a ‘tea chest’ (in which tea was imported and the empty boxes were available from the grocer on Main Street). I drilled a hole in the top, inserted a long thin iron bar to which was attached some fishing line with the other end of the line pulled tight to a nail on the outside of the chest, and this was my double bass. We had another tea chest acting as the drum kit.

Derwood went on to become a very well-known singer and entertainer in the Sydney, Australia, nightclub scene and I did catch up with him in the 1980s in Sydney, though he died about 1990 when quite young.

West Strand, 1960, L-R: Gerald Johnston, Brian Minihan, Brian Cunningham, Derwood Magill, Alan Rainey, Irwin Stewart, Rodney Byrne

Another favourite summer pastime as late teenagers was to sit in the Lido Cafe on Main Street listening to the records played over the speakers by the owner, Mrs. Trufelli, who also owned Barry’s. She knew my father quite well and may have banked with the Northern Bank in the town. The cafe was the place to gather, and we drank Coke or coffee.

A major feature in the late summer was the Fireworks Display which was held on the tennis courts at the north end of the town. Captain “Tiny” Shutt was known to us all and he organised the display. The best vantage point was from Ramore Head above the courts, and we would go as a group of young teenage boys and girls. Sometimes with a bit of romancing, a girl would go with you to the ‘Fireworks’ as a special date! I remember one Fireworks night asking Jenny Hill of Hill’s in Coleraine if she would go out as a regular date, and joy of joys when she said, “Yes”!

The Harbour, 1960 (Photo taken by Michael with hand-held Leica camera. Film processed and printed by me at home in my darkroom.) Right: fireworks display advert, Portrush 1958, as organised by Capt Shutt

‘Portrush Rock’ was a big seller in the confectionery shops. This was a solid stick – it was not called ‘rock’ for nothing – of hard, sweet, pink, confectionery with a peppermint taste, about 300mm long and 50mm in diameter, wrapped in cellophane, but imprinted in the centre right through it in pink, were the words, ‘Portrush Rock’. It was a big souvenir to take home to grandparents, but who after trying to eat it had to book a trip to the dentist, it was so hard and solid. The only way to eat was to break it with a hammer and even munching the little bits of ‘rock’ was hazardous.

The East and West Strands were packed during those days. We enjoyed the summers: they were warm, we played soccer in the sand dunes or on the beach, and we would spend a while in the sea. We swam in the harbour, jumping or diving off the high diving board or sunbathing by the red changing boxes on the harbour wall. We went snorkelling and spearing plaice, we hired dinghies in the harbour, fished for mackerel in the harbour or from the rocks, and occasionally would land an Atlantic salmon. The water never seemed to be cold, there were no wetsuits, and we just accepted it for what it was.

In 2008, my old school friend Rodney Byrne gave me a copy of his excellent book on the history of Portrush, “Vintage Port”, and part of it does give a good flavour of life there in the 1950s. He writes about an incident when four of us – Rod, Irwin, Alan, and me – decided to take a dinghy outside the harbour, even though a storm was brewing, and we had to be rescued when the weather turned very ugly! It makes good reading, but we were so lucky that day.

Michael White and Irwin Stewart at Portrush 1960

We went to some large limestone caves in the White Rocks at the end of the East Strand, and would go on out to Dunluce Castle, which was in ruins but quite spooky in the dark evenings, and we have some parties there. Across the road from Dunluce was an old graveyard but the inscriptions on the tombstones had been beaten out by the weather, even in the 1950s.

Entrance fees to Dunluce Castle and the Giant’s Causeway and Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge were non-existent in our teenage days. The rope bridge was not a tourist attraction as it is today, it was for fishermen to get across the gorge between the mainland and a small island, and was functional and not built with much health and safety in mind. At that time, the floor of the bridge was a set of narrow width boards spaced about 300mm apart, some 30 metres above the sea, and these were looped through two holes either side of each board on to ropes underneath, the ends of which were tied to rusty iron hooks at either side of the gorge. There was a rope handrail either side of the bridge, but the ropes were only attached to a hook either side of the gorge and not to the bridge itself. It was good fun, especially when we started to make it swing! Health and Safety was not a requirement!

Summer at the Port, and hard winters too. I loved Portrush, the two very long beaches, the harbour, the summer, the packed holiday atmosphere of the town, the wildness of the sea and the chill in winter, the contrast in seasons, the Giant’s Causeway in the distance, Dunluce Castle, and my friends. I remember distinctly walking our corgi dog, Betsy, along the East Strand beach in front of our house, vowing that I would never leave Portrush.

But of course I did.

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END OF PART I .

Part I – “Portrush Tales” – from The Other Side of the World – Michael White
Part II – “Portrush Tales” – to The Farthest Shore – Michael White

With thanks to……
Michael refers to Rodney Byrne’s “Vintage Port” with superb descriptions of characters, events, and life in general in and around the Port in the 1950’s
Photographs courtesy Michael White, Ray McConaghy, Pauline Hunt, David Martin
Postcards from Sheila Brown
Archive photographs from History of Portrush Facebook group

Links to related “Portrush Tales” blogs –
The Swingin’ Sixties!
Portrush, Easter – My Day in Barry’s, Barry’s and the Wall of Death
1600s – a Century of Trouble (about Dunluce castle)
“You must see the Giant’s Causeway”
Sunday School Excursion to Portrush (day trips to Portrush, 1950s)

100 years of Badminton at the Kelly Hall

It was a huge delight to meet Cyril & Margaret Davison a few days ago. They were really marvellous, set up badminton at Portrush when I was a kid, working to get the Kelly Hall refurbished and courts marked up to play there, and got the badminton club up and running and doing rather well in the area leagues. Jonny Dobbin says about the 1991 photo below, “That was the year that I won the most improved player in the Ballymoney and District league. Cyril coached me – and he was the reason that me and others from the club achieved local, district and country honours.”

Jonny Dobbin & Cyril Davison, 1991 ; Cyril & Margaret Davison, 30June2022

The Kelly Hall was used too for bowling and the Church Lads Brigade and other activities under the auspices of Holy Trinity church, and folks like May Graham tell me of going to school there before the primary school was built in the 1950s, and of their family being the builders of the hall back in the 1890s, and it was venue for making pantomime stage sets!

Of the Holy Trinity Badminton Club, Cyril Davison started it up in about 1970, and I started playing there when I was still primary school age. It met first in Dunluce St hall – I guess that site became the Gold Rush arcade. The club was amazingly popular, so much so that Cyril had to arrange us in pairs, lined up either side of the hall, hitting the shuttlecock across to each other – as he said, it was the only way to ensure that everyone got a chance to play and practice.

“Members of the Holy Trinity Badminton Club, Portrush, pctured with trophies won in a very successful season.”

The club then moved to the Kelly Hall when it was refurbished. The club developed really well and there were a few of the teams at various levels in local leagues, with awards like in the photograph above.

League match nights, and regular club nights – and some mucking about nights. One evening we were warming up before a game, knocking the shuttle around. One comes over and I swish at it. Unfortunately my partner Kathleen Diamond reaches to catch it, to start serving to start the match. But both her hand and my badminton racquet suffered in the collision. But at least me delivering the ‘Tele meant that I had pocket money to buy the replacement.

I look for photographs of the badminton club but do you remember the 1970s, the days before mobile phones and not a million photographs of everything? I had only found the one photograph of the club, above, and then Clive Shorter produced a few more, of 1977. But David Downs says, “If only we had camera phones back then, knock knees Martin wouldn’t want any images wee small arse around a badminton court even if he was OK at it.”

Small arse? Knock knees”? I am shocked. That photo, below right, of me practicing in our house, about 1974. My knock knees pose must have been good enough to earn those little medals and prizes, encouragement for improvement over the year
My regular playing group was that under-16 team shown on the left (and all the lads were golfing buddies too – though I have no idea why Andy H has a shuttlecock on his nose). It was great tragedies that Sandra C and Janette K, school classmates, were taken away too early from us.

George Shorter remembers Cyril’s great humour. “I always remember Cyril walking into the Kelly Hall and asking ‘Can anyone ride a bike?’ If you replied Yes enthusiastically, he replied, ‘Well come and help me get this stuff out of the car.’

League matches meant traipsing around to badminton clubs at back-of-the-end-of-the-earth places – Hoescht social club, the Strand club in Portstewart, Aghadowey, …. One hall out in the country somewhere, so narrow there was just room for the badminton court, with about 1mm separation to the wall. And close matches often lasted until after midnight – not good when school the next morning, and my Mum and Dad didn’t like it. One match I was particularly late home, after 1am – mum and dad were still up waiting, oh err I am in trouble. But I was saved from a worse telling-off because my brother’s Hi-fi Shop in Belfast had been bombed earlier that evening and they were up, anxious for news that everyone was OK, not primarily because of my lateness. That was the first of two Hi-fi shop bombings.

About 1977, and into the dizzy heights of the Minor C league, and photos include Tom Hentry, George Harkness, Tommy Peters, Eva O’Neill, Sandra and Heather Crawford, Thelma, and Cyril & Margaret, Sammy & Sadie and ‘the splendid array of trophies’ (all badminton newspaper cuttings courtesy Clive Shorter) !! oh dear I can’t remember all the names, let me know of any blanks !!

An annual feature of the club was the 24 hour badminton marathon, for fund-raising. They were great fun, and especially the lovely cooked breakfast on the Saturday morning. We really appreciated the effort everyone put in to support the activities. Badminton marathon, early hours of the Saturday morning, I always remember, Mr Sam McGuinness come along, just sitting quietly watching, but just such as encouragement that he took the time to come out and support the event.
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I had thought that the club starting in 1970s was a first for Portrush, and that the marathon was a new and creative things to do – but who said, There is nothing new under the sun? I am gobsmacked to find a newspaper article of 1937, about an all-night tournament with prizes (wow when we did the 24-hour, one aimed to pace oneself to manage the duration – not a competitive tournament!).

