Postcards from Portrush: Donkeys (II) on the *West* Strand

“No day trip to Portrush would be complete without a ride on Rose, Jack, Billy or Benny, the donkeys on the beach owned by Jesse Edgar.”

The ponies and donkeys, on the East or West strand. A timeless, summer at the seaside activity!

The yards at the back of the Edgar’s house, down the terrace on Croc na mac, were their base for breakfast and for saddling up, after their overnight grazing at Parker Avenue field. Then they trooped off down the back lane to the Portrush beaches, with their daughter Fern and a giggle of youngsters earning summer job pocket money.

Its worth reading about this in the first blog, here’s the link Postcards from Portrush: Donkeys on the East Strand, if you haven’t read it already.

I remember Fern’s daughter Joanne as just a toddler, helping out as toddlers do. Joanne writes, ‘The beach donkeys and ponies were a big part of my life growing up. It was up early and over to my Granny and Papa’s house at 36 Croc-na-mac to pick up bridles and then over to the donkey field to get our charges. Vicki K remembers them, that ‘Jessie Edgar’s pony field was across from my granny’s in Parker Avenue’ – and then a swift canter with the donkeys and ponies back over the football pitch and in to Mrs McConaghy’s back garden, a few houses along, to give the animals a spruce up while they enjoyed their breakfast nosebags…’

Its a timeless activity! There’s a postcard of donkeys on the beach, 1920s, and there they are again, in glorious multicolour, in the 1980s!

After their breakfast would be the parade of a dozen donkeys and ponies, each with teir leader, out along the back lane, on their way to the beaches. And Sheila K: ‘Oh David, I remember the donkeys and ponies down the back lane and of always having a sugar lump or two to feed them if we knew we were going that way… or pulling up handfuls of grass from the verge if we had no other offerings.

‘And I remember too, two elderly spinster sisters, the Misses Cochrane, who lived in Rodney Street and who swore that Edgars’ animals’ manure was the reason that their roses and their rhubarb did so well. The smaller sister used to gather up any droppings left as the donkeys and ponies went to and from the beach with a short-handled coal shovel, put them in a galvanised bucket and head home as if she had just been panning for gold and had bagged a bucketful of nuggets!’

Out onto the lane and then, Joanne, ‘We split up to either the ‘Big Beach’ or the ‘Wee Beach’ – the East or West strands. I see Council adverts of the 1950s of licence for eight ponies or donkeys on the East strand and four on the West strand.

Joanne continues, ‘If it was the big beach then Shimo, Ken Bolton’s beautiful wee collie, was waiting to spend the day with us. We scaled the gate of the Bolton’s big Strandmore house, overlooking the East strand – it seemed an insurmountable height when I was small – to get buckets of water for them, while someone ran to the grocers to collect the carrot tops that the grocer kept for the donkeys, something they loved.’

‘If it was the wee beach, the West strand, then the tap outside the Teas and Ices cafe was much handier! And there was Maggie and Linda at the deckchairs to say hello to and the craic was good.’

Speaking of deck chairs: I don’t think I have mentioned Mrs. Frizelle anywhere elsewhere in my series, but here she is, one of the stalwarts of Portrush, promoting tourism, dancing lessons, choreographer at pantomime, deckchairs, Blue Pool diving displays, RNLI and British Legion, ….. – she herself was a ‘Great Institution’ of Portrush,

There’s images of the West strand above. Caroline D says, ‘I remember them well and loved them. I was always pea green watching the lucky ones who worked with them. ‘ – to be honest though I find only a few photos, no postcards, of the donkeys or ponies on the wee beach – do let me know, if you have pics of the animals, on either of the beaches!

The animals processed along through the dry arch along the west strand promenade and then down the slope at te Teas n Ices down onto the beach. Katy Diamond writes, ‘I always remembered the West Strand donkeys run by Claire and Ann MacIntyre ‘, and I see pride of place in the August 1974 Belfast Telegraph seaside article below is Claire wth two donkeys – and there too is Ray Mason of Portrush Pottery, and Joy May of May’s Fashions, if you remember those shops.

Allison C: ‘This such a great read and photos! I remember going to the donkey field as a child when visiting my grandparents on Croc na Mac. Was there a donkey called Joey or Bobby at the east strand? Not sure what his name was, anyway he bit my sister’s finger when we were at CSSM one morning. I will never forget me trying to run home with her terrified that it would fall off. OK I was only about 8 and she was about 5 – imagination was my strong point! ‘

Vicki K writes about her family, ‘I definitely think horsey-ness runs in family blood. Claire’s daughter Olivia had a pony and now I also have a horse, and Tracey has 2 donkeys.’ And Joanne’s family too, with a long love for the animals. The photo below – so historic! – just received from Joanne’s family album, image has never been seen before! ‘My grandfather’s riding school – where the Maxol station is now. He ran the riding school, and as well my great-grandfather also did beach donkeys.”

I guess that every kid visiting Portrush got a ride on the donkey, and I guess dozens of youngsters earned a little pocket money helping the Edgar’s with the animals.
Brian S: ‘I remember it well. I used to lead one of the donkeys – they would stand on your foot if you were not careful!’
The pay was not a path to riches though. Vicki K: ‘I used to love the stories that my aunt Claire and Ann told about working with the beach ponies, of a horse called Tara, and how little they got paid a shilling, an amount equivalent to like 50p a week!’

Left, photo courtesy Alice R, about 1930: ‘This is Albert Rohdich with his mum on the beach. Albert would have been 95 yesterday!’
and Right, donkey photo courtesy Pauline Rigby (Hunt), though not of Portrush: ‘I love the Portrush story, David! And the photo here is of Dana, her with lots of connections to Portrush, here with impressario Joe Longthorne during one of her summer seasons at Scarborough, before she went to America. And we still have donkeys on the beach in Scarborough, where I live now x’

Sheila K: I remember as a child wanting to work with the donkeys at the beach because you got to ride them there and back … until I realised that in-between, the work involved an awful lot of just standing about holding reins all day ‘.
George Davies: ”I used to lead the donkeys up and down to the marker flag all week for half-a-crown. Well, we did this more for the joy of riding the donkeys down to the beach and home again at night! I still remember riding a pony home and going past the gas works when a loud whistle scared the pony and he took off! The guy on a bike managed to stop it before the crossroads, going on to the Ballywillan road!’

Joanne continues, ‘I can’t remember much about our customers because, like all the leaders, all we cared about was our animals. I can remember Rosie, Clancy, Mitzi, Meg and Duchess the donkeys, and Tara, Candy, Goldie, Tanya, Sandy, Jet, Dusty and Rue the ponies. There were others, but those are the ones that stood out for me, and I could tell you about each of them to this day: Tara’s patience, Jet’s cheekiness, about the wonders of my first ever canter on Dusty, about how Rosie loved her ears scratched inside and how she refused to go to the wee beach because it wasn’t ‘her’ beach, about how Sandy was a nightmare to catch …… I could go on and on. To this day, many of the leaders I meet out and about, like the Una in the photo above, say it was the best job they ever had!!’

Mr. and Mrs. Edgar were the same generation as my mum and dad, getting married the same year and living in Croc na mac, ‘Honeymooners Row’. From the Edgar’s family album, the beautiful photo above. Joanne: ‘Oh this is one of my favourite photographs! Papa and Granny on Trixie and Jock, taken in 1948, the year they got married.’

Thirty or forty years later, years of donkeys and ponies, and I guess they were heading towards their retirement in the 1980s, and I guess also animal poo on the beach became considered un-cool and a health risk. I think donkey rides as an attraction at Portrush faded away in the early 1980s. The last newspaper photo of donkeys that I see, below, is of August 1981 (with some familiar names in the article), and Joanne reckons that her Papa had them until mid 1980s. If you have photos & info of the donkeys and ponies, that you’d like to share, please do send, to add to the social record.

So, donkeys on the Portrush beaches – really, a timeless activuity. The postcard, below left, is of donkeys on the East Strand, about 1910s. In the centre is, ‘Sixteen- year old Kathlen Tosh, of Coleraine, photographed in 1959.’ She is sitting very gracefully, but looks quite a lot older than 16 to me.

And right, from Belfast Telegraph, August 1978, ‘A day trip to Portrush would not be complete without a ride on Rose, Jack, Billy or Benny, the donkeys on the East Strand owned by Jesse Edgar. The two assistants are Louise Quinn and Linda Kelly, both from Portrush.’

What shines through to me is the care and affection for the donkeys and ponies. Sheila K reviews this and writes, ‘Oh David, even the ponies and donkeys get elevated to celebrity status via your memoirs and attention-grabbing writings!’ And that each one had their own character and personality – for example, Joanne: ‘The photo below is of Mum and a pony called Cheetah – Mum says that Cheetah insisted on having a snooze every day at lunchtime lol’.

There was the fantastic historic photograph of her family’s riding school, reflecting the several generations in her family, and Joanne finishes,

‘I’m proud to be my grandparents’ granddaughter and to have played a tiny part in the happy memories of so many people. Oh, and while none of the originals are around, there are still two donkeys in the family – I just can’t imagine a life without donks in it!!!’

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With thanks to Joanne Gibson for the story and family photographs, Sheila Brown for the postcard images, the contributuions from Vicki K and everyone.
Heritage Newsletter, The Beach Donkeys and Ponies
Newspaper articles from https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/

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, ‘Counties & The White House
(VI) Diving at the Blue Pool

Postcards from Portrush: Donkeys (I) on the East Strand

If you were visiting Portrush, what would you want to do? Well, buy popcorn and ice cream and sweets and go to the beach, The White House, the amusements, ……. Pretty high up on the list would be a ride on the donkeys – a traditional activity, fare for a hundred years and more!

In this ‘Postcards from Portrush’ series we have walked from the Croc-na-mac boulevard, passing Eglinton St. and through the dry arch onto the West strand and the harbour and then the Recreation grounds and Portandoo and Lansdowne and Lower Main St, stopping to watch the diving at the Blue Pool….. the route illustrated with postcards from Sheila Brown’s great collection, Now continuing our walk, down the steps past the salmon fisheries, the ladies bathing place, and along past the Arcadia dance hall………

…..And then, we are onto the East Strand, and there is the procession of donkey and ponies. Timeless. The photos above are the 1950s and the 1960s. I think everyone will have a donkey photograph of them with visitors, and below, 1970s, is Sheila Brown’s: ‘David this photo is about 45 years ago, about 1978! The lady to the left is my brother’s wife and two daughters from Vancouver, and my son Trevor on the donkey.’

