The fifth in the series, from the Cornucopia of Postcards from the Exquisite Collection of Sheila Brown, as we continue our walk from the harbour and up over Ramore Head and down Lansdowne towards the Bloe Pool.
<< this is work in progress – i haven’t found anyone new who can tell interesting stories of this area – let me know, if you have some to add in to this blog !! >>
Landsdowne. Lovely terrace, with the Tower House on the corner there. Trish Gray writes: “Tower House! my Dad was born in the room with the glass veranda!!!“
Portandhu little port, in the right photo. Trish: “We got an afternoon off school from Carnalridge when Billy Gregg opened Portandoo! Total delight!” as described in blog, Gregg’s dinghy pool, Portandhu lido.
Rosemarie Severin: “‘Billy Gregg the Boatman’, Dad used to call him..” Trish gray: “Oh, Mr. Gregg to me! otherwise Dad would have chased me!! (Though they were both good friends- boats, harbour, etc!)” Quite (very) formal in those days. I remember my Dad ‘tipping his hat’ to everyone as he walked up Main Street, stopping to chat etc.. Even people I knew very well as a child, were Mr, Mrs or Miss X. Or for very close family friends- Auntie/ Uncle… The narrow line was Mrs C, mother of my BBF, tho we didn’t use that terminology then!!
Loud music on Lansdowne green! Left, an historic photo! I dentified the image as being of Sharples circus, and newspaper archives had them as having a pitch on Lansdowne Green, in the 1920s. The posh residents thought the circus was un-cool though – noisy, busy, and that Lansdowne was the only place in the town that had a genteel promenade – but being spoilt by circus revellers.
And, Radio 1 Roadshow, 1980 & 1981 (photos courtesy Caroline Dorsett) – above right, Kid Jensen with Bruce Penhall, 1980s, and – below, left, Steve Wright, and right, Kid Jensen with Bruce Penhall
Garden for the Northern Counties? Black and white image, and colorised version, hand-painted over The postcard left, is 1915, to Mrs. Joe Halshead in Oldham: “Many thanks for the big box of flowers which arrived all right today.“
and Right, July 1904, “Having a good time here but weather not the best. Giving up, going home on Saturday.“
Oh! Nice smooth tennis courts on the ‘Counties green – but then with the band playing on it !!! Shocking. Churning up the nice tennis lawn.
Left, is 1913 postcard, from Londonderry Hotel: “Dear Aunt [May Parker, in Huddersfield], we have just arrived, and everything is fine. We are a little busy. I send you this boring postcard as my excuse for not writing a letter, love from Dora.“ (Antrim Gardens – site of the ancient abbey of Portrush, described in blog, The Night the ‘Counties Died.) Right, 1908, postcard of the band playing on Counties green, and the greeting from K. to Mrs. Hunter in Belfast, below, must surely get the award for The Most Useless Postcard Message Ever:
Weather features on a number of postcards: “Having a good time, I thought we were going to get blown away on Monday night.” “Here for the afternoon with our church choir, but it has come on very wet, just pouring.” “Having good time but weather not the best, too much rain, just pouring. Giving up and going home on Saturday, Caroline.” “Enjoying ourselves though weather not too good. Went to watch the Fireworks Display but it just poured. I hope the weather will be better for you. Marie Leonard.”
A visit to Portrush to see me mum, I stay a super few nights in the Ramada hotel, covid times. One of the team there lets me out the door to go and look at the sculpture over in the gardens opposite, and she tells me, “Myself and the rest of my primary 6 school class, from Mill Strand Integrated Primary School, helped the archaeologic team dig up all the artifacts during their investigation of Antrim gardens in 2005. For a bunch of 10 year olds it was a very fun and memorable week helping the archaeologic team, they then designed the Antrim Garden to reflect what we found, as you can see on the stature in the middle of the gardens. Hope you enjoy! Amber.”
The Northern Counties, exterior and ballroom. Richard Brown: “….the Northern Counties’ fires. We got awakened by the fire alarm for both fires, and got up and watched them in the middle of the night. I have this photo from I assume the day after the second one.”