And I see the description of the annual meeting of the Holy Trinity Church Badminton Club, in 1922, including familiar names like Alex Lee (photographer family), Lundy, and me.
And badminton matches were being played by the ‘Portrush Club’ at the Kelly Hall, in 1917 – wow newspapers are amazing, with that same edition reporting on battles at the Somme and of plots to murder the PM.

Even in 1914 the ‘Portrush Club’ was making donations to Belgian refugee fund.

Discovering that badminton was so ancient in the town, I look back at the story of the ‘Kelly Memorial Hall’, built in 1896. Who was Kelly anyway? Well, a Church of Ireland minister who supported schooling and education as key for the community and who pushed for the development of a school, but who tragically passed away before being able to complete it. The quotation for teacher’s residence and school, of 1894, below right, was to R J Martin Esq., from builders in Freddie Fleming’s family, and the school opened in 1896. It was the ‘outpost’ of Portrush, beyond was the sandhills of the Triangle golf course.

When I played in the 1970s, badminton club nights were Wednesdays and Saturdays. The Church Lads Brigade, CLB, with folks like buddy Kyle Miller, met in the hall as well, on Fridays. And George Shorter in Hamilton Place says he was in those two organisations and also in the Bowling club – he was in the Kelly Hall every evening of the week.

The CLB started originally soon after the Hall was built. Their activities for an exhibition in 1899 are described, with (pretty shocking) drills of shooting, bayonet drill, and stretcher drill!!! Maureen Kane shows me the CLB membership card in 1923 of her dad, our neighbour Mr Tommy Kane who worked at the primary school. With a knight in armour, it looks a bit militaristic for my liking, but I’ve lived in an era of largely no-war in Europe for 75 years – that is, until Ukraine.

Kelly Hall, CLB, 1966, and people have identified: Revs. Roycroft & Wilson; Rodney Magee, Jimmy Arnott, Norman Mckay, Eddie Clements, Michael McConnell, William Bacon, John Charlie, Geoffrey, Morris, Sammy Johnston & daughter Daphne (photo courtesy Rodney Magee)

Mr Kane’s CLB membership card is dated 30th November 1923. If there was some form of membership ceremony or parade, it is my guess that it didn’t happen at the Kelly Hall – as it had burned down in that summer.

1923, and a fire at the garage destroys about 30 vehicles and the Kelly Hall

That extensive fire at the local Stewarts garage destroyed two dozen charabangs and sedan cars, and the “most extensive fireworks ever seen in the district.” The Kelly Hall was destroyed.

The Kelly Memorial School was re-built and re-opened a year later. Sheila Stirrup’s research has found the class registration books in the PRONI archives, with the column on the left with the emotive, “On Roll when school was burned 19.7.23”. Ray McConaghy passed me the photo of the school class in 1928. “My dad’s class, Kelly school. He is 5th from the right on the back row.” His dad (Jack McConaghy) is the chemist with Sadie Jefferson in 1951.

Ken Mcallister: “We used to watch the caretaker lock up after setting up the net for the evening, and Denny Mcaleese and I watched him putting the key under the mat. Two hours playing badminton – pure luxury.”

And it being ‘Portrush Tales,’ a story from me? It is Easter holidays from school. One afternoon, me and Kyle and George and Mark McC get the Kelly Hall door key to go in to play for a few hours. Oh, nuisance! the bowling mats are spread out. We push them over to one side and set up the badminton net so that we can play.

Later, the caretaker tells us: she had spent hours doing the laying out the mats and vacuuming them, to perfecto bowling green flatness for the match that evening. And we had just pushed them over to one side against the wall, and then pulled them back after our games. She had to do the preparation all over again. And we got the rollicking.

About 1977: Sammy & Sadie Kane, Clive Shorter, Cyril & Margaret, Tommy Peters, Thelma, Elaine Adjey, and oh dear but I can’t remember all the names – well it is 45 years ago !!

As well as at the Kelly Hall, Cyril also did badminton coaching at the primary school, including to Jonny Dobbin in the mid-80s. The badminton strip and the football strip are surprisingly similar! (“Those horrible sports strips for all sports. Absolute nipple wreckers!” , says Jonny.)

Photos, 1986. Sports strip, similar between badminton and football teams?
Cyril also taught badminton at the primary school, teaching Jonny in the mid-80s. Badminton. Starting back row left. Jonny Dobbin, Miss Steele, Richard Hassan. Front row from left. Shane McDonald, Richard Kettyle, Peter Smyth, Stephen Mckenzie
Football. Starting back row left. Richard Hassan, Jonny Dobbin, Edwin Burgess, Rowland Robinson, Nigel Smyth, Miss Boyd. Front row from left. Peter Elliott, Shane McDonald, Peter Smyth, Jason Quigley, Richard (Archie) Kettyle, Stephen Mckenzie, James Allen

Raymond Mcneill: “Well done Cyril & Margaret! An account of badminton days gone by. When the Saturday night at the  was brilliant, ending with fish & chips and Match of the Day!  it!!”
David: yup, agreed! Battered sausage and chips at the Dolphin, on the way home!

Cyril was heading towards retirement in the late 1990s, with some months back and forth to Spain, continue to coaching badminton to kids in Spain. Jonny Dobbin, back in Portrush after uni, stepped up to take the club forward in the late 1990s.

On the left: winners of the Ballymena & District League & Cup, 1999: Clive Shorter, Jonny Dobbin, Cyril Davison, Steven Hastings; front: Sharon Kennedy, Margaret Davison, Margaret Weir
Right, back row: ladies Sharon Kennedy, Margaret Davison, Margaret, Pamela Smyth
Front row: William Snelling, Stephen Hastings, Clive Shorter, Jonny Dobbin, Tommy McCarroll

Left: the junior members who represented Ballymoney and District at the Jack Wilson Trophy (all Ulster under-17 years old badminton districts) – Andrew Harte, Johnny Dobbin, Anne Hopkins, William Snelling, Aslan Bucukoglu
Anne Hopkins. “Yes me in centre. I was only around 13 at the time and don’t remember much about it but I remember going to Donegal and playing badminton in the tournament.”
Right: the Junior badminton club in 1991. Back row left to right: Alan Stewart, Steven McMinn, Jonny Dobbin, Cyril Davison, William Snelling, Chris Graham, Richard Weir. Front row: Rosemary Payne, Katherine Snelling, Claire Mclain, Anne Hopkins, Andrea Weir

The Kelly Hall was refurbished in 2005, and with increasing demands for the hall its uses were revised.

Jonny records, “Cyril & Margaret were so awesome, they coached at the badminton club from about 1970, and they taught me at primary school sports as well, in the mid 80s. So appreciative of Cyril’s coaching, and that Cyril was the reason that me and others from the club achieved local, district and country honours.”

And at least as important as badminton skills, I’m sure that tact and diplomacy are important parts of any town or church activity, like with the Kelly Hall where a number of different groups and users vy for the hall. But I think Cyril and Margaret, and Sammy and Sadie Kane, were really great at just ensuring everything went smoothly. I think it was Sammy that pulled together a few bowling evenings, where the badminton folks would play the bowling club. As you would expect the bowling club won, but at least my rink managed one draw, our best result. I remember at that evening that Sammy spoke about the value of church togetherness and of the younger and older folks being together. Sammy was also a leader in the CLBs as well and the lads appreciated his leadership, with courtesy and respect.

And the example of contribution to the community too: sometimes with Cyril’s coaching would be interrupted as he heard the fire station siren and dashed off to serve the community. And the club played variously in Coleraine and Ballymoney and Ballymena district leagues. Jonny says of lots of late nights through the week and lots of inter-district events at the weekends, and really appreciated that senior members gave up a lot of their time to ship the younger players around the church halls of Ulster and then up to Belfast for the ‘majors’ games.

30June2022: David Martin, Sheila Brown, and Cyril & Margaret Davison

So, 100 years of badminton at the Kelly Hall in Portrush, from early 1900s to early 2000s. So much respect for Cyril and Margaret Davison, and Sammy and Sadie Kane, and Jonny Dobbin, for the parts they played in training up youngsters in badminton skills, and in life lessons too.

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Photos, courtesy Jonny Dobbin, Maureen Kane, Ray McConaghy, David Martin
Newspaper cuttings of badminton teams, courtesy Clive Shorter & Jonny
Newspaper archive: https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/

Dunluce School plays Billy Liar, 1980

I am up in the Lighting gantry, up at the top left of the Dunluce School stage, looking down on the actors as they Exeunt left and they Exeunt right. I see Bobby/Billy’s Dad as he enters the stage – but he walks through the “wall” part of the stage set. Someone in the audience shouts, Hey he can walk through walls! Bobby is in a fluster and turns around and walks through the doorway proper….. then he pauses for the stage dramatic moment, before shouting over the buzz of conversation on the stage, with his big lines,

“Mother! Mother! I think she’s dead!!”

For the earlier scenes me and Kenny Robinson have been gently sliding the stage lighting controls, pretty heavy duty mechanical sliders, to fade up or fade down the lights for the scenes through the play. But this is our big moment – that speech is the dramatic cue, and we slam all the lighting knobs on this big lighting panel down to OFF – there is a big clang!! and the whole hall is plunged into darkness. It is the interval.

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
In this blog, the fantasy world of Billy Liar is meshed with the equally bizarre and surreal life of Sheila’s upper Sixth, a year above me at Dunluce School.