And so memorable! Scott F, responds, ‘That’s me in the photo, holding the white donkey Snowball!’ – remembering the event, of over 40 years ago! 🙂

So, donkey rides, such a big part of Portrush life and visitor attraction – and I see it features there, up alongside other wild animals in a tourism brochure of 1971:

Me, Portrush Tales, I like to write about things that I have some connection with. About the donkeys, they lived just a handful of houses down the terrace, at the Edgar’s house, such a part of Croc na mac life. There’s a photo below from Maureen, of her sister Sandra on one of the ponies, so familiar and everyday that peope like Maureen and Heather R can’t remember anything about them! ‘Unfortunately no specific memories! Jessie Edgar’s donkeys were always just there…. – part of the Croc-na-mac fixtures and fittings!’

But the donkeys were transformed in my brother Kenny’s imagination into being in the wild west, and there he is, with Ian Bellingham, up on their coal shed roof, cowboys ready with their pistols to defend the ponies and donkeys and the waggon train going past…..

You can see, in the 1960s that the backs of Croc-na-mac houses were yards, scrubby, outhouses, workshops, grassy, bird cages for the Bellinghams a few doors up, rooms where families lived for the summer while they rented out the main house. Wire fences, not many walls, few cars, no garages in those days. Our back yard was lawn where we could play football and tennis – and there was a centre ‘pillar’ in our back wall, a brick and a half wide, just right to act as cricket stumps.

And the back lane was scrabbly, rough too. Watts coal lorry deliveries to our coal shed, and the horse-and-cart of the scary rag-and-bone man that we knew as the bogeyman. The back lane was ‘adopted’ by the Council at some point, and tarmac’ed, though Ian King writes, ‘I quite miss the back lane the way it was though – big puddles and pebbles, but I suppose it had to be modernised.’  The back lane became a nice smooth tarmac and we could play tennis or football and learn to cycle on it. No garage and when we got a car, Dad rented one behind the filling station on Eglinton St. Me learning to drive, that allowed the putting-the-car-in-the-garage task to be at least a lap of the town and maybe via Portstewart prom too, as part of my driving practice. Later Dad had the garage built with up-and-over door, so the width of the back yard ‘football pitch’ for kids’ play was reduced, but not our chance to have a drive around the town.

And the back lane was for the procession of the donkeys to and fro the beach, from Mr. & Mrs. Edgar’s up the road, with their daughter Fern, with a troop of youngsters from around the area earning summer job pocket money.

I remember Fern’s daughter Joanne as just a toddler, helping out too. Joanne writes, ‘The beach donkeys and ponies were a big part of my life growing up. It was up early and over to my Granny and Papa’s house at 36 Croc-na-mac to pick up bridles and then over to the donkey field to get our charges. A swift canter back over the football pitch and in to Mrs McConaghy’s back garden to give the animals a spruce up while they enjoyed their breakfast nosebags…”

Raymond McConaghy remembers, ‘They saddled up in our back garden, number 30 Croc-na-mac Road, before their morning trip to the beach’; delightful, though Ian King, another neighbour, writes, ‘Well I really didn’t like the donkeys to be honest – their size (when I was little) and the stench.’

Joanne: ‘Me in the saddle, in Mrs McConaghys back garden, about 1980. I’m not sure who all the people are but the pony is Candy’ (on the right, Laura-lee in the great blue flares, and Cindy M)

Then, every summer morning would be the parade of a dozen or so donkeys and ponies out along the back lane, on their way to the beaches. Joanne, ‘After ther breakfast, we split up to either the ‘Big Beach’ or the ‘Wee beach’. If it was the big beach then Shimo, Ken Bolton’s beautiful wee collie, was waiting to spend the day with us. We scaled the Bolton’s gate at Strandmore – it seemed an insurmountable height when I was small – to get buckets of water while someone ran to the grocery to collect the carrot tops that the grocer kept for the donkeys, something they loved.’

Left, out the front at Croc-na-mac. Joanne: ‘Maureen Kane will recognise these boys! Jet is the pony and Rosie is the donkey’ and Nigel J writes, ‘Darren in the red, I’m in the navy coat and Neil G has the red boots on.’
and right, Joanne: ‘I know who this is but if I tell, he’ll kill me and he’s bigger than I am these days lol!!?’

My Dad’s roots were in farming, and he was always a keen gardener, green-fingered. He’s out the back garden, planting roses or something, and says to me, David go over and ask the Edgar’s for some horse manure. So off I go, and I ask Mr. Edgar, who says, Yes sure, bring a bag with you and shovel it up.
Hmm – that wasn’t quite what I expected.

A reviewer writes, “Oh David!! That is so coincidental on my walk on Saturday there was horse dung on the path and I was cross I had no doggy bags to scoop it up for my shrubs Wasn’t Mr Edgar smart Yes I do remember the rides on the beach, most vaguely the excitement and fear of these huge looking beasts, how to get on and how to stay on and not scream head off. I remember I was more happy to watch them – they were really just docile and hard working little donkeys.”

I remember the donkeys on the East strand more, but Joanne reminds me that there were animals on the west strand too; the Council advert above is 1956, selling the licenes for trading, for photography, for ponies or donkies on the east strad (8 animals) and west (4).

Donkies and ponies on the beach – a great summer activity. Above left photo, Joanne says, ‘There is Jet and Sandy on the beach’. But what did the donkeys do in winter-time? Fred Ramage explained, in 1964:

That article says, ‘…donkeys… on the East strand for over 30 years’ – well I see donkeys featuring much earlier. There’s a postcard of early 1900s with the donkeys on the ‘north strand’, and donkeys in twee Irish heritage too, and with several donkey races in Portrush Regatta of 1887, that’s 135 years ago.

End of Part I! The next part will discuss the animals on the West Strand too.
Do send, if you have interesting photos about the donkeys and ponies at Portrush. And / or might you have a story to tell of your expereinces with the animals? ..do write a paragraph or two, and the photos & stories could go into the next blog, coming in next few days. 🙂

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With thanks to Joanne Gibson for the story and family photographs, Sheila Brown for the postcard images, Maureen & Ian & Raymond for photos nd stories, Daniel Tietze for the Tourist Brochure,
Newspaper articles from https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/

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, ‘Counties & The White House
(VI) Diving at the Blue Pool
(VII) Donkeys on the East Strand

Fishing fleet at Portrush Harbour (1): “Fifty trawlers a week”

“The catch was the biggest yet landed by one trawler, there being nearly four tons of fish of first quality – turbot, roker, cod, plaice, whiting, brill, lemon soles, black soles.”
Photographs of the steam trawler Ocean Sunlight unloading at Portrush harbour, Tuesday, May 3rd, 1932:

The journalist looked over the story of the town and wrote headline with confidence, “Portrush as new fishing port. History is repeating.”

The herring season would start in April. We are “expecting 50 trawlers a week will visit Portrush.”

It was like years of planning and effort by the Ministry of Fish were coming to fruition. Five years earlier, 1927, the Rotary Club meeting at Belfast called for two new harbours in Northern Ireland. The ‘Klondyke’ fishing banks were rich for white fish and were just up between the Portrush coast and the west coast of Scotland – but the fishing fleet took their catches away to Fleetwood for landing and processing.

‘Why didn’t the boats save time and costs and bring their catch in locally?’ asked at the Rotary meeting. Because harbours in the province ‘could not support fishing boats larger than a yawl.’ The herring industry had bases at Buncrana and at Oban; but locally, boats could only land their catch at Ardglass – 30,000 barrels of herring landed there in the 12 weeks of last season – but no facilities there, boats could not shelter there, and there was no room to increase the harbour size.

There were ideas for developments of facilities at other ports, like at Magilligan, or Killough, or Kilkeel, or Portrush, or Portaferry, or Larne.

Mr George Steven, the Inspector of Fisheries – him, the tall one in the above right photo – was fired up for development at Portrush harbour. Nicely, the shoals of juicy plankton, that marine microscopic food, were drifiting nicely towards our coast, and fisheries were looking to Portrush for a base for landing and processing their catches. The town had the advantages already of great road and rail infrastructure for onward transport to markets.

And the harbour had capacity: the Scotch ferries ended at the start of WWI, and bettter dredging of the Barmouth gave beter ship access to Coleraine, so Portrush harbour had capacity for opportunities. The harbout authorities, the PUDC council, and the LMS Railways were all committed to supporting the development of a fishing facility at the harbour.

Their efforts seemed to be paying off, with in February 1932 a big scottish fishing trawler landing their catch at Portrush:

The big catch from the Fraserburgh trawler – a great success, and promise for the future! The harbour was lauded to be the headquarters of the trawler fleet. “Mr. Steven hopes to see fifteen trawlers arrive at Portrush next week”, the last weeks of February. And, “The trawlers worked within 20 miles of Portrush, which is an ideal landing place and equipped with all the necesary facilities,” drooled Mr. Steven, the Man From The Ministry. “Why should trawlers have to do the round trip to Stranraer, 180 miles, or the 300 miles to Fleetwood and back, when within easy range there were equally good facilities at Portrush?”

The promise of Portrush, in a new role, the headquarters of the trawler fleet. And Mr Steven, the Man in the Raincoat, paid tribute to the cooperation from PUDC – the stalwarts Mr W. I. Cunningham & Mr. W. R. Knox – and the LMS Railway Company.

The expectation of two trawlers coming in April was still big news, in early April. There were going to be great benefits of price and freshness. Mr Steven, the Minister of Fish, reported that, up to now, fish caught in the White Sea or Bear Islands by sea-going trawlers were landed at Stranraer or Fleetwood, for processing and onward transport: fish were 3 to 6 weeks old by the time they reached Ulster shops. Further those Ulster customers were asked to pay first class prices for only second or third class fish. Instead, those stream trawlers, of 90 to 100 tons weight, could quickly get to Portrush to land their catch and get back out to sea again, and could be fishing for five or six nights a week, rather than just three.

Do you remember that name, Mr Steven, him from the Ministry of Fish, from the Portandhu blog? Him in 1924 saying, “If it was up to me, I’d scrap both of Portandhu and Portballintrae harbours,” he said, riding rough-shod over the local way of life. He Had A Plan, he had his sights set on the development of Portrush harbour and was for sure talking up the fishing enterprise opportunity: “It is expected that fifty trawlers a week will visit Portrush with their catch.”

That sounds great – or is it a bit worrying? Like, Portrush is continuing to develop nicely for rest and relaxation. PUDC has just opened the recreation grounds for play and relaxation, and there are nice cafes and bathing boxes and the diving boards have been installed at the harbour, like shown in the 1930s postcards from the great collection of Sheila Brown, and there was regular swimming and sailing regattas. Sailing regattas too, with newspaper below of the regatta in August 1929 – the start of the race, and centre, of ‘Edith’, owned by James Kelly, winning a drontheim sailing race – and right, 1934, big swimming regattas and displays at the harbour.