And then, that masterpiece of Portrush, the White House, written up in several blogs, including “Leadership at The White House” showing the wonderful example from Mr. Hamilton,
We found the awesome photograph of our neighbour Sgt. Fulton, with the photo caption, ‘Carnival Day at Portrush, 1935’. Oh looking at newspaper archive, the Carnival was such a big event, so many really fancy costumes! And many of the familiar Portrush surnames, be it grandparents, uncludes, aunts, ……. of people that you know.
Oh, I find that there were TWO carnivals that summer, with fancy dress, and other events of fireworks, and bands, ….. there was a lot of stuff going on in 1935!
That’s Sergeant Fulton there on the left, with the three stripes on his sleeve, supervising the carnival day procession as it goes past the train station, in summer 1935.
Then, thinking about the events that happened that year…. Early in the year, the Sports Committee, the organising group, met in March to review the previous season’s activity:
But oh dear, the Committee had organised 18 events in 1934, but ALL except one were dreadful weather, washed-out, and visitors numbers were poor. And they had experimented with adding band promenades last year, quite a lot of expense, but they ‘had not received the support anticipated’ – no wonder as band promenades are pretty boring. It was a great effort by everyone, especially Capt. Shutt, but financially overall they were in deficit and disappointed. Mr Cunningham, the Town Clerk – that’s him in the photo below with Sgt. Fulton, on that Carnival day – tries to cheer everyone up, that taking the weather and everything into consideration there was no cause to be down-hearted, and with Council support there were more prosperous times lay ahead.
So, suitably encouraged, they continue with their plans for a big series of events for 1935: fancy dress carnivals, bowling tournaments, fireworks, military band entertainment, military tattoos, hard court tennis championships, and also swimming galas and yet more band concerts. Actually a program that sounds pretty familiar to me, growing up in Portrush! Plus ça change.
Excitement for the year’s activities is building…… There is a great celebration for the King’s Silver Jubilee, in May, with children’s events and a torchlight procession to a huge bonfire on Ramore Head.
And then Wednesday 17th July, is the opening event of a summer of fun in Portrush, with a parade beginning at 3pm (just like the time showing ion the train station clock):
It was the Belfast Military Band who led the July procession (and later in the summer, it was the Leicestershire Regimental Band who led the carnival in August).
And good news, the weather was ideal, the crowds thronged the streets and flocked to the natural grandstand of Ramore Head to enjoy the judging of the fancy dress. The competitors were your grandparents or uncles and aunts! There are the surnames Clarke, Ross, McGuigan, and in the centre is the family of Capt. Shutt himself, winning a prize as a basket of flowers.
Alan McF: “Brilliant David, thank you! I laughed at the pics of the young ladies in fancy dress, especially the one of a young Pat Anderson with the little ukulele. I run the local uke club here in Portrush, Ukes At The Port. “
There were about 11 categories of fancy dress, 200 participants were mentioned, and a roll call of winners as long as your golf club, the surnames that you will recognise – there’s Knox, Heron, Graham, Stewart, Lee, Chalmers, McFetridge, Diamond, Brown, Gregg, ……..
Imaginative, stunning costumes includes ‘Italian girl’, ‘Old Russia’, ‘Heading for the last round up’, ‘the Sheik’, ‘The Result of Revaluation’, ….
I’ve included photos of Carnivals for other years around 1935 where there are names that might interest you; the set above is of 1932 and has McFetridge, O’Neill, Kane, McCullach, Hepworth, ….. and the list of winners in the categories continues, you will probably find some nae that you will recognise.
Lucy S: “Another great collection of stories and photos. Loved the fancy dress of the cotton pickers – imagine the outrage today lol . Thank you David for sharing. “
The July carnival was a great success, and a bit later in July, fireworks, a Portrush tattoo, with special trains laid on:
So, summer 1935, and all is bliss. The town has successfully deflected the development plans away from Mr. Stephens of the Ministry of Fish’s plans to make Portrush an industrial-scale herring fishing port, to being holiday and health and relaxation. The Causeway tram trundles tourists out to the Giant’s Causeway, and there is increasing wealth. The photo above shows a nice array of sedans waiting around the train station and the town hall. The banner across the street advertises Fireworks 14th August – it really is this this year, 1935, with its ‘COLOSSAL DISPLAY OF FIREWORKS’ as in the advert below:
And ‘THE ORIGINAL MONTOS in Daring Aerial Acrobatics’ and ‘NOVEL AERIAL ACT’ ? Well, don’t think of Red Bull aeroplanes and parachuting onto the recreation grounds, rather instead think of tumblers, acrobats. Still, very impressive and novel I’m sure.