Sheila Chambers/Kane takes up the story of the play:
“Billy Liar was performed in my upper 6th year in March 1980 after we persuaded Mr Logue to resurrect the tradition of the school play. Jim Drain played the hero, Karen Hamill was his mum, Bobby Hutchinson his dad, Jacqueline Tomlinson his granny. Arnold Gribben played Billy’s best mate. Billy’s three girlfriends were played by Allyson Montgomery, Patricia Bell, and me (totally cast against type as ‘the tarty one!’ )

And Sheila also describes life in Sixth Form:

“Brian Connelly had a wee blue Mini and passed his test before any of the rest of us, and I remember he would let me drive it occasionally (I did have my provisional licence) on runs round the coast road during free periods … can you imagine sixth formers getting away with that nowadays?? If we had crashed or caused injury to someone else … doesn’t bear thinking about!

“Thing is – we didn’t sneak out … being very proper and sensible, Head girl, I was assigned to request permission from the vp, Mr McKee, to nip out (I don’t think I could possibly have told him we were going in a car!!) and for some reason he let us!!

Karen Hamill/Maguire:
“Yeah the bit about Bobby that you mentioned , I was on set with him when he did that – hilarious!
“I remember worrying about one of my lines having a ‘bloody’ in it . I remember working for ages to get the accent right. Then I couldn’t stop doing it .
“I remember Mr Logue believing in us and sharing home made bread with seeds in made by his partner at our late night rehearsals. And I remember some of my lines to this day.”

“David Knox, a farmer’s son, also had a wee car – a mini clubman van, and I remember a crowd of us getting permission to go out, and about 6 of us piled in the back and went to Portrush to see Karen Hamill’s brother’s wedding at Portrush Presbyterian. We watched the wedding party go in (Karen in a splendid bridesmaid’s outfit), then sat unobtrusively at the back of the church for the ceremony, and then had chips from Rudi’s and headed back to school!
Even as I’m typing this I’m thinking, did that really happen??

“Oh hold that! It wasn’t Karen’s brother’s wedding … it was Barbara Jeffers’ sister’s wedding!! Barbara was the bridesmaid we went to see! Wedding should have been in Ballywillan Presbyterian but they were having major renovations so Portrush was used instead. I do, however remember the date …. 10th September of 1979

Karen: ‘A told ‘im- straigh! A said , that’s not the way we do things in this ‘ouse!! A said , if you want to go on ‘oliday, you can come t’Morcombe with us, an’ if you don’t, you can stop ‘at ‘ome!!

Sheila: Also …. how can 1981 now be 40 years ago?? I was shocked to hear someone say this on TV the other day!! How can I possibly be 60 in 10 months time?? I’m only 27 in my head!

“When we were in 6th form there were two rooms within the library that we could use as “study” rooms, apart from the designated 6th form room further up the cul de sac of a corridor, behind the state of the art Language Lab. One of these library rooms was supposedly used to enhance our A level English studies, and every so often I was assigned by “the lads” in the class to go to Mr Binnie and request the loan of a record player and a couple of Shakespeare LPs … The Tempest and one of the Richard’s .. the 3rd or 4th ?? … to listen to real actors reading the lines from the plays we were studying.

“Of course, when I got back, it was Led Zeppelin, Def Leppard and Horselips that were played on the turntable, not Shakespeare! … and not my type of easy listening at all!”

David: up the lighting, Kenny Robinson had good electrics knowledge. Cables went to the gantry of lights – pretty high currents, pretty high power. He was concerned about the reel of cable and how each turn of the wire interacts with the next one when tightly wound together – inductance. So he arranged the coil to be wound loosely along the length of the wooden rail of the gantry.
And that was my first exposure to inductance – which is actually what I am working on in Germany now. Like, how your smartphone gets charged when you put it on a wireless charger in Starbucks – how the magnetic fields interact with each other, based on magnetism and magnetic fields.

But here’s poor me, now working in Germany, with my great northern Irish voice…. Last year there was a ‘Girl’s Day,’ an initiative to interest school girls interested in science-y / tech-y things, come for a tour. So there is me, explaining about magnetism. And thing about magnetism, it involves iron – can you imagine how difficult that is for me to say?? Like, “iron” is pronounced the same as “Ireland” – me trying to pronounce this clearly and explain this to teenage german school girls. It was sooooooo difficult.

“The other room was used by the French and German A -Level pupils as a quiet study area for those elite who were in Mr McEwen’s class. Bobby Hutchinson was a talented linguist and very much a model pupil admired by said Mr McEwen … until …. One day Bobby and a few others were carrying on, and every so often the closed door of this study room would open and a jumper, tie, belt, shoe would come flying our making us believe that Bobby was the object of desire in this room. Suddenly Mr McEwen glided silently into the library in his gown, wanting to know what all the commotion was about … He knocked on the door and Bobby’s voice yelled out, “Go away! It’s not your turn yet!” “This is Mr McEwen, Bobby,” was the reply and a shame-faced, disheveled, half-clad, but still decent, Bobby emerged muttering apologies and was distraught that his mentor had caught him taking part in such boorish behaviour.”

And thanks to all the other teachers too: Mrs Adjey, PE teacher, helped with costumes; Mr Tony Browne, teacher for a short time in Art dept, did makeup; Denis McNeill was press secretary; Mr Hobson drove minibus that took us to and from evening rehearsals/shows …. most of the staff helped behind the scenes in some way!

I remember that the play was scheduled to be performed on a Thursday afternoon, aimed mostly for the pupils, and then Friday evening performance for the town and grown-up audience. But the evening performance clashed with another event in Bushmills and spare tickets were released for the pupils to fill the hall. Me mum and dad came to the evening performance, expecting a ‘theatre’ audience, to have the experience of kids in the crowd throwing rubbers around – slightly school dining hall-ish, slightly noisy and a bit chaotic!

Allyson Hutton: I remember I had to smoke in a scene and I was terrified what my Dad would say… his comment was that you enjoyed the cig too much young lady. LOL…. hard to believe its 40 years… it cant be… LOL

Our friend Arnold was one of the key roles in the Billy Liar play, and Allyson describes him as such a true gentle man. Alan McLaughlin remembers that he loved collecting postage stamps and coins, but that when he called him a coin collector he would be corrected with a serious tone, “I’m not a coin collector, I’m a Numismatist.”

After Bushmills Arnold went on to study Law at uni in Dundee. Actually I was visiting my girlfriend’s family there and I tell her about Arnold studying at the uni there. I see a tall blond slim guy walking along. Oh Lesley stop the car that’s Arnold! It wasn’t, and we drove on. The next tall blond person I see, I say to Lesley Oh stop stop its him! I do that a few times more – I am messing about a bit now – I know you are shocked that I might do that, so out of character – I guess it was a moment of weakness.

And then, it really was Arnold walking along!!! I say, Stop oh stop stop it really is him oh stop stop! Let me out of the car !!! Talk about the boy who cried wolf in sheep’s clothing! But we met with Arnold and had coffee at his student room. But I do remember it as not being a happy time – rather as awkward, unhappy, unsettled.

It is sad to report the too-early passing of Arnold, not many years later. And Mr Peter Logue is remembered as a visionary, a really great teacher and inspiration at Dunluce. Sheila remembers in the mid 90s being with a group of NI teachers invited to Cultra to the premiere of a new cultural heritage series for Primary Schools – written, directed and produced by Peter Logue, in his life after Dunluce, and of meeting him briefly there. But Mr Blair (oh I get the shakes at the thought of calling him Kenny, I just can’t) tells me that Mr Logue passed away last year, towards the end of 2020.

“Library days also reminds me of a time when there was a spate of chairs with broken legs appearing, you know, the luxury library chairs with the orange padded seat bit? Well, one of the folks took it upon himself to snoop and see who was breaking these chairs, but that was a bit of a sneak, not a popular way to behave, aligning oneself with the authorities. He was duped into sitting on one of these broken seats, where the leg was propped into place, just at the point where Mr Someone-or-other entered (Mr McEwen?) and caught the sneak seemingly breaking a chair! I think that put an end to the sneak’s detective work – well for a while anyway …. I think he did end up in the real life police.”

So, remembering the Billy Liar production – fantasy, hilarious moments, still roaring with laughter at Sheila’s stories of the her Upper Sixth, and fond memories of old friends and great teachers who inspired us.

Karen: “Well done David and Sheila, that’s a finely caught blast from the past . I really enjoyed being in the play and the camaraderie, humour and sadness of that time still feel real. Must say I’m gutted to hear this recent news that the visionary Mr Logue has passed away!! Am very shocked and sorry to hear that indeed …”

Mr Kenny Blair: “Hi David, really enjoyable piece. I’m amazed at how little we as teachers knew about the goings on outside the classroom.
. ..and you can practice calling me Kenny! I regard it as a compliment that my former pupils use Kenny – I must have done something right when they still speak to me.
Look forward to reading future memories, Kenny.”

Sheila: “Billy’s three girlfriends ….. and me, totally cast against type as ‘the tarty one!’ “

Sheila says, “Mr Blair – you were an amazing teacher! It was you who inspired me to go into teaching … you also had the respect of your pupils and I always thought how wonderful it was that you were able to walk in at the start of a lesson and just teach – not a note in sight! – all those equations and formulae stored in your head and spilled out onto the blackboard when required.
“You, Mr Binnie and Mr Wishart were the basis on which I chose my A Level subjects, as all three of you were superb teachers with an interest in us as individuals and a way of invoking passion in us for Maths, English, Geography.”

“Another time we all piled into Knoxy’s van and had a fun two-periods-worth of chilling in sunny fields somewhere in the middle of nowhere near Ballybogy!! I didn’t want to put this on your posts just in case there might be someone who would find a legal reason to prosecute us or the school as maybe there’s no statute of limitations on such daring stuff!!”