Er, so there will be fifty trawlers arriving per week, chugging in and out of the harbour, while you are doing your ‘Portrush flyer’ dive from the high board and swimming out to the raft?? And you reckon an industry of workers on the quayside there, unloading, curing, pickling, packing, despatching the catches, while the visitors to the town look on and hold their noses at the smell while they pick their way over the blood and guts and fat of fish carcasses on their way to their meal at the Harbour Bar or the Ramore?

Hmmmm…. fifty trawlers a week in Portrush harbour. Hmmmmm….. Do you think that would work?

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Portrush fishing fleet – at Portandhu
(1) ‘No Man’s Land’ at Portandhu
(2) ‘Nobody’s Child’ at Portandhu

Portrush fishing fleet – at Portrush harbour
(1) “Fifty trawlers a week” at Portrush Harbour
Next issues….. hopefully will get contributions from folk….
(2) Portrush as new fishing port – history repeating itself
(3) Portrush harbour 1930 – 1970 / Doherty era
(4) …..through to tourism
(5) deep sea creatures, kraken, octupuses, orcas and mermaids.

Portraits of Portrush: Patton of the harbour
Postcards from Portrush: (III) Climbing the stone bins, spear guns, & other harbour adventures
Postcards from Portrush: (II) the West Strand & Harbour
Portrush – the Harbour story
Portrush – Living on an Island
‘Teas and Ices’ cafe and the Great Train Robbery
Jimmy Molloy and the Harbour Bar

Croc-na-mac: Tin Huts to Steel Pre-fabs to Brick Homes

You may have a house now, with fully fitted kitchen, en-suite bathroom, loos upstairs and downstairs?
What was it like, living in a tin hut amongst the sand dunes of the west strand?
….and of then moving in to the luxury of one of the nice new pre-fabs on Hamilton Place, with frames made of steel, with All Mod Cons of having a fridge?
..or of later moving from a 20-year old past-its-sell-by date pre-fab into a solid, permanent brick house on Croc-na-mac or Rodney Square?

Hopefully there will be some readers who remember what the pre-fab houses in Portrush in the 1940s and 1950s and early 1960s were like, and even what it was like in the mid-1960s to move into the brick home….? Please do write a few paragraphs of your memories, and photographs please, for the social record.

Reminder that 1946 was the big year, the year that Winston Churchill’s vision to address the UK’s housing crisis happened, with the ‘Emergency Factory Made’ housing programme. Over the next few years there would be 170,000 houses built in the UK – great, though the target was 500,000 – with 16 in Portrush, out the front of Hamilton Place, and at the plots that would later be known as Croc-na-mac Sq and Rodney Sq.

I wrote about that year, 1946, in a previous blog.That was mostly about the building; this blog seeks to capture some family life, of living there – well it would do better for Portrushsocial history if anyone would record their Portrush prefab stories.

Firstly, Alan Wisener: “The day war broke out, my Dad left the family, travelled up to Londonderry and signed up into the army. When he left to join up, his brother gave him a Victoria crown dated 1890. He ended up serving wth the Royal Engineers, but he carried that crown with him throughout the war. He met my mum whilst on leave in 1942, they married, and I was born in 1944. When the war ended, he and the family returned to Coleraine and heaven knows how but in 1946 we found ourselves living in “The Hut”, a tin hut that was set amongst the sand dunes, at the end of the west strand in Portrush.

“Dad was working at Benjers the creamery and playing football for Coleraine.” But tough years for all: “My brother was born in the Mary Rankin – and mum got scarlet fever, And a tapeworm infection,”

Alan: “Hi David, I am the little chap sitting at the front of the photograph, which was taken in Easter 1946, with the ‘Tin hut’, our home, just beyond.”

“That Victoria crown, that my dad was given – he carried that with him throughout the duration of the war – and I now keep that crown. I had it mounted in a silver type pendant as a watch fob, and I keep it with me.”

Janis B: “There were temporary tin hut accommodation area in the sand dunes at the Black Rocks end of the West Strand – where big blocks of apartments are now. It was known as the Klondyke; I remember walking through there as a child though I can’t be sure if that is where this photograph is.”

I see a newspaper description that, two years after hostilities ended, “that heavy losses to home production after the floods and blizzards”, and that “the peoople will be worse off than ever.” Alan writes, “Yes, we were definitely on the West Strand, and I remember my father saying that soon after we left the place was flooded, or even hit by a very high tide, that would be around 1946 or ’47.”

I like maps. There’s Croc-na-mac along the bottom, with the empty sites that became plots for the ‘Arcon’ prefabs – I reckon that land was lower and sandier and so the Croc and Rodney terraces had avoided there!
The West Strand is on the, well, the west of this map, and I’ve marked Klondyke as being there, with the burn running through the embankment.

‘Klondyke’ isn’t a Portrush place-name that I recognise, but I find newspaper articles highlighting the Kondyke fishing grounds off the coast as being a ‘gold mine’ – if the tin huts there had some connection with the fishing rush.

The photo, below left, shows that ‘Klondyke’ area, in the Dhu Varren floods of 1960 (photo courtesy Sindy Smith), at the black rocks end of the west strand. On the right is the view from Dhu Varren, about 1960 (courtesy Trish Gray).

Back to 1946, and under Churchill’s drive for housing, with priority given to ex-service personnel, the Wisener family were offered a pre-fab in Windsor Avenue in Coleraine.
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Brian Carlin writes, “Hi David, my family, mum, dad, my two younger sisters and baby brother, moved into our home, a pre-fab, at 56 Windsor Avenue, in the summer of 1946. I was 6 years old and I lived in it until age 15, when I left to join the RAF.”

What were the pre-fab houses like? Unfortunately no-one in Portrush seems to remember details of the pre-fabs in the town or have memory of family life or have any family photos, so we must move over to Coleraine for fab details. Brian Carlin, now writing from California, says, “I have very good memories of living there” and gives an amazing description of them:

from Pathe film, Pre Fabs For Northern Ireland (1949)

“Let me describe the layout, because I haven’t seen anyone else describe it.

“There were two entrance doors; one was the front door that opened onto the street. It led into a hallway that I estimate was 15 feet long. The toilet was immediately on the left as you entered. There was a large built-in cupboard opposite the toilet. Further along the hallway, it opened out with the bathroom on the left flanked by a large airing cupboard that was heated by the hot water tank. Opposite that was the front bedroom and immediately ahead there were two doorways. The one on the left was the entrance to the living room, while that on the right opened to the back bedroom.

No photos of prefabs at Portrush?? This photo, from Irene Peden collection, shows the Pre-fabs at Coleraine, James Street/ Windsor Avenue.

“The other entrance door was at the left side of the house, as viewed from the front and gave direct access to the kitchen. Both entrance doors were made of steel, and the opening mechanism was a car door-like handle that was lockable.

Arcon floorplan Source: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/305963368408743304/

“The kitchen was equipped with a gas cooker opposite the entrance door, and behind that was a panel that housed a switch for the water tank immersion heater. The tank was also heated from a back boiler in the living room “Siesta” stove. Further along, there was storage space underneath a kitchen work surface, and then the kitchen sink with draining board. And lastly, on that side we had an under-the-counter gas-powered refrigerator, which was the height of luxury to our minds. On the opposite side of the kitchen, there was a fold-down table that doubled as the kitchen table, but with a convenient electrical outlet, could also be used as an ironing board. The table was in a kind of nook, between it and the entrance formed by the built-in larder.

Photos above – from English Heritage, 1947 (Actually they look a bit museum-y to me: does no-one have interior photos, from Portrush or Coleraine???)
Allison C: “Great description of the inside of prefabs and I’d never seen a photo of them either. Hard to imagine how much has changed in that area.”

“The living room was the largest room in the house. It was at the back, overlooking the back garden. At one end, there was a cupboard and set of deep drawers. The only other feature was the previously mentioned stove. It was an ugly piece of equipment, black enameled, with two doors having mica “windows.” But it gave out plenty of heat into the room as well as heating the water. Above it, we had a narrow mantelpiece and below was a semicircular hearth. Both bedrooms, the living room and the kitchen all had large steel framed windows, with a opening side pane and an upper horizontal pane that also opened.

Unfortunately no-one has local photos of interiors of the prefabs (in the meantime I’ve grabbed these photos from Prefab Museum website)

Josie McA: “The prefabs at Croc-na.mac Sq.were called Arcon Sq. The McAuley family, Goodmans, Hunters, Haslems, McClelands, Blanthorn, Langfords and Scotts all lived there.”

“Although the living room stove gave off plenty of heat, the rest of the prefab was bloody cold in the winter months. I remember waking up to see frost “trees” on the inside of the bedroom window. Supposedly the houses were insulated with “glass wool” but it did little to keep the cold out.

“I can’t think of any more to write, but will take questions. Brian Carlin”

Karen M: “​The history of the prefabs and the descriptions, so interesting! I do remember the steel window frames in my aunt’s home, how odd, and even more I remember the cold and the frost windows inside. I ddin’t remember until I read this blog.”

Really, can no-one in Portrush describe the pre-fabs there, or family life there?

I find the floorplan of the Arcon online and I send it to Brian. He continues, “Ah! Thank you David for the Arcon floor plan – it is just as I remember it! And a few details too that I had forgotten, such as wardrobes and cupboards in the bedrooms. The only thing missing in that floorplan is the fridge – it occupied the space labeled ‘Cupboard’ on the window side of the kitchen sink. I hope that helps! Regards, Brian.”

Later, Garth Law’s family move into that same house, and Garth writes, “David, my mum and dad moved in to 56 Windsor Avenue in July 1962 and lived there until April 1964, in one of the rows that faced each other between Windsor Avenue and James Street.

“Thge photographs from our happy time there, a great community. And I would love to know who’s prefab had the Nissan hut in their back garden.

On the right: “Inside a prefab, 56 Windsor Avenue, 1963, the Law family, Margaret Barker, Edith (Bell), Avril, George and Donna. I was born the next year in March 1964, and we then moved to Rosemary Place in Apil 1964.

“I can’t be sure of the prefab numbers so I’ve marked each of the 45 prefabs with a plot number. We lived in No. 56 Windsor Ave which I was told was Plot 22.

“Brian has been very helpful with his description of the pre-fab. My mum would totally agree that they were very cold in winter. Then again, I can recall frost on the inside of bedroom windows in the houses that replaced the prefabs.”

There are great happy memories of the pre-fabs and the community there in Coleraine, recorded in Coleraine Facebook pages. There were 50 pre-fabs there so I presume a stronger community and more memories, whereas no-one seems to have memories or stories found at Portrush.

Can someone can tell me of moving into the new brick houses on Croc-na-mac Sq, stories, photographs, family photos you might share?

And thirdly, those pre-fabs in Portrush were cleared in the mid-1960s, and folks moved into Croc-na-mac and Rodney Sq. sites, and later those council housing and privatisation.