And hard court tennis championships? A feature in my teenage days too. (I wasn’t much good at tennis: I played in the championships just once, losing pretty rapidly in my one and only match. I think I was the Null Points, of a Eurovision Song Contest.)
The blog about the recreation grounds mentions the fancy dress competition, and of kids last-minute grabbing sheet off their bed, cutting holes in it, and going as the Holy Ghost, only to find other kids have done the same! The photos here, wow what marvellous effort went in to the fancy dress outfits! Costumes included archers, knights and their Ladyes, modern misses and Victorian dames, empire builders, fishermen, ……. – a rich and colourful variety.
The centre photo above is of two ‘Empire Builders’ – McAllister and Diamond, neighbours at Quarry Court, behind the harbour. Ken McAllister asks me, “Which is the most expensive street in Portrush? Answer: Quarry Court – because it is full of Diamonds”, he says.
I ask him if he knew Sgt. Fulton. “Yes indeed David, I knew him well. When I worked in Barry’s he used to sit in the office and have coffee. My mother was working in her house looking after Frank and Louise so I was careful not to step out of line because he would tell her. He was tough but fair.
“Oh I just remembered: I got a part time job as message boy in McCulloch’s fish shop. I was 12, and there was an older guy there called Curly. One day we got a delivery of salmon in, and Curly must have arranged to sneak one and throw it over the side wall to his mate. Sergeant Fulton must’ve saw his pal who ran off, but lo and behold, over came the salmon. Curly shouted over, Got it? He got a muffled reply, Yes. Two minutes later the sarge walked in to the shop with the salmon! Curly was sacked but not charged “
And a few days later, after the Carnival, there was fireworks and a band promenade that was broadcast on the BBC to great acclaim. And the Sports Committee had the chance to reflect and celebrate the activities’ great success – 25,000 people enjoyed the events, 8,000 to each of the big events. (Is 8,000 a big number of visitors? It sounds a bit small to me?)
Photographs above, of the carnival in 1932, with the Cunninghams (the family of the town clerk), of Misses Fairley and Butler as a Spanish couple. And below, of Portrush belles old and new, and the monstrosity of Loch Ness trundling through the streets.
Helena A writes: “Isn’t that just wonderful. 1935, and the town was buzzing. Carnival was a big thing. I was entered for them all in the 50’s. My Mother loved getting me dresses up… Rose of Tralee… Doll in a box… Queen of the North. And do you remember sitting on the hill at Recreation Grounds watching the fireworks? They which always ended with fireworks displaying, ‘Good night!’
Happiness at the seaside at Portrush. Postcards of the time from Sheila Brown’s collection are of bliss, happy, holidaymaking. There’s postcards in the 1930s, swimming in the harbour with the big diving boards used for swimming galas, the bustle of the train station and the Town Hall and of Eglinton St. and the trams…..
In the wider scheme of things though, I’d say that 1935 was the turning year, the end of bliss and happiness and holiday feeling. Times are changing. King George V celebrated his silver jubliee in 1935, the new king, Edward VII in January 1936, him with Mrs. Simpson, and the year was spent in abdication crisis. Tensions are building internationally too, with Mussolini in Italy, Hirohito in Japan, Adolf in Germany. Things are getting darker, ominous. The 1936 postcard above right, features a warship out in the bay, trying to reassure the populace.
Fancy dress costumes at Portrush carnivals continue to have mickey mices and princesses and Frozen themes but there are also a few poignant ones, of dressing up like Emperor Hirohito, of ‘Ammunitions to Italians’ (I hope they were duds, or were flowers, as Mussolini was busy invading Abyssinia), and in the 1938 carnival, there were costumes of ‘War and Peace’ and ‘Refugees from Shanghai”.