I. Portrush schools – Growing pains

“Me and my cousin, we were chatterboxes, always talking in class. Our teacher, Miss Perry, called me out to the front and scolded, I’ve had enough of you and your talking! Go now to Mr. Clarke, the headmaster, and tell him that I sent you!”

There are the four schools that we recognise in Portrush now. I like learning about their origins, and then hearing from you about your experiences there – so please do add your comments that I can extend this blog as a social history record!

Going back to our roots, Portrush harbour was built in the 1820s and then the town developed, adding housing, business, hotels, saloons, steam trains, and law and order and the sherriff. Opportunities open up worldwide and there is the drive for education education education to bring new opportunities and better lives for everyone.

Churches and church schools and reading rooms and lending libraries promote learning and civilisation. Holy Trinity church was the first church building in the town, in 1842, with school rooms for boys and girls nearby. The first school was earlier, initially just open air, started by the Wesleyan / Methodists with Dr. Adam Clarke in the 1830s. Other churches were added after ‘Disestablishmentarianism’ – oh I just love that longest word. The Presbyterian church (below left) was built in the 1840s, in the early days of Portrush development with open space all around it; the Methodists building (right) was later, 1880s, with its obelisk outside, after fund-raising in the US.

(Postcards courtesy Sheila Brown)

Good Victorian values and discipline also brought the temperance movement. In the history of my Cambridgeshire village, the workers came in from the fields after their days’ labours, past the 13 pubs along the way to attract them, and worst case they drunk their day’s wages and the kids went hungry and the wife was thumped for complaining. With similar concerns in Portrush the ‘United Temperance and Total Abstinence Society’ met in 1841 in the Methodist church – wow that soiree sounds like a barrel of laughs – the elite seeking to improve the lot of the working families.

Good / bad Victorian ethics too of ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’ discipline mentality features often in people’s memories and that appals us now. I am pretty shocked that corporal punishment was banned only as recently as 1987.

So, 1830s to now, that makes about 190 years of schooling at Portrush. From its 1840s beginnings the Presbyterian church was later extended and a hall added out the back, which in a few years became the Mark Street National School. Through the 1880s it hosted the annual Teachers’ Meeting, a hotbed of National Union of Teachers’ activism with calls for legislation and pensions and teachers’ rights.

And an 1896 article has Samuel Porter, the son of the Mark Street principal, being Top Boy in an All-Ireland competition – the little swot, a creep. (But still he had the shame of being beaten by a girl.)

There are not many photographs – well, none – of Victorian schooldays, but from Sheila Kane: “The Causeway School was under control of the Education and Library Board and employed a teacher to teach in the way of 1950s and 1900s teachers, depending on what era the class was doing. We could get a term’s work on old schooldays and ways of life and then end with a trip to the Causeway School where, for a day, the children were in character (they all had names of actual pupils who attended the school). The children actually loved the strict rules and regulations, and were terrified of being called out to be “caned”. These two photos are of a 1990s class trip for a Victorian school day.”

Sheila Brown attended Mark Street National School (“Mark Street (Portrush Primary School)”) and writes: “We arrived in Portrush in 1943, my four brothers and myself. I was 11 and I was there until 16. The headmaster was Mr Bingham. Oh he was rough on the boys – Bobby Alcorn, David Friel, Ronnie Collins and others – they got it rough with the cane. Bingham also had a golf stick with which he whacked the boys – cruel. One lunch time we were with Ronnie Collins and his sister Margaret, and Ronnie got the stick out from the back of the Science cupboard and broke it. I can still see Bingham’s face blood red with rage. We kept our heads down but he never found us out. He sat the whole day putting masking tape on it, but the spring was gone out of it.

Jennifer Y: “I went to British Legion building – it was for infants – with Miss Mogie and Miss Cunningham. Then to Mark Street – Miss Brodie, Miss Woodrow (she was lovely) and Mr Logan. Mr Bingham was headmaster. We ate our school dinners at the cafe in the railway station. Once a year Barry’s gave us a day with free rides and Morelli’s gave us ice cream. Then on to Portrush Primary.”

“There were no activities that I remember, nothing exciting, just school and homework. Bobby and David used to wait on our bus to get my exercise book to copy the answers. We got small bottles of milk and I remember it changed to quart bottles, and Mr Bingham licking the thick cream on the cardboard lid. We made shopping bags with the lids, with raffia – nothing was wasted.

Ken Mcallister’: “Yes I remember all these teachers – Mr. Bingham, Miss Woodrow and O’Hara Logan and even Miss Cunningham. I started in 1943. Ernie Donnely was my pal and we used to copy each others work, but we both got it wrong so we finished at the back of class, face into the corner. I used to caddy for Mr. Bingham in later years but he never spoke about school.”

A 3-week trip to Russia for Miss Woodrow?? Wow that sounds a risk move! They will visit places “within reason” and the newspaper article asks, Will that include the slave-labour camps?

Elaine B: “I have fond memories of Mark Street school. Miss Woodrow was my teacher. She often asked me to go to the Stairway restaurant to bring round her lunch. She was a great teacher and wonderful lady. I was 9 years old when I was there, only Miss Woodrow stands out in my mind. I had forgotten about Mr Bingham until I read your blog. He lived in the house beside the school. I went from there to new school in Croc na mac then to the Kelly Memorial school in 1961. It became compulsory to transfer to the intermediate school in Coleraine. My memory of Kelly school was teacher Mr Lynn Mitchel who lived in Causeway Street. He was a real character was good at throwing chalk at pupils.”

“Other teachers were Miss Cunningham and Miss Woodrow (of the rather brave Russia trip, above). Some of the other teachers were hard on the children and my youngest brother refused to go to school because of the treatment. Some of the teachers and that treatment carried over to the new primary school.”

Charlie McConaghy: “It is good that Miss Woodrow this mentioned with fondness. I recall my father doing a daily taxi run to and from her home on the the Coleraine Road to the school. I drive by and still recall their home.”

Kelly Memorial School opening, 1898, named after Rev. Kelly, and (right) Freddie Fleming has the 1894 offer from his family for the building work

The Church of Ireland had Boys’ and separate Girls’ Schools that met around the Church Pass area. Later the minister worked to prepare for a new school hall, though he passed away before seeing it built. That Kelly Memorial Hall was where I played badminton, and earlier May G attended the school there in the late 1940s and ’50s. I imagine the school as being the size of that one badminton court, divided by curtains into classrooms. May was there from aged 5, did the 11-plus there, and there were classes through to aged 15. At age 13 May went on to Portrush Technical College.

Raymond McConaghy, “My dad’s class – he is 5th from the right on the back row”

May admits that her and her cousin were chatterboxes, always talking in class. Her teacher Miss Perry called May out to the front and scolded, I’ve had enough of your talking! Go now to Mr. Clarke, the headmaster, and tell him that I sent you! and she pushed May out the door towards his room. May says she went ….. but went on past, down the corridor, to the nice tiled entrance hallway, washed her hands there at the sink, had a drink, washed her hands again, …….. and after that few minutes dallying she went back in to Miss Perry’s class. There, Miss Perry said, That’ll teach you, there’ll be no more talking in class now!

GS: “I attended Kelly Memorial school in the forties. Mr Clark was the headmaster then. We used to tend his garden next door. Mr Elder, Miss Lord, Miss Irwin were the other teachers then. I had the cane from Mr Clark and Mr Elder on numerous occasions, some deserved but mostly not.
Not the most happy place for me. I left school at 14, one of the happiest days of my life.”

Miss Irwin, with her long austere Victorian ma’am skirt, was the room next door and May dreaded hearing the twang of her cane. She wailed to her dad, “Miss Irwin would be my teacher next year and I am not going back there!” Her father took her for a walk and explained how important education was, and that Miss Irwin had taught there for years and was expected to retire shortly. So May agreed to go back – and found herself taught my Miss Irwin that year – and who stayed to teach a generation more of kids.

Alan Mcfadden: “When I came to Portrush in 1957 I attended Mark Street school and was in in Ernie Bingham’s class. Then in January of 1958 I attended the Kelly Memorial school until June that year, prior to going to Coleraine Inst. I was in Mr. Clark’s class. So I guess I was one of the rare breed who attended both schools!”

What were the school days like? May says they were about the same, 9am to 3:30pm, same as us, and school holidays were also similar, though about 6 weeks in summer (rather than my whole July and August holidays) with 2 weeks in late September for the tattie-gathering. There was an annual holiday day, the Monday around 24th May, Victoria Day, when the whole town closed – and I mean, really completely closed – and May says one went off on excursions, to places like Belfast, Londonderry, Ballymena or for variety Limavady, great days out on the trains.

Joan Cook (Sharkey): “I also attended Kelly Memorial in the ’40s. I remember all those teachers also Miss Perry who I loved she helped me a lot! I was one of the first lot of pupils who passed the 11 plus exam and went on to Bushmills Grammar school in 1947 with my best friend Marion Francis. We are still in touch even though we are now in our ’80s! The headmasters daughter Judith Clarke was also in our class. Happy days for me! I have no bad memories of anyone there!“

Was it a good school? Yes it was nice, May says, some of the teachers were nice. Miss Perry of Ballywillan Rd was very knowledgeable. Mr Elder was very good – he taught May, and he also taught me in P7, football coach too, over at the new school on Croc na mac.