Kellie M: “We used to play on the old prefab foundations outside my granny’s house on Hamilton Place, they were still there until the Fold was built.”

Allison C: “Those houses were built by Taggart’s and were very sought after. My grandparents lived on Dunluce Ave. and my granny was very anxious about moving in to a brand new house, but worse still,,, the kitchen was at the front of the house!! However over the years she loved to watch the world while standing at the window.

“They moved in to the house in Setpember 1966 – my Aunt has just confirmed it – and she and Granny lived in it – No.1, Croc-na-mac Sq.”

Croc-na-mac & Rodney Sq – photos of NW200 in 2013 & 2014, courtesy Maureen

Sheila Brown: “David I got married in 1964 and the houses in Croc-na-mac and Rodney Sq.s were built after that, for we were the first tenant in No. 5. If I am right we got the key in 1966. Laverty, Connelly, & Rankin were all my neighbours.”
“They were quite plain. Kitchen to front hall leading to living room, 2 bedrooms and a box room and bathroom upstairs, just basic open fire store at front. Yard and coal house at back gate. We were there until 1974”

===========

Anyone got experience of buying the council to make it your own home, what difference did it make?

And maybe fourthly, Privatisation, under Thatcher, about 1980, would be another part of the story – would anyone add anything about that time and the difference it made, if any?

The blog, about the 1946 / building of the prefabs, is here: 1946 – the Year of the Prefab
..and here is the link to the Index of Portrush Tales topics.

Portrush Tales: The Two Sheilas

​In writing and researching and gathering material for the blogs, thank you if you added in a Comments and your own story, I really appreciated that! In particular I especially wanted to thank ‘Team Sheila’ – for their support, all the way through the series of blogs. Sheila Kane was great – I think she read and gave encouraging feedback on every one of my blogs – at times I felt that she was the only one reading them. And we had some hilarious conversations about some of the events – she has great humour I discovered, not the serious straight-laced Head Girl that I remembered. And she did great write-ups and contributions herself, especially on the primary school, on Dunluce School, the Girona and Ramore Head blogs. So, thank you so much Sheila Kane, and here is your Crackerjack pencil.

Sheila K: Aw David! This is so lovely of you to do! I feel like I’m back at school and having the teacher write a report about ME!

(Sheila Kane’s great write-up of her first days as a teacher at Portrush Primary School are in this blog:
II. Portrush Primary School – Infants, downstairs.

Other folks have been great throughout too, adding in to a number of Portrush Tales blogs too – so my thanks to Alan, Alan, Alastair, Alistair, Allison, Allyson, Beatricia, Christopher, Columba, …….and other people all the way through to Victoriana, Whilharmonica, Xanthum, Yulysses and Zechariah. Thank you!

Me as a kid, morning duty was to go round to Blair’s shop, round the corner on Croc na mac, and get the newspapers from Sheila Brown there. I guess everyone in the area passed through that shop and Sheila Brown knows everyone and everything that was going on. She always said how well-brought up and polite I was, so I guess I was on my best behaviour there. Sheila has great memory and with great photos, she has made great contributions to episodes of Portrsuh Tales, particularly to the blogs on the floods of Portrush, on Croc na mac, the L’Atelier studio, the coast walk to Portstewart, and these days especially the Portcards of Portrush series is based on her Collection. So, a Blue Peter badge for Sheila Brown.

With her great memory, Sheila Brown (nee Blair)’s has written up her life experience of Portrush. As well as being her own story, to me it also tells a social history, of the development of Portrush, of being hard-working, of taking opportunities, of community, of care for others. And being Portrush Tales, the memory must be validated by facts – newspapers, documents to support the story.

Sheila is nervous that you may not find it interesting – I am pretty sure that you will, and that you will really enjoy it.

Blair family photos, courtesy Sheila Brown. All early 1960s: Left, “My dad and me at Magilligan beach” 
Right, “My mum painting at the Tides house”

“Hi David, a few notes for your blog: my mum and dad had a farm on the outskirts of Belfast. My mum did the farming, my father did a country run of deliveries with his van. He wanted a change, and when my dad saw the property now ​known as ​The Tides up for sale, he came to the town and bought it at the auction. They sold the farm and moved to the port, my brothers and me, arriving in Portrush in 1943. I was 11 years old.

“The family, a the Tides house. From left to right: Robin, Sheila, Tom, my little sister Molly, and my dad and mum, James & Sarah Blair.
And, do you see the picture there above the fireplace, of a red setter dog and a cat, amde with wool? All my life I loved making things with my hands, and I made that picture.”

“The house and shop had been McLaughlin Stores, and became J. Blair & Sons. I worked in ​the ​shop​, I discovered that I really enjoyed it, it became ​my passion​. Shop-keeping was not easy in those days though, with rationing and coupons for everything. Our parents were good to us though – no frills, but lots of good home-made food. Another passion for me was looking after the family; my little sister Molly was born a few years later, and I loved doing things with her or making things for her.

Left, photo captioned, ‘McLaughlin Stores, Ballyreagh near Portrush’
Right, that house, with the shanty town around, before those were cleared for the caravan park.

“All around the house and shop were huts and caravans, rented out during the summer months. My brother Tom started in the caravan trade, becoming a letting agent for the caravans, and me and mum prepared the caravans for the next visitor. The bus driver would call out the stop as the ‘S-town’, the Shanty town – my mum hated it being called that. There was an outbreak of typhoid in 1959, from one of the other shop-keepers, that led to the site clearances and the development of Glenmanus homes as better accomodation.

“The family business was J. Blair & Sons. As well as the Tides shop, we had a shop in Bushmills and we did a country run with a big mobile shop. My brothers all  worked in it – there was lots of work to do. I helped out there too – they say Variety is the Spice of Life.

“We bought another small shop in Croc-na-mac Street in Portrush, so small, really just the front room of a small house, and I worked there.

Sheila’s Wheels: my first car, in 1964. No driving test in those day, I just bought a licence, it cost 5 shillings, just because my friend had got one, and I am still driving.

“Later I met a friend of a friend, Harold Brown, who was visiting Portrush with his family from Magherafelt; a holiday romance, and we married in 1964​.​ I wanted to stay in Portrush and I renovated the apartment above the shop and initially we lived there. The Croc-na-mac area was still the post-war prefabs – they were replaced by the brick houses we moved into one, in Croc-na-mac Square.

Helena Alcorn Espie: “Mrs. Davies, one of my Primary School teachers, was very partial to McVities Chocolate Digestive biscuits, and I was often sent to Blair’s shop to get them for her.”

Portrush postcard, sent back to Harold’s parents in Magherafelt

“We renovated the shop and extended it to be a supermarket, and my brothers took it over.”

The renovated, extended Croc-na-mac Street shop – Sheila, Harold (Brown), and Tom and my father James Blair

Ray McConaghy: “I have very fond memories of working with Harold Brown on the “delicatessen” counter in the shop after school and during school holidays – a wonderful kind man. Sometimes I would go over to Sheila and Harold’s house in Croc-na-mac Square and help Harold to drill holes for electric cables in glass bottles. which Sheila decorated beautifully with shells and transformed into lamps.”

Helena Alcorn Elspie: “Way back when, we would have used the telephone in the shop, as few people had phones in their homes. I remember going after a job interview, the boss phoning Blair’s shop to tell me I’d got the job. Always someone would have come to the house to tell you thee was a call for you.
“My best friend Sylvia worked in the shop. She lived across the road, so did Sheila and Harold. He was big burly sort of man with gingery hair, always chatty and cheerful. No supermarkets then, it was a busy shop, also over in Rodney Street was Hamill’s shop, and both shops did well.”

Maureen Kane: “Oh so long ago! I only remember as a very small child going into buy sweets with my thruppence when Sheila’s mum was behind the counter, and I had to stretch up to put the money on the counter. The door was inside a porch and when opened the counter was near the door – jars on the shelves behind the counter which was a big high counter – I was very small then. I always have the impression of Sheila’s mum as a tall woman, very friendly with a lovely smile. Then Sheila worked in the shop, I don’t remember much except like her mum she was always very friendly. I remember Harold in a white coat, working in the shop. He had lovely blonde hair.”

Caravans & Transport – the Blair family moved to Tides in 1943, and Tom started in caravan business. A small beginning, I see an advert for sale of a singe caravan in 1945; then in ads in 1947 are to let out a handful of caravans on the Ballyreagh site, around Tides. That caravan business continued with sales as shown in the 1978 advert, on the right.

David: Sheila mentions the mobile van in Bushmills. Me, I guess I was pre-school age, about 4, but I remember the Saturday morning visit by ‘James the Baker’, in his Inglis van. We got white bread from him, with a black burnt crust that I always cut off my sandwiches, and maybe my treat from him was a coconut-y snowball bun. His half-red and half-white van had big long pull-out wooden “drawers.” He had chocolate-covered ginger biscuits, 1/2d, my brother Trevor’s favourite. The upgrading of shops like Sheila’s round the corner, and as car ownership expanded, that buying from mobile vans became unnecessary. I remember my mum feeling obliged to continue to buy bread from James, felt too bad to tell him not to come any more. I see the Blair’s advert in 1968, above centre, selling their two mobile shop vans – I guess that era of the mobile van calling came to an end.

Margaret Mullings: “Love this story, thank you. Memories of shopping for my mum in Blair’s Shop. We lived in Parker Avenue, nine children. A lot to feed but we are all still here. Great memories to last a lifetime.“

“I went down into the town and took over a small shop, the Shell Cove, which is​ now a gallery on ​M​ain St​., near the cinema, it was really a poky, footery wee place. I gathered bags of shells ​from Magilligan,​ ​Portbalintrae ​and Donegal beaches, and in a room out the back of the shop I made all kinds of ornaments to sell in the tourist trade. ​​

“Later I was able to get the larger property next door, across the little lane, and over the years the work expanded so that I had cottage workers making flowerpots covered with shells​, and​ letter racks with the clam shells​.

“There was a clam factory in Glenarm and I went there. My husband Harold was very helpful to drive, and our son Trevor too. We went further afield too: we went on holiday to Tarbot in Scotland to gather Queenie shells ​- ​a type of small clam ​- and ​we came home laden with them​. They cost nothing to collect and ​were ​lovely when varnished​.  I also bought a lot of tropical shell goods from a big shell factory in Bude in Cornwall​,​ where they made shell stuffI​.​ I enjoyed the trips over​.​ It was great to go to Holiday Blackpool, a massive show, a world-wide wholesale for fancy goods. It was held in the Winter Gardens there – later it moved to Birmingham – I loved it, shops were my passion.

Craft fairs, and getting stocked up for the season!

“Later my mum moved from Tides to live in a house on Causeway Street, next to the old Post Office. I move​d​ my business to the shop next door, into what was known as the Bonne Bouche​. ​I did fancy goods, I made a lot of my stock – silk flowers, sea shells – there was plenty of work.