There’s a Hemphill on the left as Brittania, a John Neill as an Atlantic flyer in a wonderful aircraft, and in the centre, as Stephen O’N describes, ‘the picture in the middle is of Billy O’Neill, my uncle – he was the one with all the dogs. Sally Doherty was the sister of Tommy Doherty who was the harbour master.’
Maybe troubles bubbling in the world but for this year in Portrush, 1935, all is well, a great success.
The three big events of mid-August that year – fireworks, then the fancy dress carnival, then the military tattoo – over 25,000 people were entertained, with 8,000 people at each event.
Above Graham & Hepworth, and on the right is Billy Gregg, prize winner with the most original costume.
The processions with the penny farthing, loch ness monsters, aeroplanes, ……… snake their way to the Recreation grounds for the judging, and then process back to Dunluce St.
The caption on the photo below is ‘Portrush Carnival, 1935’ , with Sergeant Fulton on the left; on the right is “‘This way please’ – a comic policemen (was that a cariciature of Sgt. Fulton’s height?) found time to direct one of the competitors on a ‘bedstead bike’ to Ramore Head’
So, TWO big carnivals that year, in July and then in August. So, in which one is Sgt. Fulton leading the procession? I thought the time on the station clock might be a guide but both parades started at 3pm; and both started from Dunluce St.; and both had military band leading the procession.
The weather? Well it is described as ‘ideal’ for the July carnival, but August’s is described above as quite a blustery day; in the Carnival parade photo with the Sergeant they are wearing floppy hats and things, so I assume that it is nicer calmer weather one so I will plump that the photo is of Wednesday, July 17th, 1935.
And there’s the Misseys Grey on the left, and the Stewart boys as ‘Toilers of the Deep’.
Margaret McMullan says, “My late father-in-law Bobby and his brother Albert and John McMullan fished on the MVV ‘Family Friend’ – my husband Trevor worked on the oil rigs but if he was home or his work got slack then he often helped out. I remember waking up one morning to find a lobster climbing up my bed !!!! “Needless to say we had lobster for tea that night. It nearly broke my heart though putting it into boiling water.”
The rafts at the harbour, the RAF boats, the fishing trawlers – all at the edge of my memory, and I am not sure if I am remembering them or just photographs and postcards of them. So, thank you to the folks who have contributed to this social history of the fishing fleet and of the Portrush men and their families at Portrush.
The previous blogs looked at the centuries of fishing in the waters around Portrush, and then of the attempt to make the harbour the base for deep-sea steam trawlers in the 1930s. But the fish shoals were elusive, the weather changeable, the markets fickle – times of gluts of fish that were unsellable and times unable to get the fish that people wanted, at the right quantities, to the right markets. The expected fifty trawlers a week just didn’t happen.
And the big deep-sea steam trawlers were stripping the sea of livelihoods. Even back in 1930, Portrush’s John Stewart’s highlighted the trawlers depleting fish stocks, and that only by fishing within the Skerries could he make a living.
Kerry Gregg writes, “The big development of the harbour never happened of course, its a pity but a fact that there is not much out there to catch now anyway – with modern fishing methods and high quality electronics, we have become too good at catching fish. “I love the old photo of the steam powered trawler alongside the quay. They were a common sight in Fleetwood and other big fishing ports around England, but I suspect they were a rarity in Portrush.”
Tourism and the seaside air took higher priority, and visitors to Portrush in the 1930s “will find hours of interest in the magic of little coasting steamers and salt-crusted deep sea trawlers.” For the townie visitor, trawlers were perhaps a curiousity, photogenic, an unusual an infrequent and unusual sight – but they were the essence, the life-blood, the heart and soul of the town.
Wartime and restrictions and I don’t see any reports of that time. The fishing fleet from ports like Portrush were one of the key food supplies for the nation, and I assume the trawlers were armed and on the lookout for submarines recce’ing the coast. The photo above by Jack McConaghy (courtesy Raymond McConaghy) is “Harbour at War”, 1939 or 1940 – before the arctic convoys started and photographing of vessels in the harbour become a traitorious thing to do.