The church schools migrated to be under ‘National School’ umbrella though they generally preserved their denominational focus. For the RC chapel, the 1856 article above describes the centuries of angst, with the Ulster Plantation displacing the old catholic O’Cahan and MacDonnell families, such that there was only one catholic family in Portrush in the 1820s. But the minister worked to build up the congregation, to have a resident priest, and despite opposition built a church and school, ‘one of the most elegant and finished schools’, in the 1850s.

And at that big fund-raisng event, I’m sure that Miss Harkin had them rocking in the aisles with her harmonium.

I have only had the single response from anyone, about this school, though again, corporal punishment is the thing that comes most readily to the person’s mind. Is that because it is something definite to write about, and emotive, rather than days and days of good teaching? Anyway, ABC: writes “St Pat’s like the other local schools had a tough regime with some unfairness but mostly happy. Master Fitzpatrick using the leather strap frequently (hidden up the sleeve of his jacket). The spoilt kids sat beside the old stove while the rest of us froze … Miss Mearns had a addiction to using a cane walking stick for punishment. (I got it frequently for being unable to spell Australia…) Rita McNally and Higgins were great … but not soft.”

The development of education is documented in the brilliant write-up on Schools by Discover Portrush, highlighting that there were also early schools at Ballywillan and Loguestown, and later Millstrand, the Integrated school. And Carnalridge, up on the hill, is one of the oldest sites, starting in the 1850s, with the job advert there in 1857 for School-mistress.

Reba Jackson: “Well David I have very happy memories of Carnalridge – a 2 teacher school then, two wonderful teachers, Miss McCartney and Mr Bankhead.”

“Miss Mc Cartney taught the younger children. She had us in a band playing the triangle, harmonica and drums! She also had us acting nursery rhymes to music. She also sent a few of us outside to look at Carnalridge sign and learn how to spell it!

“Mr Bankhead taught the older children. In the days before piped water, the older boys had to go to the well down the road to fetch a pail of water back for the sink!! And in Mr Bankhead’s rooom we got to listen to Radio programmes like about the Ice Age etc, and Musical programs to sing along with them. We also had silent reading once a week in the afternoon and this instilled in me a love of reading.

“I remember when Prince Charles was born we had to write a composition welcoming the baby prince to our green and pleasant land. And I remember the first day school dinners were introduced – Miss Harbinson and Miss Smith were the cooks.”

In the 1950s the Mark St and the Kelly schhols were merged into the new Portrush Primary School, across from us at Croc-na-mac. The foundation stone ceremony was in 1956, with a nice bouquet presented by Gwendoline Longman, and later the VIP Lord Wakehurst also delivered the big Curtis Cup golf trophy, the British side having been captained by the local Mrs. Bolton against the Americans, to the RPGC club for safe-keeping.

I will write other episode about Portrush Primary School but overall, there was about 190 years of schooling in Portrush. School days – a wide range of experiences, good and bad memories. About the bad times a buddy writes, How anyone could be cruel to a child is beyond me?? – the most vulnerable wee loves, heartbreaking.

Pretty unbelievable that corporal punishment was allowed through to the 1980s. I guess there was a spectrum of teacher motives, maybe at one end of good intentions to instill discipline and good behaviour, through frustration trying to prevent repeat errors, but to horrid scale of bullying and victimisation and brutality and the worst of child mistreatment. The horror of behaviours to others.

Facebook of my Cambridgeshire village has end-of-school term incident, kids messing about at the recreation grounds, with bottles and litter the day after. “Oh and I just cleaned it up last week!!” Response? Calls for security cameras, more police, padlocks, bring back national service, bring back the birch. Is that the same aim to control someone else’s behaviour, when someone doesn’t behave the way you want them to? I cannot comprehend the mentality that sought to scourge others but thankfully those days are gone and hopefully most of us are left with a good memory of our schooling in Portrush, of the care and attention and excellent teaching by most.

III. Portrush Primary School – Seniors, upstairs

“When our class moved upstairs I felt very grown up. Mrs. Davies was Scottish and she used to pick a pupil to go to the shop in Croc na mac Street to get her favourite biscuits – chocolate digestives.”

A bit older now, upper level classrooms. Mrs. Johnstone’s P5 class, first room on the right at the top of the stairs, where I was taught to mime when singing for the Christmas concert.

Students from uni, brilliant me selected to look at their 12 cards, grouping them in sets – only I forgot to also say the obvious, that the cards could also be set’ted by the obvious, by the card colour.

Helena Alcorn Espie: “O’Hara Logan was of course the Principal and I was scared of him. You could always see part of the cane hanging below his jacket. I think may have got caned once it was painful.” David: He was a big man and always a bit scary to me. He was stand-in for Mrs. Johnstone one afternoon. I was desperate but too scared to raise my hand to ask to go to loo and wet myself in class. (Great introduction to being in the senior school, huh. (Oh dear, oh dear, 50 years ago and I’ve never confessed to that before.))

Louise Walker & Alison McQuilken

Garry McIlwaine: “I loved being given wee jobs or errands to do: there seemed to be an awful lot of taking money to Mr. Logan’s office where he would be pulling at his pipe while sliding thrupenny bits across the table and into his hand. Neat piles of coins surrounding him in his tobacco haze. There always seemed to be a school radio programme playing in his office??? The bonus for me was being all alone in the entrance hall to re-examine the collection of cacti, marvel at the stuffed crocodile, dream of owning a huge ostrich egg of my own, or watching the sword fish glide to and fro with their neon stripes and pointy tails.

“The plum jobs, however, were doing the milk or biscuit round. Usually two boys to each. I preferred the biscuit round: you were trusted with keys to the store (yes, there were spare canes in there) and you had ages to roam the school, calling in to every class. You missed dictation and you didn’t end up stinking of stale milk from the bottles and crates. To be honest, there was one huge bonus of being a milk boy: you had the opportunity to sort the bottles to make sure that someone in your class (hopefully you!) would get that special third pint bottle of milk with “Suki” written on it with green ink!”

George Lavery: “It was getting close to break time – you could smell the third of a pint bottles of milk heating up nicely as they were stacked in their crates next to the hot radiator. Suddenly the classroom door opened, “George Lavery!” I stuck my hand up “Yes!”
“Your Da left this in for you, you left without it this morning”
My Mother had baked an apple tart – don’t get me wrong her apple tarts were yummy, it’s just that the apple bit was quite runny. The slice of tart was loosely wrapped in “Sunblest Bread” wrapping, the grease proof type, I could see the apple juice leaking from the sides.
SPLAT!! The lad who brought this to me let it drop from about two feet above the desk, it went everywhere! Never again – I changed to Digestive Biscuits now sold by the school each in its own wrapper.”

School trip to Edinburgh, 1986: Mrs Gilmour, Mrs Sherrard, Miss Steele, Miss Boyd, Mrs Craig

P6, Mrs Davis, lived over in Portstewart, I’m told she could ‘buy’ your warts for 6d.

My brother Trevor must have taken me to school one day, he was in the classroom, I felt very proud. And hey, discovered I was pretty good at maths – but not very good at being told things, I have to figure them out for myself, in my own time. Like, Mrs Davis with the cardboard clock, pushing the hands around and asking us the time – but I made the same mistake over and over, despite her explanations.
Well that’s my excuse for being late – we became known as being on ‘Martin time’.

Helena: “When our class moved upstairs I felt very grown up. Mrs. Davies was Scottish and she used to pick a pupil to go to the shop in Croc na mac Street to get her favourite biscuits – chocolate digestives.”

Garry: “..that brings back memories of the lovely Mrs Davis and her “wee furry purse”. She was always proud to tell us how it was of seal skin, Scottish seal skin, and that it was a present from her much talked about daughter, Deirdre. Anyway, the wee furry purse was where Mrs Davis would keep her collection of silver sixpences and thrupences. Biscuit duty folk were always keen to keep any small  silver coinage for Mrs. Davis. The wee furry purse would come out of her big top drawer when something needed celebrating, like when someone said something really kind, made a page of beautiful non-blotted handwriting with a new Osmiroid fountain pen, or did a nice picture. In my case, my only way into the wee furry purse was when I showed the class my little black stitches, retained from an appendix operation!

“But I did come close, on one other occasion… Mrs Davis loved big, big sums which were often put onto the blackboard as a challenge. We begged to be chosen to have a go but as soon as you made a slip, you would be dismissed and someone else chosen to carry on from where you left off. I was chosen once to have first go… a sum which involved the addition of 3 rows of gallon, quarts, pints and thirds. I wasn’t overly confident but things were going well, very well. I hadn’t been stopped so my carries must have been good enough. Onto the gallons column, nearly finished… but out of the corner of my eye I spied the top drawer being slid open, a hand reaching in to find the furry purse… the opening of its little top clip…. and I missed a carry from the quarts to the gallons!!! I was  stopped, Elizabeth Dennison finished the sum and got the silver!!! It was the nearest I ever got without the help of a surgeon’s scalpel.”

Louise Walker: “You have probably seen this old classic before. The Kelly Hall preschool probably 74/75. Karen Faulkner and I in the middle seats lol. My mum was a helper in the back row”

George L: “Woke up late one morning, arrived into school via the “bunker” fence, sweat was blinding me but not enough to stop me noticing O’Hara Logan walking down the corridor and into my classroom. I scuttled across the grass and in the back door, I’m half way down the corridor when I encounter my worst fear!
“Where have you been?” He thundered.
“At the toilet Sir!” I answered in a flash.
“Do you normally take your school bag to the toilet ?…….. My office NOW!
Eventually got to class hand stinging and everyone giggling at the fact that I got caught.”