Bonne Bouche location, Causeway St.
Left postcard, from Sheila Brown’s collection. On the far left is the old Post Office (now the library); the building with the bay window will become Sheila’s antique shop; Bonne Bouche, the shop with the large street frontage

“Shops were always my passion – I loved being behind the counter, I loved making things to sell, I loved the products, I loved meeting people. I especially loved antiques – and later when the Bonne Bouche property was sold I moved next door, into a little shop that I called the Victorian Room, and focused on antiques.

Fiona N: “I remember ​The Victorian Room, on Causeway Street, in Portrush – it is where I got my engagement ring, 28 years ago. It was a really lovely shop and Mrs Brown was always so kind. She knew what I liked in jewellery and was the one who showed me the ring which I have now worn for nearly 28 years.”

“My very first purchase of an antique, years and years ago, was of a brass clock set. It must have been 75 years ago. A neighbour had given me a bag of shells that he had collected; I made some products and sold them, and had a few pounds from the sales. There was a man at Ballyreagh selling some old things – my mum had green fingers, she loved flowerpots and she bought flower pots, stands, anything to do with plants – she had green fingers, I have them too. She said, You should buy a few antiques with your money. The clock set was for sale for £10, that was quite a lot but that was the going price. I loved looking at and handling such old things.

​”Those candlesticks are the oldest thing I have – they are my dad’s handiwork, he made them over 100 years ago, in the Sorocco works in Belfast.

Bonne Bouche: 1927, a cafe ; 1975, put up for for sale by Blair family

“I was there in that Antiques shops for the next 25 years, until it was demolished to be replaced by apartments in about 2002.”

End of an Era – closure of the Antiques shop on Causeway St.

Sheila Kane: “Oh I have so loved Sheila Brown’s account … She has such a great memory and always interesting recollections. I have a beautiful rose-gold bracelet and ruby and diamond ring that I bought from her antique shop in Causeway Street – it was like an upmarket Auntie Wainwright’s shop from Last of the Summer Wine … absolutely mesmerising to browse in. I loved her Shell Cove too. I used to have a big conch shell that had been converted to a lamp, and I bought many bags of shells for different little teenager art projects that I’d have been doing at home.”

Sheila you showed me your great collection of Portrush postcards. How did that come about? “Well David, after I retired from the Antiques shop, I was given an old postcard album and I started collecting old postcards of Portrush, about 20 years ago. A man from  Belfast started doing Antique Fairs and he had a shop where Troggs is now. He had a partner who sold postcards in the shop and I got most of the collection from him. I visited the shop quite often and he would keep me local cards. They cost 50p upwards – rare ones at £5 or more below – it all added up but I got a lot of pleasure with them. You can see, they go back in time to early dates of Portrush, like a time machine, and the writing on the back is interesting.

I ask Sheila B, do you remember Sheila Kane /Chambers – was she a trouble-maker? “Hi David”, she replied, “I knew Sheila’s mum, Jean Walker, when in Crocnamac shop. She married Harry Chambers. He was a great radio man. My Harold was always interested in Short Wave radio stuff and he loved Harry’s aerials. I knew Sheila to speak to, a lovely person I think, so many juicy stories t say about her!!” **

“We were in Vancouver four times, including going to my son Trevor’s wedding. Harold is wearing the hat. We saw lots of Craft and Antiques and got stocked up – they were great holidays! The first time we went to Canada though we had 12 different flights, what between breakdowns and going on a holiday as well to San Diego.”

** it case of any uncertainty, I should say that I just made that last bit up.

“Over the years I did talks on Shells & Antiques to all the Women’s Institutes and women’s gatherings untill I retired. I had a very enjoyable life meeting people and making my stock. I loved making things and now 90 years old and I am still crocheting – good for the mind. I made rugs, tapestries, loved baking, shopkeeping, and my pride and joy was making things for my little sister.”

David with Sheila, June 2022; receiving card from the Queen, 2022; & Christmas, 2020

“I have had a wonderful life. I moved eight times all in Portrush – I can’t believe it myself !!! I live now at Dhu Varren in a flat, with still a number of my precious things from over the years. If you are passing by, feel free to pop in and say Hello.

“This is only a few snippets out of my life David, I hope it is of interest to people – delete if no interest, Sheila.”

Sheila Brown: “Hi Sheila Kane, well if we were out of the picture David has brought us to light. He is a lovely man and just loves writing about Portrush. I think the book will be closed now but it was great, all the blogs, they keep us young, and we will not be forgotten.
Hope you keep well and look forward to seeing you soon “
David S: “Sheila Brown (‘the Model’) as Harold called her – a beautiful human being, who has a wonderful account of local history..“
Davy McA: “Two diamonds in the rough of Portrush”
Heather W: “You provide a fantastic platform for Portrush people to share memories and photos, David Martin! So lovely to read about the “good old days”! I’m a blow in and as I walk round Portrush I smile remembering the people and places mentioned.”
Bobby Ann: “Two great ladies..”
Lorna G: “Two lovely smiling faces ”
Sheila Kane: “Sheila, David certainly has put an awful lot of hard work into his meticulous research, into encouraging people to send him facts and memories, and he has pulled everything together in a way that his articles always make interesting reading … and let’s not forget the way he punctuates all with his wit and humour “
David B: “Sheila I loved reading your article Aunty, brings back many memories of the summers I spent in Portrush”
Melody B: “Wow! You still have an amazing memory Mum! Great you are able to share all this.”
Sharon C: “Sheila, absolutely loved reading this….so many memories “
Christine H: “Thank you for sharing this!”
Margaret M: “Love this story, thank you. Memories of shopping for my mum in Blair’s Shop. We lived in Parker Avenue, nine children, a lot to feed we are all still here. Great memories to last a lifetime. Always love to hear stories about Portrush, keep them coming”.
Karen L: “Love this!  thank you for sharing.”
Reba J: “Great stories down Memory Lane / thank you both x“
Noleen K: “This is lovely.”
Sindy S: “Another great read bringing back great memories David Martin. My grandparents William & Kathleen McFetridge lived straight across from Blair’s on Croc-na-Mac. We were allowed to cross the road to spend our pocket money think it was only 2 1/2p but it went a long way, bubbly, black jacks & rainbow drops. I loved the shop and Mrs Brown, she knew all us kids. I would then play shop in Grannies kitchen using the cabinet with the drop down top as my counter. Happy days. Thanks for the memories David and the two Sheila’s  ”
Sheila K: “When we lived in Rodney St, Mr and Mrs McFetridge allowed our next door neighbour, John Bacon, and I to play in their back garden as we only had back yards and they had a long, grassy, open stretch at their back. Great fun in what became the Wild West for us with John being the cowboy and me the Red Indian … I can still remember the smell from the cap gun and my rubber-tipped arrows We even had cowboy teas … sausages and beans … on wonderful tin plates from a toy teaset I had (food always looked good on tin plates in the westerns) I remember Sindy too as she would have played with us when at her grandparents’. Also Catherine and Suzanne Quinn from further up Croc na Mac St. All this before Croc na Mac Sq and Rodney Sq were built!”
Sheila Brown: “The stories from Croc na mac are good. I took almost all the kids round those streets to Sunday school in a Bedford van, me and the driver, they rolled about great fun. I certainly know a few generations. “
Elizabeth B: “So fascinating to read all this. My Dad is Sheila’s brother who lives in Vancouver Canada, we had many memories of visits to Portrush when we were children. We heard stories about all of this too. We loved Aunt Sheila and her shops. Thanks for putting this together.”
Lesley McB (nee Blair): “I’m one of Auntie Sheila’s Canadian nieces! Wonderful account of life’s story in Portrush. On our visits over to Ireland I remember our baggage got lost and My Granny Blair took us to Logan’s and bought us new outfits for Sunday, Granny Blair was exceptionally kind and left a legacy of kindness. Auntie Sheila was the same and I love her dearly, she took my two sisters and I and my cousin Kathryn to the Safari Park and we had our photo taken holding the lion cubs. I remember my Dad taking about doing deliveries for the Bushmill’s shop. What Auntie Sheila has said about her life in Portrush and all the lovely comments tells a true picture, she is a wonderful woman! I am now living in Armagh and seen her last on her birthday in May, I will hopefully get up soon again for a visit!!” Beth L: “Thank you for this! I am truly amazed (and jealous) of such a keen memory! It helps me remember my childhood and my wonderful hometown so much better.”

Janetha I: “David Martin I loved reading this and was delighted to spot myself and my classmates in the featured photo of Mrs Chambers’ (now Sheila Kane) P3 class. I loved Portrush Primary school even though I had a few tears most mornings when my mum dropped me off. Mrs Brown and then Miss Chambers always welcomed me with open arms and cuddles until I felt ready to face the day.
I wonder where everyone from my class has ended up.”

<=== oh Janetha, that story sounds so interesting…… Might you be interested in doing a write-up. “My First Day At School” ?

“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.

=============
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)

Our Mum: Maud Martin 1926-2022

We celebrated Mum’s 95th birthday last year, on 25th October 2021, a great time of celebration and thankfulness, with the family all together.

And some great times over the last year too, with mum doing well after the rubbish Covid years, with hearing better and such great conversations again. Seeing new great-grand children for the first time. She has been thoroughly amazed and enjoyed seeing and hearing these Portrush Tales blogs, and is so tickled that she stars in them. She keeps asking me when I am going to publish – her hopes might be a bit too high!

But age takes its toll, things getting tougher, and to our great sadness our lovely mum, Mrs. Anna Maud Martin, nee Hamilton, passed away on Saturday 25th June 2022.

Seeing the new great-grandchild, early 2022

Thinking back over her wonderful and full life, Mum grew up in Enniskillen, with a great set of friends at school, at tennis clubs and Fermanagh Young Unionists. Her dad worked on the trains, and they went everywhere by train, including to visit an aunt at the Dundarave estate at Bushmills. Wartime, she had to carry and do regular drills wearing a gas mask. Her dad was in the ARP, ensuring blackouts, with them hearing bombers after the blitz on Belfast and on the lookout for them over Enniskillen.

My mum: wonderfully vibrant, beautiful

Her first job in her ‘teens was in the city offices, sorting Food and Petrol ration books. As a special treat one day they were allowed to leave work a little earlier than normal: well it was VE Day. After 6 years in darkness, all the lights came on and they danced in the streets all night.

Courting days – excursions to Portrush, 1947

There was a 12th of July parade through Enniskillen, and there was a young policeman doing duty, standing near her mum’s front door. Her mother told her to take him a cup of tea – and that is how mum and dad met.