Ken Mcallister, a bit older than me, writes, “I remember 1943, when the fishing boats arrived in and berthed under the bins. My grandfather used to ask if they had any wee dabs, and he got the nickname “Dabbler” from Spud Fleming – so that’s why I am called ‘young Dabber’.
And Ken continues, “I used to live at the bottom of Kerr St, Quarry Court. We used to wait for the horses and carts going around the harbour. Most times there was a spillage of course, and we happened to have a bucket handy to collect the coal. Butch Fleming used to spook the horse so we got quite a lot. 1944 was a good year.”
Painting courtesy Eleanor Bond, the caption reads, “MVV Family Friend, Portrush 1955, skipper Bobby McMullan, crew Albert McMullan & John McMullan” and Eleanor says, “This is a painting that a man in Portavogie did for us – where the boat originally came from.”
Sheila Brown: “Hi David, I have just looked at the blog. You have done a lot of research, its a great read. Before my time but a lot of names I know. When we came to Portrush in 1943, there were two big McMullan fishermen.
“Later on, in the 1950s, the clammers came to the harbour. We used to sit and watch the boats unloading every evening, about five boats, and lorries loading up with the clams. I used hundreds of clam shells making ornaments to sell in ‘The Shell Shop’ that I had on Main Street opposite the White House. They were popular presents to take home from Portrush. Those were the days David, maybe a slow way to riches but I enjoyed it. “My late husband loved the harbour, with Richard McKay the harbour master at that time. “Thank you for the wonderful history of Portrush, God bless Sheila”
Karen Monteith says, “Oh I’m liking this story more and more! And I think I may have bought a fair few of Sheila’s clam shells too maybe with a little disc of soap inside, I always thought they were very fancy x”
September 1957 and the newspaper article reports that the fishing fleet is now eight boat strong, and that they fish locally, in the Bann or Foyle, not further – and shush! do be quiet as at this moment the crews are sleeping, after being out all-night fishing.
The photo below left (sorry about poor quality) is news of another Portrush trawler, the ‘Aigh Vie’ – from left to right is John Colvin, John Wilson, Douglas McMullan and George Stewart, skippered by Robert Stewart and owned by R. Lynas. The photo is of them landing a record catch of almost 4 tons of grey mullet, at Portrush harbour, in March 1958.
The hard treacherous pretty scary part to me of fishing is the being out-at-sea, and then getting the fish onto the quayside. But the success of fishing as a business seems to depend on logistics – keeping the catch fresh / frozen, and getting the catch to markets. In the 1958 article below, the harbour-master John Doherty moans of the lack of freezing facilities at Portrush that would enable the catch to go to Scotland. I guess that shows the failure of the 1930s hopes of local catches, local port and processing facilities, and of getting the fish to local markets.
The Portrush fishing fleet is described then in 1958 as 20-odd fishermen, that’s sounds like about five trawlers, but the harbour looks pretty quiet in the photo below.
1950s, Portrush harbour
Ray McConaghy: “Great post David . Another name I remember was a youngster – well, same age as me – called Billy McLelland. I think his family were fishermen in the 50’s and 60’s?”
I see the name of another Portrush trawler, ‘Confide’, above, with ownership the same as for the big record catch sailing, with Robert Lynas of Coleraine with skipper John Wilson. It was October, late in the season, and this boat was the only one that ventured out that day – with the alarm raised and the lifeboat called out for its overdue return.
Wow all these newspaper reports and photos happened in 1958! It was a busy year. The photos above, courtesy Pete Doherty, with a newspaper caption, “Mr Doherty, his two sons and two brothers own between them the £1,500 Queen Elizabeth, which carries nearly 60 passengers a time round the Skerries and along the north Antrim coast.”
Eleanor Bond: “I’m sure you know Willie Gregg (left) was a great boat builder,” and Kerry Gregg adds: “My grandfather Willie Gregg beside dad’s boat, in 1965, at Quarry Court. And the photo with the three generations of Gregg is my brother Willie, my dad Billy, and my grandfather Willie, in June 1958.”