Sheila: “While still a student in 1983 I was on one of our many teaching practice sessions at the school, and the new Abercorn Court was being officially opened by the Duchess of Kent. The whole school was out on the football pitch to see, some with bunches of quickly-gathered daisies and buttercups that they naively thought they’d get to present to the royal visitor. Mrs Nevin, the staff’s unofficial / resident photographer, had her camera at the ready and snapped away from a variety of angles, well pleased to have such a good vantage point. Unfortunately, when she took the camera to the chemist to get her film developed, she discovered that it was empty! Of all times to not have checked!

“A few years later at a staff night out, someone reminded her of this – she was not amused! The person got that famous Mrs Nevin pursed-lips glare, and a verbal denial that it ever happened and she had just ‘lost’ the photos. I was very glad that I was not the one who had reminded her!”

David: yup I think I remember that event. I see TV stories of other royal visits, passing through streets of cheering masses. But Norn Irn being Norn Irn, such visits were hush-hush, inner secrets only. So only me and a handful of others happened to see the royal limousines gliding down Croc na mac afterwards, the Duchess in her yellow suit waving so-enthusiastically to the handful of us bemused watchers, her safely behind her bullet-proof windows.

David: It was super that the school was used as a polling station. There were some great years in the 70s, with edward heath, oil crisis, miners strike (3-day weeks and doing homework by candellight, and making shadow puppets on the wall), general elections, EEC referendum – several non-school days in each of several years. Sheila writes: “I also worked an Election Day at a table with Mr Logan and he spent the day drawing fab sketches of people and animals. However – that evening Sgt Louis Craig came in, in uniform, to vote and when Mr L asked for proof of ID there was a stunned silence in the hall. Louis hadn’t anything appropriate with him and Mr L refused to let him vote. Louis left and returned with ID, slapped it down without a word and got to vote. It was like the meeting of two great John Wayne characters. And …. Louis and HO’H were cousins!!!”

Backing your school jotter? I remember using only plain brown paper on mine, here Louise’s is very artistic! ….but with the ominous threat from someone!

Helena: “I told you the story of the school being broken into? No idea what year that was. I was on my own and think I was going to the library. I was dallying along on opposite side from where the Police Station is now – it was owned then by Sarah Ann Boyd’s family. A man approached me and asked the way to our school so I told him and he then asked was there another way or shortcut and I said Well you would have to go through the hills. The next day found out the school had been broken in to and I was scared to say anything about the stranger. Eventually I told teacher who then tells O’Hara and I’m questioned by the police and they showed me books of photographs to see if I recognised him. I couldn’t, and can’t remember if they ever got anyone!!”

Police – Wanted, photograph album

Brian Logan: “I started at Portrush Primary in 1959 and have fond memories of some of the original teachers – Miss Cunningham, Mrs Davis, Mr Elder, Miss Nevin and, of course, Mr Kane the caretaker. I suppose I only became really aware that my Dad was the headmaster as I progressed through the school. Yes, he was a hard taskmaster, took no nonsense and expected the best, both academically and in behaviour from each and every pupil. I remember being caned by my father, along with Ian Richardson, for something we had obviously done wrong. It was sore at the time – but it taught us a lesson. I was worried about what Dad would say when he got home from school – I shouldn’t have – he was a headmaster in school and a dad at home – it was never mentioned!

George Lavery: “I came to Portrush in 1959, and started at PPS in P1, same class as Brian Logan, with O’hara as the teacher. This photo in the early sixties, I am 3rd from right, back row.”

“I found ‘arithmetic’ hard at school and had extra tuition at home from Dad prior to the 11+. God, I hated those sessions as the science of mathematics was drilled into me – but it stood me in excellent stead for the future. I do have fond memories though of ‘making’ the school football team, playing left full back. Good times.”

George Lavery: “I started Portrush Primary School in 1959 I was in the same class as Brian Logan. It wasn’t too long after that I met his Dad, strangely enough at that time I liked the smell of his tobacco even though it came to represent that I was in the wrong place and was about to be cained!!
O’Hara ran a strict ship, you even got cained for walking on the grass at break time.
I remember Mr Logan taking our class and giving us a test needless to say I failed miserably, O’Hara was not pleased to say the least, he shouted over to Richard Rosborough, a few desks to my left, “Why do you think Lavery failed this test?” “I think it’s because he doesn’t pay attention…..”
I was then helped out of my seat by O’Hara and frog-marched to his front office where he pulled out a piece of writing paper and commenced writing a letter to my mum detailing why he was expelling me!
Suddenly his office door opened and Miss Woodrow who had started to cry and beg Mr Logan to let me stay! Long story short I was sent back to my class with a warning that if I didn’t smarten up I was out.

“Two days later I was walking into the playground from the bicycle shed, Mr Logan spotted me and called me over, after a few further threats of expulsion he dismissed me and I walked away in the direction of one Richard Rosborough who gingerly asked me what Logan wanted. “Oh ! He said that I was to tell you to go over there and stand on the grass”
ROSBOROUGH! GET OVER HERE!
Every time I hear the name Rosborough it makes me laugh!”

George Lavery, aged 10, left, and right: “When I left school I joined the RAF I did not realise until many years later that O’Hara had also been a member of RAF! I found a life of RAF discipline easy after my years of discipline at Portrush Primary. Whilst in the Air Force I joined up with British Forces Broadcasting and during the following 10 years I found myself broadcasting in far away places like the Maldives! After my RAF service I joined the London Fire Brigade in 1983. In 1987 I transferred to Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue I did 23 years in the Fire Service. I retired in 2006 and nowadays I have a home recording studio where I voiceover adverts and record items for Belfast 89 Fm – on internet radio you can pick up my show on a Wednesday morning between 8 and 10am on Belfast89fm via tunein app.
“Those early days at PP school taught me to think on my feet, stay alert and most importantly treat others how you would wish to be treated.”

Sheila: “Comic Relief Days were always fun … I remember one where I wrote a script (in rhyme!) based on ‘Allo ‘Allo for the staff to perform at break time in the assembly hall … . This photo, 1991, has a keyboard so we must have sung something for that one. I also have one of me in my Bushmills Grammar School, my first form uniform !! … when the girls wore box-pleated skirts … later, when we moved to the ‘new’ school, skirts became much more modest in appearance. How amazing that it fitted me 12 years on!! (I still have it, you know, just in case by some miracle it ever fits me again and I’m called upon for some unknown reason to dress up in a school uniform.) (And why oh why wasn’t I like Mrs Nevin, who dated and named everyone in her photos? The arrogance of youth led me to believe that I’d always remember every child’s name whom I taught … quite often I now find I need a clue or two).”

Joanna Robinson: “Here’s one of my older brothers and cousins – Mac O’Neill, Jane McComb, Rosie Pogue, Stephen O’Neill and Angela McComb.” (David: Stephen was my year at school, I reckon this photo is about P5, about 1971)

And finally, Mr Elder’s class, P7, out in the green mobile, with those little electric heaters around the wall, giving the damp steamy fuggy air on wet winter days, and Clive Shorter, badminton buddy, coming in to visit his old teacher one day.

Helena: “Mr. Elder was the last class and I stayed there two years. He was really nice.”

Garry: “The first mobile classroom! What excitement we had when pupil numbers meant that Portrush Primary was to have a new mobile classroom. In Autumn 1968 our P7 class were the guinea pigs being herded by Mr. Elder. For some reason I remember double desks being a thing, and sitting beside Drew Hamill near the fire exit. All lovely and ship shape, smelling of new paint, it was another new start. Life there was dominated by reverberating footsteps on the hollow floor. Trips to the toilet always took longer than expected: we never really returned by the shortest route. Teachers of other classes often tutted when we would cross the assembly hall, interrupting their work. Poor Catherine (Trent (??) will have different memories after her fall on the mobile’s slippery steps. Her full length leg plaster and crutches made moving in and around the mobile a real chore. There didn’t seem to be too much of a kerfuffle  at the time…. such an incident today would probably merit a two-part Panorama health and safety special.

Sheila: “Garry, I am transported back in time with your detailed tales … I remember the older girl, Catherine Trant, being allowed to sit on a chair at the side of the hall during assembly, her plastered leg propped up on another chair in front of her.”

“The mobile had great views, especially if you were interested in all the comings and goings from the car park. Mr. Logan definitely went to lots of meetings! And crusts thrown onto the roof – we would NEVER have done that! – definitely tested Mr. Elder’s short fuse when half of the Skerries’ seagulls descended to scrape for the scraps.”

My class, P7, in Mr Elder’s mobile

Garry: “Mr. Hassen was our P7 student and he was like a breath of fresh air. Drama, music, art, recording our own class production of The Charge of the Light Brigade. And… we were taken on a field trip to the Black Rocks to study rock pools. What a world Mr. Hassen opened up to us and he never raised his voice, threatened or scolded. He read The Silver Sword to us. This didn’t happen in P7, a teacher reading to us! It was life changing for me: those stories, studies and his connection with us were a model for my own time as a primary school teacher.”

David: Bell rang after break time, kids run to queue up outside the back door of the school. The blond kid sticks his trippy leg out and the other kid goes flying and is hurt. Me, Head Boy, I take Blond to the Head. But really it was nothing more than a silly trip up kneejerk by Blond, a kneejerk reaction on my part to the other guy’s blood, and maybe Blond got the cane; a bit officious of me, all a bit unnecessary – sorry about that Blond.

And so, wee school days coming to an end. Summer term, with cycling proficiency in the playground, sports days and football, the 11 plus, and the finale of the school trip, and of getting ready for Big School. Long summer hols and then kids disperse to schools in other towns, on the bus to Bushmills or Inst or High School. End of an era of going to school together in the town, and I lost touch with many primary school buddies until re-discovering them through these blogs.