1948, Excursions to Portrush, and the Enniskillen tennis club

So many happy photographs of their trips, to Devenish, to Bangor, Portrush, Dad’s family farm in the Mournes. New policemen had to serve 5 years in the force before they could get married, and mum and dad tied the knot in 1949. Mum prepared everything special for their first meal together in their new house. But Dad came back hours late, and clarried head to foot in mud: there had been reports of sheep worrying by dogs, and he had spent hours trying to catch it. I guess that chaos, the demands of the job, set the pattern for their married life.

Kesh, 1952

They moved around with Dad’s postings, Kesh in Fermanagh, then Newtownhamilton in the bandit country of south Armagh, during the 1950s IRA campaign . (Me mam’s folks came from Glaslough, across the border in Monaghan, but they had to move north in the 1920s troubles. (One can’t really write much of northern irish history without that background being there.))

1956, Newtownhamilton

After that 1950s IRA campaign was over they jumped at the chance to move to Portrush, buying the house in Croc-na-mac in 1960 for £2,200.

Me, I was born about the time of the Cuban missile crisis. My school history teacher says about those times, that they didn’t expect to live to see the next week. I ask my mum what does she remember about that time? Nothing really, she says. I am a bit surprised at that, like she was at home, with 5 boys around, what was she doing?

Portrush, mid-60s

Late 1960s, and it is the big Troubles. Policemen are drafted to Derry and Belfast hot spots. My Uncle Jim, another policeman, talks about patrolling at the Divis Flats area and the person next to him is felled by a concrete slab thrown from the top. Dad was away many weekends though only incurred a knee injury, by a brick thrown during the Burntollet Bridge ambush in 1969.

Fermanagh, about 1978; Mum & Dad, some stone structure thing, and visiting us in Plymouth, about 1990

RUC pay was pretty poor in those days, and family holidays were few and not very far. Often with a friend’s caravan, mum and dad and my next brother might go to places like Bangor or Groomsport for a week. Mornings we were often dropped off at the golf course, and that kept us occupied for half the day. With 5 boys I’m sure it was much needed ‘us’ time for mum and dad. Maybe later years, maybe a bit more money, we stayed in a B&B or small hotel. We had a special holiday back to Enniskillen, to see some of their old friends and haunts. It always seemed to me to be a proud city, with the long tradition of the Inniskilling Dragoon, being welcomed home in the patriotic songs. Of course many didn’t come home. We are at the cathedral, looking at the war memorial. To me, they are just names on a list; but they are names of her school friends, or parents or brothers of her friends, and mum is in tears.

As a young lad in Portrush, the Troubles were on the news but in the distance. School summer holidays, Dad is drafted away, I am bored. I play tennis with mum in the back garden. At a break time, I see Dad coming down the new road from the Eglinton St barracks and call out, Dad’s home! like I did every normal day. Mum is so relieved that he is back OK, but I am cheesed off that our tennis game is aborted.

Mum & Dad and our eldest, about 1995; and Mum & me, 2015 (It is pretty touching that several people look at the photos and say, “David, you look very like your mum.”)

As the town Sergeant Dad was often working very long hours to check things were OK in the town, even more so on big days, being responsible for the officers on duty all round the town. I think Mum had the main tasks to bring up the 5 of us. Her and Dad were a great example to us all that helped us all, through school, university in the days of grants not loans and family support, and then getting jobs and married and new homes. One of the things she is proud about, is that “We are all still married, and all to the same woman.”
A bit of an Irish-ism, but I hope you know what it means.

Diamond wedding celebrations, 2009

Middle brother moved back to Portrush about 1986, then married and then the kids. For mum and dad then there was years of child-minding and later of collecting kids from Carnalridge school, with them often the first car in the car park, waiting 30 minutes or more for the kids to come out from school. Then ice cream from the van in Lansdowne on the way home, sandwiches when they got to the house, and the kids got the wee folding table out to do their homework – the same table that I had used for my homework. Mum and Dad were asked to assist a lot with child-minding, too often I reckoned, but Dad said that it kept them young. It is just jealousy really on my part – I was away to uni in 1981, and working and then married life was away from Portrush, and we both regret that our kids didn’t have much time with their grandparents.

So, my nephews and nieces saw the most of mum and dad in those years, and Andrew writes:
“Granny and Granda, I automatically think of together-ness. I only knew them once they retired but my memory of them is their two arm chairs in the living room, each did what they could of a crossword and swapped over. When Granda drove, Granny directed him, she reversed him out of the garage at Crocknamac. Then when they came to a junction Granny was responsible for checking the left side, Granda the right. They were walking partners too, and every day they did a lap of the town, and everyone knew them and greeted them, because of Granda’s status and because they were such a part of the community.

“In their later years, Granny and Granda’s summer holiday was to Newcastle and the Mournes for a week every year, where they would make a point of seeing Aunt Anna. Both Granny and Granda were avid tennis players in their young days, and they would be glued to their screens for Wimbledon every year.

“I have two prevailing memories of childhood with them. Firstly we used to take trips to Portstewart to McIntyre’s toy store to pick up Lego every year, which was accompanied by a trip to Morelli’s for ice cream.

“Another was the annual trip to Barry’s every summer. Granny and Granda would get tokens and take us around the rides, and we would go on and they stood at the barriers and watched us. Going around the cyclone we always tried to touch granny’s hand as we were swirled around. Just that contact, that closeness to them both, that feeling that though we may be a bit away that they were always there, quietly, looking out for us.”

90th birthday celebrations, 2016; centre,golden wedding anniversary, 1999

Mum and Dad were well-known for their twice-daily walks around the prom and round the town. Dad passed away in 2010, and Mum moved over to Abercorn Court on Croc-na-mac.

Later with restricted mobility for the last years, she moved over to Madelayne Court in Portstewart for the extra nursing care. The nurses and carers in both homes were wonderful, caring, and doted on her as if she was their own granny. The Rev. Peter MacDowell supported Dad and Mum kindly and gently on their journeys.

After some bumps and falls over the last few months Mum had been limited to bed or sitting only. In the last few days of illness stillness in her care at Madelayne Court, she would sometimes ask the nurse, “Please, would you help me to get up.” The wonderful nurse would gently ask, “What would you like Maud, what can we do for you?”

Mum replied, “I want to dance.”

Maybe as old age closed in, her mind and spirit soared to the past and to things fresh and new in the future.

So, as mum, Maud, mum-in-law, granny, great-granny, neighbour, friend – however you knew her – a life well lived, and departing in peace to join the dance.

With love to you Mum, and Dad, from Jim, Kenny, Trevor, Ivan, David and the family and all your friends and people who have been touched to have known you xx

The Metropole (II): as Ministry of Finance – Portrush’s biggest employer

Who was the biggest employer in Portrush? Well, you might think of the The White House, or the Northern Counties, or Barry’s – though all of them rather seasonal. Rainey’s or Taggart’s construction? Dairies, bakeries? Tourism? Lots of hotels and B&Bs in the town, but individually each were small. About industrial employment, there was the super new jigsaw factory in Glenmanus – announced as a breakthrough, the first factory in the town – but still, only about 30 employees.

Orreen Yates, McCelland as was, leaps out of her seat in excitement when she sees the blog about the Dhu Varren floods, in August 1960. She tells me that she was at work that day, in the Metropole, in its incarnation as the Ministry of Finance, Ulster Savings Certificates branch, and clearly remembers her bus struggling to get up the hill to go back to Coleraine, and of seeing furniture floating in front gardens of Coleraine Rd. She has an awesome memory of working there and from the top of her head writes down the names of over 80 other staff. They came from Portrush and from all around the north – the team probably includes you or your parents or family or their neighbours.

We reckon the Metropole, the Ministry of Finance, as Portrush’s Biggest Employer.

photo of Metropole, August 1960 – extracted from Sindy Smith’s photo of the floods

From the blog on The Metropole (I) – Hotel: Decline and Fall, you will remember that it started as the Hotel Metropole in 1907, “The finest tourist hotel in Ireland.” I think it wasn’t doing that well and changed hands a number of times, then in the 1920s became a Rest Home run by Presbyterian church organisation, then re-opened as the Metropole Hotel in the 1930s. Jump to the late 1960s and it became a care home, then Coleraine uni accomodation, then was a low-cost hotel.

Amd from other blogs you will remember that government offices and some schools and colleges moved out from Belfast after the 1941 blitz – re-locating to Castle Erin, to the Northern Counties – and the Ulster savings office moved to the Metropole at Portrush, and was there for 23 years, 1941 to 1964.

Trish Gray (nee Lee) has just given me this gorgeous photo, of her mum with other colleagues who worked at the Metropole, about 1945:

Photo courtesy Trish Gray. “I only know 3 of the 4.
 Back Row my mum, Winifred McCallion (later Lee, remained in Portrush); Helen Hunter (later Johnston, moved to  London then Bangor)
 Front Row Margaret Innis? (later Malcolm, moved to Belfast) ; Unknown

Orreen McClelland
(now Yates), 1959

Orreen describes her time there:

“In August 1959, aged 16, I started work in the Ministry of Finance, Ulster Savings Branch, at the then very old building known as the Metropole in Portrush.

“The building was quite dark, badly lit with creaky old staircases, flaking paintwork and was frequently in need of repairs so the local builders, Taggarts and Raineys, were in constant demand.”

From her (astonishing) memory, Orreen lists about 80 staff that she remembers, for the few years that she was there. She says, “At that time it must have been the biggest employer in the area, with staff coming from Portrush, Portstewart, Coleraine, Bushmills, Ballymoney and further afield. I would think that outside of Belfast there wasn’t any one establishment employing such a huge number of people.

photograph: Hotel Metropole, 1910s (photo courtesy Sheila Brown postcard collection) Does anyone have interior photos of the Metropole – be it staying after Lush nights or being at the clinic or a Resident there or whatever? Right, Metropole, the address for the Ministry of Finance, 1957 advert

“The staff was predominantly female with just a few males. From memory I can recall these faces and names, and I’m sure there must have been others: 

“Ernie Simpson was Manager; Senior staff were Miss Isobel May, Frances McCaughey (Portstewart), Alison McCandless (Portstewart), Bill Scott, and Mr McGuckin (Portstewart)” [the person was from Portrush at the time, unless noted otherwise. Names are written from Orreen memory, 60 years later – of course may not be 100% perfect or complete.]

“When I left Coleraine High School I did a Secretarial course at Coleraine Tech in Form CS (for Civil Service). We were then automatically enrolled on a waiting list. There was a recruitment interview, held in Coleraine. Some of my friends who were interviewed at the same time as me got jobs locally in Coleraine, like at the Labour Exchange. There were intakes to the CS at certain intervals when a clutch of people were admitted at the same time. The starting point was as a clerical assistant and when established in the job, if recommended you could go forward for an interview in Belfast and then through to the grade of Clerk, and so on up the ladder. There were no exams necessary.