The Headmaster, O’ Hara Logan was a big man, a towering presence over the school in those years and looming large in our memories. Sheila writes that at his retirement ‘do’ at the Causeway Hotel, he insisted on buying everyone a Cointreau and orange juice … and that she, “who never touched alcohol, felt quite giddy and the drive home with Karen was quite the laugh, especially on the windy coast road!” Samantha A writes, “I might have been one of the few who liked Mr Logan… I think he actually would have been great craic, in another environment.”  And Sheila writes, “Another time, at Royal Portrush, we on the local Save the Children committee ran a tournament each year to raise funds, and we supplied and served the meal at the dinner dance afterwards. Mr L was there and when the dancing started he came over and asked me to dance with him!!! Old style waltz to Lady In Red – I’d never seen him in this light, jovial, non-school way before. I never hear that song now but I think of him, with warmth and a respect for someone who really only wanted the best of standards for ‘his’ school, both pupils and staff – to whom he was always loyal.”

He retired at the end of school year in 1989 to care for his wife, but passed away himself suddenly in December that year, after only a few months of retirement.

Sports Day, about 1978

Inviting you to add your memories and stories and any artwork or memoriabilia that you have. Like, Samantha Allen adds:

“School trip to Amsterdam, 1984 maybe? Misses Boyd, Millar, McNeill, Steele? We had all the subtlety of a brick in telling Miss Boyd of our intentions to have a midnight feast one evening. She smiled, and pretended not to hear us….. so of course, we had to keep telling her.
“That night, treats were arranged meticulously on an embroidered table mat and we counted down to midnight. Lots of giggling and being told to ‘Get to sleep girls!!’ Next thing you know, we’ve drawn the attention of some ‘foreign boys’ in the room across the courtyard ….who proceeded to flash their little, pale chests at us from behind their pyjamas!! I squealed, Daphne J G went to the window to look, Mrs Millar came in, sussed what was going on, and Daphne got a smack to the bottom!!! 
“Lessons were learned…and we were very embarrassed at breakfast the next day…..”

So, to close up this story on Portrush Primary School and schools in Portrush, one of Sheila‘s stories: “I was in charge of Education for Mutual Understanding in school – basically, a subject that existed to help schools get on better. Well in Portrush we worked together anyway, but we got grants to do several projects together and had a great time. My counterpart in St Patrick’s was Miss Phil McNally and twice we had projects filmed by UTV to show to schools in ‘less friendly’ areas how things could be done. The photo below is us waiting in the Dunluce Centre for the TV crew. The Art on the wall? in the 80s teachers had to make their own visual aids on the wall behind – can you believe it?? You just got on with it, did the best you can, and hopefully it worked out well for everyone in the end.”

With many thanks to Sheila Kane, Ray McConaghy, Ian King, Janice Finlay Stewart, Helena Alcorn Espie, George Shorter, Garry McIlwaine, Janet McQuilken, Beth Logan, Brian Logan, Richard Brown, Louise Walker, Samantha Allen, George Lavery, for stories and photographs over the 60-odd years of Portrush Primary School.

I guess being Sgt. Martin’s son I avoided the worst of treatments, and being a quiet wee lad no-one suspected me anyway. Overall there is a wide range of experiences, some with difficult memories, hopefully mostly with memories of maybe great days of our lives, and the overall feeling that everyone in Portrush worked together well, had some fun, had a good time and did some great creative work to make random artwork and murals for the walls. Overall a great set of committed caring teachers, and mostly we all had mostly great experiences there. Hopefully this has been a great summer holiday fun read for you.

and Yay! there is the bell to signal the finish for the day, the last day of primary school, and you leave carrying the games you brought for the last day, and with your artwork and your jotters and wearing your t-shirt signed by all your classmates, as you say cheerio.

————-
Other school episodes –
I. Portrush schools – canes and gains – the start of Portrush schools in the 1820s, and info on St Pat’s and Carnalridge to date
II. Portrush Primary School – Infants, downstairs
IV. Portrush Primary School and the West Germany football team – my P7 years
V. Portrush Primary School – P7 and the School Trip
and,
On the bus to Dunluce School
Dunluced School plays Billa Liar
and
Sunday School Excursion to Portrush
Dhu Varren – The town between the ports – includes the story of Millstrand School

II. Portrush Primary School – Infants, downstairs

My walk to Portrush Primary School was about 100 yards down Croc na mac, then guided safely across the road by Mr Kane, a neighbour, who was the lollipop man before and after school and caretaker in-between, cleaning up messes like our clarried football boots. What were your primary school days like? Here are quite a few stories and great photographs including from Sheila not-related-Kane, Chambers as was, a shiny new enthusiastic teacher, taking photographs of everything about her first job.

Portrush Primary School replaced both Mark St and the Kelly Memorial Schools, and secondary schools moved out of Portrush. The foundation stone ceremony was 1956 and the school opening was 1959. I view that as the school moving in to the “modern” era, although some of the discipline stuff carried over.

People have given me enough stories for two blogs and Helena Alcorn Espie goes first, describing the start-up of the school: “My Granny lived in Hamilton Place and I often stayed there as a young girl. The building in the middle of that street took some overspill from Kelly Memorial school, only had 1 classroom. I went there before I was school age but when I was school age I didn’t want to go.

“I was one of the first pupils then in the new school. When it opened the canteen hadn’t been finished so we went down to the café / restaurant / canteen at the train station, beside Barry’s. The ‘New Road,’ as we always called it, hadn’t been done either (see the centre photo above, 1959 construction) so we went through the hills and we sang ‘I love to go a wandering’ on the way. When the school dining room was finished we had our own food then. I didn’t eat meat even then and got into trouble for not eating what I was given. I was chastised by Mrs. Cunningham – I didn’t like her much.”

Left – School, 1950s. // Centre – Mr Kane, caretaker & lollipop man – and war hero // Right – Dinner ladies, 1974, the Mrs Smith, Mann, & neighbour Mrs. Rae McConaghy

The Croc na mac building development was photographed by neighbours like the McConaghy’s and the King’s. The photo, at the top, the two boys are Ian King and Ray McConaghy, in 1960. The high wall (dark, in the photo) on the far side of the road was the remaining boundary wall of the Triangle golf course, demolished for the new road and the school.

I see great pictures taken by Mr Kane, like the ones below, so photography was in the family: I’m told that Maureen walked to school each day with a camera over her shoulder, and she will have lots of memories to tell me about the school, I’m sure: “Oh! David, Portrush Primary – my school days are a complete blur to me – probably because in today’s world I’d be classed as a late developer! I even remember very few of my teachers!” She did though find the Order of Service and the list of teachers, for the school opening service, 6th November 1959, 2:30pm. Don’t be late.

Ray McConaghy: (left) “1960, me coming out of school with Wilma Leighton and Sarah Ann Boyd” (right) “1963, photo taken by Tommy Kane: Ian King and I with primary school in background”

So, start of school – P1, Primary school year 1 and Janice Finlay Stewart writes, “I remember Miss Bradley, P1, having to carry me back into the classroom after several attempts to go home to my dad lol.”

and Garry McIlwaine: “I don’t know where to start so it’ll be like something hoaked out of  a memory skip! In 1962 our family moved to Portrush. My big brother Jimmy and I moved to Croc na mac school from the Irish Society school beside the distillery in Coleraine. Oh my, it was like a new world… everything was so new and state of the art, it was like heaven! There was a car park, a garden, a playground and an assembly hall for PE. It WAS heaven-like… and there was the smell of fresh air and the sea, better than the barley mash smell that enveloped Coleraine at the time. Although there was no Irish Society rocking horse to welcome new pupils and put them at ease, there was the lovely Miss Mogie. Full of smiles and encouragement (along the corridor and up the stairs, there was another preferred method if ‘encouragement’) I was warmly welcomed and quickly settled into my lessons. I must have done OK because at a later stage was moved two classes at a stage, missing out Miss Brodie and going straight to Mrs Williamson.”

George Shorter: “My favourite teacher was Miss Nevin, I remember her buying everyone in the class a box of chocolates at the end of the summer term. I remember a kids TV show called The Herbs, with Parsley the Lion ..that’s what the chocolates were. And I remember Sports Day very well. Michael Scott and I always did well in the wheel barrow race and the three legged race.”

David: The walk to school, along Croc na mac – wave to the elderly neighbour Mrs. Anderson looking out from her front room bedroom, with her daughter Minnie Anderson and her golden lab dog at the window – wait to cross the road with Mr Kane, the lollipop man.

P1 or maybe with my late August birthday I went straight into P2? Anyway, Day 1, Mrs Nevin class – didn’t like it, I ran away home. I had more success than Janice ‘cos I made it back to our house – 3 times, though Mum brought me back each time, until Mrs Nevin locked the classroom door.
Report card: “Shows initiative and perseverance. Good Head Boy potential.”
And so the pattern was set, of not particularly following rules nor doing the norm, the expected. Like, here in Germany, crossing the road at a Red man – whew, naughtiness personified.

Sheila Kane: “Mrs Gilmour in June 1985 with her P2 class that became my first class, in P3 Room 6, in September 1985”

Daniel T: Oh, I remember that uniform. I’ve got a couple of pictures of myself in it (from 1972 – 75). My teachers were Mrs Millar, then Ms Gilmour. And the photo of the dinner ladies in 1974, then they definitely had to deal with little unruly ol’ me. I think I remember them coming around offering to mash your potatoes for you – funnily enough (am I imagining this, or does anyone else remember that?). And when I got home and my parents asked me what we had for lunch, apparently my standard answer was “carrots.” (I loathe boiled carrots).

P3 with Mrs Cunningham introducing us to ink pens but still I preferred pencil. She had great success teaching Janet McQuilken to write neatly but obviously didn’t teach me very well since I still can’t read my own hand-writing scribbles today.

Janet McQ: “A couple of school photos lol. Fringes all cut especially for the occasion.”

George: “At lunchtime, James McCullough from Hamilton Place would often ride his scrambler motorbike around the bunker, out the back of the school. I used to jump over the fence and he’d take me for a spin on the back of the bike. I’d often burn my leg on the exhaust, but couldn’t ask the teacher for First Aid because I shouldn’t have left the playground.”

David: I remember my Dad, Sgt Martin, got complaints about the noise and saying it was a pity, that of the activities that youngsters could be getting up to, riding a motorbike in waste land seemed the least trouble. He tried to get a solution that everyone could agree to – not sure if it was possible though, and maybe the motorbiking was stopped.

Garry: “Tadpoles were highly valued, it seems, by every teacher. The boy who brought in the first jam-packed jar of dotty jelly each spring was definitely ‘blue eyed” for a while. After the third and fourth legs appeared it was time to move on and on two occasions I was on the group honored with carrying out the big release. We scooted over the road, along to a little stream at the end of Croc na mac and emptied froglets, slime and the remains of the foods we’d thought they would like into the water.”

David: I remember the tadpoles growing well in the bowls in the classroom – and then they were taken home by a pupil, like me, and by the end of the easter holiday they had all suffocated. One of the follow-on lessons was about the name for young animal then the adult; we agreed to change “Tadpoles grow into Frogs” to be, “Tadpoles sometimes grow into Frogs.”

Garry continues, “I also remember four or five of us parading along the road with the shrivelled school Christmas tree on our shoulders and dumping it in the rough ground where the Legion sheltered homes were built.”

Sheila’s first class, P3

Sheila Kane: “In my first year of teaching, I was sub’bing in the school. A job came up and the interview was being held on the evening of 9th May 1985 … a date that is forever with me! Karen H was due to take a school choir group to compete in Coleraine Festival, but the bus to take them broke down. The headmaster commandeered all teachers with cars to transport the choir to Coleraine. I was one of them, in my little brown Mini 850 – my first car! I had three pupils in the back, Karen beside me in the front, but … “We could get a few more in there,” said the Head, and he placed a fourth child in the back, and then one on each of these four’s knees, and then another pupil beside Karen in the front, then one on her knee and then one in the passenger footwell. !! THIRTEEN IN A MINI !! It was like one of the Recordbreakers competitions!

“Now, I know seatbelts were not compulsory then but I know we must surely have been breaking some law with this carload. However, the choice was between breaking the law or disobeying the Head – who one did not disobey, especially since he would be interviewing me later that same evening! But we made it safely to Coleraine Town Hall – and didn’t have to wait to make a return journey as there was a fresh bus available to bring the children back to Portrush – phew!”

The two youngest members of staff …. 1986 ish and 1991

Mrs Boyd in P4, or was it Mrs Steele? Me with great little drawn-out plans for playing tig in the playground breaktimes, little sketches of, if he goes this way you be over there to close in and catch him – totally useless since since the target just ran the other way, he didn’t run the route as shown on my little sketches.
Lesson of the story? in project management you have to consider that not everything goes according to plan. And that even the best-made plans – like, of flying to Cambridge to a family wedding in July, then onto Portrush for a family wedding in August, then to see in-laws in Scotland, then back to Cambridge for a wedding – can be ruined by factors outside one’s control, like Covid quarantining.

Oh the playground photograph of the school, with the shelters on the far side of the playground! So great, summer heatwave days like these days, a special treat was to be taught outside – idyllic!

Garry: “Headers in the shelters at break time when it was raining. Two for a goal and one for rebounder. Everyone packed in, along the seats, sitting or standing: a real theatre of dreams.. With time at a premium and others waiting for their turn, we thrashed and thrashed at the ball with sweaty brows in search of victory. Goals often came with the help of a deflection off the beam across the front of the shelters. It would be interesting to research the instance of long term brain injury cause by sodden size 5 leather balls being headed around those shelters.”

PE and “crab football” in the assembly hall.
Preparation for sports day: high jump practice in the hall. I am quite sporty but wow I was totally clue-less on this. Am I left-handed and should be running up from the other side? Just didn’t know how to do it. Run up, but don’t know which foot to jump up from! stop the run-up, lift the bamboo bar and fall over on to the blue cushion mat.

Janice: “I remember Mrs Steele throwing the chalk duster at the boy in front of me – who ducked, and it hit me on forehead. Mrs Steele couldn’t apologise enough!”

Sheila’s first class, P3, 1985

Garry: “Miss Jackson was our cook. Now to be honest, I wasn’t a fan of school dinners. There were dinners I loved, usually containing cake, ice cream or chips. Eating school dinners was more of a challenge than a pleasure as aisles were patrolled in expectation of spotless plates, everything consumed. We tried to beat the inspection system by either squashing uneaten food into the smallest pile possible, taking it out in our pockets or up our sleeves, or by spreading it out, super thinly so an actual clean plate could be squished on top of it. In any event, we were always found out whether at a table inspection or when cooks found their dishwater turning into soup. Miss Jackson must have been a star because even on super snow days or power cuts we always had something prepared for us. Fair or not, I can still remember Harry Roberts  (nicknamed after a bank robber of the time) reading his P7 Limerick…

There was a young boy from Portrush
Who called his school dinners a mush
Miss Jackson came out
And hit him a clout
Right on to his head with a brush.”

Samantha A: “Thank you for the beautiful pics from The Edgewater do!! Brought a tear to my eye! I also remember ‘Miss Maguire’ subbing……I couldn’t believe someone so ‘trendy’ had come to the school!!”

Sheila: a meal out at the Edgewater Hotel in Portstewart, photo above, for a celebration, one wet evening in 1986. Meal was awful, Mr L complained and we all got offered a free meal voucher – which most of us never used! I fell on wet tiles at the front door, hurt my back badly, and was off school for a week. Always had a weakness after that but never thought any more of it. 40 years on, a MRI scan for something and Dr says, ‘I see you fractured your lower back some years ago.’

“Another ocasion, a ‘do’ at the Causeway Hotel, he insisted on buying everyone a Cointreau and orange juice … me, who never touched alcohol, felt quite giddy and the drive home with Karen was quite the laugh, especially on the windy coast road!’

Beth Logan: “Well David thank you for asking but I have a lot of hesitancy writing about Portrush Primary School because I know many lived in fear and loathing of my father. He was a tall, intimidating man who used the then-accepted punishment of caning to supposedly discipline and correct wayward students. Additionally, I’ve always thought the practice of seating pupils in order of their academic prowess was cruel and antiquated. While I was always in the top three or four (I could never surpass the seemingly brilliant Susan Crilly), how must numbers 29, 30 or 31 have felt?!?

“Of course, to me, Mr. Logan was Daddy, who taught me to swim in the Northern Counties’ pool, who drew me pictures upon request, and who loved theatre, pantomime and storytelling. But even as a child, I knew that there was a stigma attached to being the headmaster’s daughter.

“My best memories of PPS are of singing at morning assembly; of Mr. Elder valiantly trying to teach us decimalization; of Mrs. Davis’ love of art; of Mrs. Williamson’s interminable efforts to teach cursive writing; of meeting my best friend on my first day in Miss Nevin’s class (Shirley Badger – who later broke my heart by emigrating to Tasmania with her family); of playing with Jane Caithness and Janis Thompson; of the kindness and dedication of the caretaker, Mr. Kane; and of the endless practices in the teachers’ break room for the annual Road Safety quiz.

“My worst memories include the revolting food at lunchtime, the disgusting ever-present smell of cooked cabbage, and of being forced to drink warm milk out of the miniature bottles that were delivered to classrooms mid-morning in wire crates. To this day, I gag when I smell cabbage and I cannot drink full-fat milk.

“All the best wishes everyone – and thanks for stoking so many memories! / Beth Logan”

Daniel Tietze, photos about 1972-75. “”We came over in 72 or 73 and I didn’t speak a word of English. My father took the photo (with Joanna Robinson) if I’m not mistaken.” And, blazer badge, and on the little train, at Benvarden.

Garry: “End of the year, no matter which class, brought clear-outs. There was always the going through of the art which would be rolled up, rubber banded and proudly taken home.  I always had an eye out for better stuff like wall charts or maps that teachers didn’t want to keep with too many pin holes or tears and half colouring pencils, chipped rulers or the likes. There were orange coloured  Bic pen holders with a funny shape. The girls would test the red pens for ink with empty ones going to the bin. Some that were ‘nearly ‘ empty also.made it to the bin… ahem…temporarily!”

So, that was the downstairs classrooms, we have now reached the end of the Infants, the Reception to P2 and Foundation Stage, the P1 to P4, the wee ones’ years, whatever you called it. We have rolled up the drawings and rubber-banded them to take home, and ready to start the next year, upstairs in the senior classrooms, up the stairs – oh so exciting!

With many thanks to Sheila Kane, Ray McConaghy, Ian King, Janice Finlay Stewart, Helena Alcorn Espie, George Shorter, Garry McIlwaine, Janet McQuilken, Beth Logan, Brian Logan, Richard Brown, Maureen Kane, for stories and photographs over the 65 years of Portrush Primary School, and hopefully this has been a fun read.

PS Learning something of people’s lives is an eye-opener. We saw teachers in a certain role, with no idea that they did stuff like spent family time with their kids, loved to fly fish for salmon on the River Bush, drank with buddies after a round of golf, trained with the TA each summer in Germany, RAF during WWII and flew the “Burma Hump”, was an Aide de Camp to Queen Elizabeth II, a CBE, and Mr Kane with wartime service in the Far East. Such an eye-opener, such experience, such interesting lives all around us for us to see and appreciate.