“Anyway, for getting to work, the bus stop was located conveniently close to the front door on Salisbury Terrace, and across the road for the journey back to Coleraine and Portstewart. We had to sign in on arrival in the morning and sign out on leaving at night. The reception area was on the ground floor, with the switchboard, a cloak room, and my area, the large Filing Room.

“The supervisor in the Filing Room was Miss Lottie Robinson, with her desk looking out the windows onto the Coleraine Rd and Portstewart Rd leading round to Dhu Varren. My desk was recessed into the window space looking out onto the Portstewart Road side. Our desks were spread amongst numerous rows of lockable steel filing drawer cabinets that contained the Ulster Savings Certificates.

“Certificates were purchased at the Post Office, and consisted of 3 tear off sections. Section 1, like below, was retained by the purchaser, and Section 2 was filed at the Metropole.”

The names list continues: ….Kathleen Adams, Doreen Archibald (Ballymoney), Sylvia Bacon (Portstewart), Margaret Baird (Portstewart), Dehra Barr (Coleraine), Tommy Barr (Coleraine), Mrs Bearns (Portstewart), Ann Bradley (Coleraine), Gwen Buckley (Bushmills)…..

“The mail was delivered each morning by the janitor, Cecil Gunthorpe, ably assisted by Bill Hemphill of Portstewart. Gunthorpe, as he was familiarly referred to, lived with his family in the adjoining house. He was such an affable man, full of life, always smiling and a breath of fresh air as he delivered the batches of mail each morning or brought the morning or afternoon tea in huge tea pots. He was also called on to bring in his cat to catch the mice which frequently scampered around the floor.

I have not found any Metropole photos but Iris Elizabeth writes, “After the Metropole, the Savings branch moved to Coleraine and I worked there rom 1978 to 1993. I found this photo of Crown Buildings in 1987 – the retirement of Isa Carson in the blue dress, and in the middle is Sylvia Bacon (later Archibald) and Annie Millar.”

…….Selena Cairns (Coleraine), Alice Campbell (Coleraine), Isa Carson (Bushmills), Isobel Cochrane (Bushmills), Cath Cooper (Bushmills), Fred Corner, Gladys Crawford (Coleraine), Kathleen Davis (Coleraine), Angela Deeney (Coleraine), Sadie Doherty (Coleraine), Margaret Donaghy (Ballymoney), Pearl Donaghy (Ballymoney), Eleanor Donaghy…

“The mail was sorted into sections and divided between the assistants who then had the job of filing away new purchase certificates or retrieving certificates which were being redeemed for payment from the filing cabinets.

(1961 census: no employment data but here’s population info, if of interest)

“Afterwards I often had the job of checking the Holdings in the filing cabinets for any lost or misfiled certificates. There were long, wooden, stool type benches placed in front of these filing cabinets to enable us to stand on to reach into the higher drawers. Continuous checking was an essential and interesting job but could get boring at times.

Iris Elizabeth: “Those three ladies again, plus Alice McLaughlin nee McEldowney in the back. This time the guest of honour was our much loved messenger Bill Hemphill from Portstewart. He looked after all departments and got a “do” in the canteen the day he retired. But we considered him ours more than anyone else’s!”

…Tilly Elder (Bushmills), Doyle Fitzpatrick (Coleraine), Gladys Glasgow (Portstewart), Jean Glenfield, Cecil Gunthorpe, Vi Hamill, Lily Hamilton (Portstewart), Babs Harvey (Portstewart), Maureen Harvey (Portstewart), June Heaney, Bill Hemphill (Portstewart), Avril Huston, May Ireland, Kathleen Irwin (Coleraine), June Kane, May Kavanagh, Angela Lewis…

“The third portion of the certificate, Section 3, was stored externally for safe keeping, in case of a fire at the main building. The storage facilities were at a building called the Bonne Bouche at the rear of the old Post Office in Causeway St. There was no full time staff employed there so occasionally we were required to go there for a stint of filing. It was an eerie, dusty old building, housing lots of paperwork and I didn’t relish being there.

Bonne Bouche, on Causeway St, “Cigarettes, confectionery, magazines, souvenirs, fancy goods, post cards”
– along the block from where Mementoes is now.

“Certificates which were being redeemed were attached to a repayment form, a US5, and were forwarded to the repayments section up on the first floor.

“Switch board operator, 1960” (Stock image) Orreen says, just like at the Metropole! ..and Gerald Bradley writes his telecom job included,”In the 1960s maintaining the telephone switchboard. Very different from today’s IT equipment. The plugs on the switchboard had to be cleaned with a paste to keep them clear of verdigris.” Right – Ulster Savings – vital for N . reland prosperity (Sept 1961)

“The telephonist was Jean Glenfield. When she went for lunch or was off, I was given the switchboard duties which I enjoyed, though of course it meant I had to take my lunch break on my own, at a later time than the others.

“There were no canteen facilities so the staff made good use of the little shop at Dhu Varren Post Office, just around the corner or, weather permitting, went for a short walk at lunchtime through the black arch onto the beach. During the winter, when the visitors had left the town after a busy summer season, the West Bay View hotel in Mark Street offered a very generous weekly deal on lunches for local workers and I was fortunate in being able to walk down Eglinton St and enjoy a lovely meal at a very good price.

“Up on the top floors was the Typing Pool, Wages, and senior Administration. The overall Manager was Mr Ernie Simpson, and other Senior Staff were Miss Isobel May, Bill Scott, and from Portstewart Miss Frances McCaughey, Miss Alison McCandless and Mr McGuckin. On Friday, payday, we walked up to the Wages dept on the top floor, and queued up in a long line to sign and collect our pay packet from one of the Senior Staff. Then, if we needed an item of stationery, over to the Senior sitting at the next desk – even something as meagre as a pencil or a finger rubber had to be signed for. Me, constantly on duty checking the filing cabinets for misfiled certificates, I wore out the finger rubber every week and had to explain why I was going through so many!

May & Nina McGrattan, about 1950 (photo courtesy Hugh McGrattan)

…Jimmy McAleely (Coleraine), J. McAleese, Ethel McAllister, Vera McAllister (Portstewart), Molly McBride (Bushmills), Eileen McCandless, Orreen McClelland (Coleraine), Marion McCloskey (Dungiven), Eileen McCullough (Portstewart), Maisie McDermott (Coleraine), Anne McDonnell (Coleraine), Rhoda McGaghey (Coleraine), Brian McGinn (Belfast), Kathleen McGrath (Ballymoney), May McGrattan, Nina McGrattan (see photos, about 1951), Muriel McMullan (Bushmills), Anne McPoland (Ballymoney), Marjorie Miller (Bushmills), Annie Montgomery (Bushmills), Margaret Mornin (Ballymoney), Mary Mornin (Ballymoney), Maureen Murray (Portstewart)…

Outside the entrance to Metropole
Back row: Muriel McMullan; Unrecognised; Isobel Cochrane
Front row Annie Montgomery; Doyle Fitzpatrick; Maureen Murray
Photo courtesy: Isobel Cochrane Scott

“In May 1960 Princess Margaret was married to Antony Armstrong-Jones in Westminster Abbey and it was the first time a Royal Wedding was broadcast on television. Somewhere in the upper floor area of the Metropole a television set was installed and we were allowed to watch the ceremony.

Armstrong-Jones, left 1958, and right 1965; wedding day, 6 May 1960 (this Portrush blog feels an episode of The Crown!)

“I can remember clearly the afternoon of the cloudburst in August 1960. In a short time the entire area around Dhu Varren and Coleraine Rd was completely flooded, due mainly to a problem with the blocked culvert at Dhu Varren. Our bus struggled to get through and as we passed the bungalows on the right between Metropole Corner and Glenvale I can recall being horrified at seeing furniture floating in the front garden of one of the bungalows.

Coleraine Road, & Dhu Varren – floods

“Other excitement, those years we closed for Easter on Good Friday and Easter Monday, but opened on Easter Tuesday. That was the day of the Point to Point races at Glenvale and the road leading there was packed with people out enjoying the holiday, while we had to work!

Point-to-point racing, Glenvale, Easter Tuesdays
Left, 1960, brilliant weather; 1961, miserable weather. Holiday makers stayed in their hotels, but a winner was local Rosemary Marks; and right, 1962 advert
(Easter Tuesday, me with my sack of Belfast Telegraphs to sell to the crowds coming into the town after the races, then buying a ‘paper to read on their way home afterwards)

Carol Pollock : Isa Carson (Photos courtesy: Gladys Glasgow Johnston)

…Carol Pollock (Ballymoney), Bertie Rankin (Coleraine), Lottie Robinson (Coleraine), Mrs Scott, Kathleen Smyth (Bushmills), Derek Solomon, Stan Thomas (see photo), Margaret Thompson (Coleraine), Anne Tinkler, Mary Watson (Ballycastle), Moira Watters (Coleraine), Les Williams, Sally Wilson (Bushmills), Gladys Wood (Bushmills)…

Left – O’Neill visit to Portrush Ministry of Finance office, September 1962 (a few months after Orreen had moved on) Right: Stan Thomas, about 1960, at the turnstile at the Causeway – 6d to go further along the walkway – the family owned a shop down below

Orreen, how do you remember so many names – did you know everone, was it all a big party there?
“Oh, I remember the names just thinking back – no list to refer to. I was of course more friendly with the ones in the Filing Room, like Alice Campbell, Isobel Cochran, Carol Pollock, Annie Montgomery and June Heaney. There was no socialising at work – we just got off the bus each day, worked till lunchtime, had a brief break, then back to work till 5:10pm and then got the bus home. In our office we never had a chance to meet up at work for coffee or a chat, and were not allowed even to make personal phone calls.

co-workers at the Metropole, outside the Town Hall
Moira Watters : Gladys Glasgow Johnston
(photo courtesy Gladys)

“But you have jogged my memory into thinking about socialising. The only time I remember was everyone congregating in the Filing Room one Christmas, and the latest recruits had to put on the entertainment. The sisters Margaret and Mary Mornin organised us and turning the chairs upside down to represent a car (like children do!) we sat in them and sang the current songs, “Seven little girls Sitting in the back seat kissin and a huggin with Fred“ – we changed the word and sang with Ernie (the name of the boss Mr Simpson) – and another current song “Itsy Bitsy Teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini.”

If no socialising at work, how did you meet? “Well, I remember staying over at June Heaney’s house one night after being at a midweek summer dance in the Arcadia with her and her younger brother James. And for me: well, my daily journey to work was catching the bus at the Diamond, the west side facing Bridge St. One beautiful early autumn morning 1959 I was coming out of Harry Murphy’s shop in Society St when the bus passed the corner – I took to my heels after it but it left without me.

“A very kind gentleman parked at St Patrick’s Church noticed my plight and, as he worked in a Portrush, he offered me a lift.

“We married three years later.

Orreen wedding, June 1962

“Unlike the Imperial Civil Service there was a marriage ban in place in N. Ireland and on getting married I had to tender my resignation, in 1962. Terence O’Neill was Minister of Finance at the time, before becoming Prime Minister in 1963. He was on a visit to the Metropole on the day I was leaving so he shook hands with me and offered me his congratulations and best wishes.

“The staff presented me with an Irish Silver Tea Service from Masons in Portrush, which I still have on display in my home.”
————————-
PS from Orreen: “Oh David, congratulations, you have certainly pulled the boat out the bag on this story. I have had lots of people commenting on the blog to me and my family which is great. I never thought anyone would be interested in what I had to say!”

When my mum married in 1948, she had to resign from her council office role; even here, Orreen a dozen years later, in 1962, has to step down from her role. Orreen reckons that NI Civil Service marriage ban lasted for a few years more, until the mid 60’s, and then people were able to re-apply and some went back to work there. Overall it is pretty shocking to think of social attitudes: I discuss about the social changes in the 1960s in this blog, Portrush, 1960s – the Swinging Sixties! and about the 1970s, moving into the ‘modern area, in Portrush and the sizzling ’70s.

The Ulster Savings Branch transferred to the new Crown Buildings in Artillery Rd Coleraine in 1964, and later to the Riverside location, as described in The Metropole Hotel: Decline and Fall blog. Iris Service writes, “I thoroughly enjoyed this write-up, me as a 1970s former Ulster Savings office girl in Crown Buildings! Remarkable how little changed – same old cabinets, same old benches, same old routines! I worked firstly under Sally Wilson and Sylvia Bacon in Repayments, later for Gladys Scott (Crawford) in Filing. Stints were done in Correspondence, computerised Repayments, Deceased and Despatch in the 1980s onwards. Supervisors included Kathleen Smyth, Tillie Elder and several others who were “new girls” in comparison to the Metropole crew. We stored the B counterparts in Crown Buildings, and I think the mention made of a riverside location is to the C counterparts store equivalent of Bonne Bouche beneath Coleraine Health – a real treat as you could buy buns, or even wash your hair! Happy days!“

So, 60 years on, and what a marvellous, so-detailed memory from Orreen – thank you so much. Wow what a great social history record! And wow I sort of love the thought of Mr Gunthorpe, the janitor, needing to bring his cat to keep down the mice in the office. And paperwork to justify a replacement finger rubber.

Left: The Metropole – Dhu Varren floods, Aug 1960 (photo courtesy Sindy Smith) Right: and me, Aug 1962 – sorry I have no memory of the Metropole as Ministry of Finance, and Dhu Varren floods were before my time.

Portrush floods – August 1960

Portrush in August – summer weather, gorgeous as always. Elsewhere though, there was some torrential rain, flood water erupting up through the promenade, flood devastation washing away houses in Germany, horror rains in Spain, tornadoes in US.

It was too much like the big flood that hit Dhu Varren, in August 1960. My mum remembers that day: relatives from England visiting us that day, during their Ireland summer holidays – but they were sent on their way early, to go back to their accommodation before the big rains came. She and others remember that kids at the primary school had to be collected, being carried home by their dad. But since it was school summer holidays, things can get mixed up in people’s memories!

Neighbour Raymond McConaghy’s dad Jack took this photograph:

“The scene from Metropole corner that I saw at 7:30pm on Wed 24th Aug 1960 after the worst ever torrential rain and flooding ever seen in Portrush in living memory. 700,000 tons of water covered this area.”

The waters rose higher and higher…….

Sheila Brown writes: “Yes I remember the big flood, due to a creek about Parker Avenue which flowed through to the railway embankment and on to the beach. My mum and I had gone to Belfast that day, shopping for a family wedding coming up in October. We had sunshine all the way to Belfast, unaware of the floods. On the way back though, going through Coleraine, the thunder and lightning was scary. The brakes on my car were water-logged, sodden, no use at all. We had to detour at the Shell Hill bridge because of flooding.

“When we eventually got to the Coleraine Road in Portrush, the water was flowing like a river. The rain that fell on Dhu Varren was bad, so bad it was a lake. The water was up to the second storey of houses, and someone had a boat. The bakery, where the post office used to be – all destroyed.”

Kathleen Dallat: “I remember all the Skerrymore kids going in our wellies to see all the boats rescuing the people and all the bread floating on top of the water. We were too young to realize the grief it brought to soo many people.“

Threre was heavy heavy rain in August here in Germany last month. I saw whole trees being swept down the local river by the flood waters. In Portrush 1960 such debris blocked the culvert where the burn normally flowed through the railway embankment and out to the west strand. Wth the culvert blocked, the flood water flowed over Dhu Varren instead.

Over 4″ of rain fell in 12 hours, compared to over 5″ for the whole month of wet July.

Alexander Duddy: “The Cochranes had the newsagents. The shop and house were in an awful state afterwards. I remember Dougy coming back to school, Dalriada, with tales of the flood…. including that of saving their parrot!”

The Belfast Telegraph reported that in hundreds of homes commoditiies like bread and milk were scrare. the town was without gas as the men were pumping water out of the pipes. Telephone communication were out of order, and Gerald Bradley: “Remember it well… I had quite a time trying to get the Telephones working.”

Whoa!!!! This is the little burn that flows through the embankment to the west strand???? Wow!!!!!!!!
Photo courtesy Sindy Smith., who says, “It used to be a tiny stream!” and ponders, “I wonder who the people are climbing up the hill? On the back of the photo it says Mrs Hilldrops.”

Sinead D: I was born during these floods. My mum lived in the prefabs and we went to Coleraine to her mum’s as I was due. Turns out her home was flooded and she got moved to Parker Ave where she still resides.

Marlene Lyle: I remember this very well. I was working in a Guest House in Kerr Street during the summer holidays (just to be able to go the Arcadia!!). The water was gushing in the back door as we frantically tried to brush it out the front door. It was a losing battle!

And it was a losing battle at the Recreation grounds and on the golf course too, with the torrential rain led to flooding of golf greens and tennis courts and play was in suspenders.

Orreen Yates writes: “David I remember that day clearly as I was working in the CivIl Service in the Metropole building. Our bus struggled to get us up Coleraine Road and in one of the bungalows on the right side between Metropole Corner and Glenvale the furniture was floating in the front garden.”

I presume that the McConaghy family, taking the first photo in this blog, are in this crowd somewhere! These photos courtesy Sindy Smith, who captions: “My grandmother Kathleen McFetridge to the front looking to the camera with her daughter Patricia in the middle and sister Jean” (though it might be Primmy or it might be great aunt Lily).
And Gary Kissick says, “There’s a photo somewhere of my mum and dad climbing into a rowing boat in beaghville drive.” – I see the rowing boat (the ‘x’ on the left) if that is them!

Photo courtesy Irene Peden, from Coleraine FB site about this topic

The 25th and 26th August, the great clean-up.

(Just as an aside: that burn was the boundary between counties Antrim and Derry, with PUDC’s area split across the 2 counties. There was effort throughout the 1960s to bring the 3 towns of the Triangle into the same county, by extending the Derry border to include Portrush, for easier coordination and management.)

In Portrush the great work of police constables John Smyth and Alan Mounce is noted, ensuring that everyone was out of their houses and them wading through the waters carrying children to safety (below right).

It was a tough start to the decade for Northern Ireland tourism: there was increasing competition as package holidays overseas started up; there were big seamen’s strikes in 1960 that ruined people’s travel from and back to the mainland, as described in 1960s – the Swinging Sixties; and now these heavy rains affected the whole province, Belfast, Helen’s Bay, Crawfordsburn, …. Holidaymakers packed their bags and went home.

Caravans at Ballyreagh were swamped in the heavy rains. And there were more blows for Ballyreagh over the next few years, with big storms causing wreackage, and then a typhoid scare leading to the dismantling of the ‘S town’ at the Ballyreagh site, described in Coast path – Tides, Typhoid and Tornado.

Gary Kissick: “There’s a photo somewhere of my mum and dad climbing into a rowing boat in Beaghville drive. I remember them saying the furniture was floating through the house,and everything had to be dumped. They lost everything in that flood.”

The waters at Portrush appear in the ‘Tele news but only for a couple of days, the 25 and 26th August 1960, and then the news moves on. Later in September the Portrush Urban District Council complained about the lack of medical and sanitation and sewage support provided during this emergency. Like the government minister responsible but who stayed away on holiday while the floods roared in on Kabul, the Divisional Medical Officer Dr. “Dominic Raab” was on holiday at the time of the Portrush floods but blustered, “his Deputy was on call, and had any request been made it would have been rapidly given.” That’s pretty rich, considering that all telephones in the area were out of service due to the flooding. “If the Deputy had realised the situation was as bad as it was”, he said, “he would certainly have gone to Portrush.” The PUDC Chairman, Mr. Knox, gave that the deserved abuse: “Well if the Press and other publicity did not warrant him coming to Portrush, I do not see what would.”

Ian R: “I remember it well. We lived next to Gospel hall and were lucky it only flooded the garage. Loads of people including Ernie Peacock’s opposite were flooded.”

And oh, by the way, the stories of dads wading through flood waters to carry kids back from the primary school?? Well, the 1960 flood was in August – kids were on school summer holidays, weren’t they? and as the McConaghy family walked (not waded) over to the Metropole to take the photo, Croc na mac was not flooded. I presume being carried on dad’s shoulders happened but at some other time – there was big snow in 1962, and big storms ripped up the west promenade in 1966, and the tennis and golf tournaments were regularly suspended due to torrential rain and flooding. (Torrential rain poured through the White House ceiling when I worked there for summer job in the late 70s.) So I have included those memories as a nice illustration, also to show that memory of over 50 years ago is not always reliable and should be validated say with newspaper articles or other sources.

Brookvale Terrace, the remants of Mr. Hilldrup’s tool shed, with his front garden washed away and a 15 foot drop.

But the weather improved after that horrible day, with the forecast:

The Dad’s Army episode has Private Frazier telling his gloomy story of, “…and the waters rose higher and higher, and they were doomed…”. Well, people on the north coast of Ireland are pretty resilient I think, and we got through it. And the Dhu Varren bakery announced its re-opening, 4 weeks later, 22 September, D.V., God willing:

Of the Isaiah bible reference there, perhaps the bakery owner had particularly in mind the verse 2: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you….. For I am the Lord your God, your Saviour.”

In the Portrush story the waters did indeed go higher and higher – but not doomed. I know of no serious injuries or fatalities during the floods, instead of a community that pulled together to help each other out, wading through flood waters to ensure everyone was safely out, resourceful to bring rowing boats to transfer people to safety, of teams working round the clock to restore electricity and gas and communications, of folks providing accomodation for each other, and of supporting each other through months and months of repairs and recovery.