Janis B: “Thank you for this. We lived in Quarry Court at the harbour until we all were re-housed. So far from theharbour, it was very difficult for fishermen who’d been around the harbour all their lives. One retired man – Tommy M or was it McM – walked down to the harbour every day after breakfast, up for lunch, back down, up for tea. I used to watch him back and forth across the football pitch and to the harbour, no matter the weather.”
Trawlers in the harbour – 1960s? The painting of the McMullan ‘Fisherman’s Friend’ identifies it as ‘B79’, that’s registered in Belfast at that time, and the ones here registered as ‘CE’ is Coleraine.
Ian King: “Interesting to see John McMullan in the picture. There were (at least) two John McMullans in Portrush in the 60s. One was married to Rose so was called Rose’s John, to avoid confusion. As a child I often wondered why a man’s name would be mixed up with roses. It was much later I realised the more prosaic truth. I never did find out which was which (in person). “He was good for me: my Dad arranged with Rose’s John to let me borrow his tender for the fishing boat when he wasn’t using it. I used to spend hours and days rowing around the harbour and yes, ferrying RAF sailors ashore for a shilling. Happy days. Truly happy. Cheers, Ian.”
And photo below left, smaller fishing boats, for closer to shore fishing. Left, from Pete D: “The big mullet haul” – I asssume this is the March 1958 bounty, as described above? And John McN comments: “You can tell by the smile on the face of the man looking at the camera that this is a very good day’s fishing! I think he is Old Tommy Doherty and the man immediately to his left is young Tommy Doherty.” and from Stephen O’N, “That’s my dad at the back, Mack O’Neil, he’s the one wearing a wee hat” Pete D: “All the local fishermen were involved. In that pic is Dad, my great uncle Tommy (‘Snowball’), my Uncle Jimmy, & looks like Jimmy Stewart.”
And, above right, photo passed on from George Lavery, who writes, “Salmon fisheries boat landing their catch – they averaged a catch of over 90 a day, in the 1960s / 70s,” and John adds, “I think the man is Spud Fleming – though don’t know who the young boy is.” Lucy S: “I have a copy of the photo of my granda Jimmy ‘Spud’ Fleming and that young boy – I never found out who he was. I remember when we lived in Hamilton Place, the crabs would have got out of the sacks and walked up the tiled floor in the long scullery. I remember that noise vividly lol. Thank you for sharing these stories David. L.“ Stephen O’N adds, “….the boy with Spud is my cousin from Australia, his name is Shaun O’Neill, and that photo was taken in 1970.” Kerry G: “It was 13th July 1970, and that photo is of my father Billy Gregg’s boat with 155 head of salmon in it, caught in the Ramore hill salmon bag net, that dad leased from Lord Antrim at the salmon fisheries, from 1968 to 1981. The boat was one of many that Billy built over the years, and yes indeed it is wee Spud who was helping dad to box up the catch, and then they were pulled up the quayside wall and into our shed – No.3, before the council saw fit to knock them all down. The fish would be collected by Sean Morton from Ballycastle who would call in his lorry on his rounds around all the salmon fishermen on the north coast, then those same fish would be iced down and be for sale in Billingsgate Fish Market the next day.” and the power of the internet, “I love these pics, I’m the 8 year old Shaun O’Neill from Australia with Spud Fleming (an absolute legend) – such great memories “
And George Lavery shows his painting skills too: “I am working on this painting of the lifeboat being towed back up the slipway.” 1960s? David Patton writes: “Another great history David that you have dug up! and nice to see other paintings too of boats. And tell George to get that painting finish, it is too good not to. !! Well done to you too, for your hard work. “
Kellie M: “Thank you, I really enjoyed reading it. So many names synonymous with the Port…. names from my childhood too as my dad was a marine engineer and we spent many long days in the harbour (and harbours all around ireland) while he worked on boats.”
Margaret: “Hi David, I hope you can use this painting of our boat, with Albert McMullan at the wheel, Bobby McMullan standing against the wheelhouse, and Rose’s John with his hands in his pockets,…. Sorry there are not many photos of them – they were all very modest men.”
Margaret McMullan: “I remember when Trevor was helping out fishing salmon, we weren’t long married and uncle Albert used to knock us up for we always slept in . Later when I took a walk down the harbour he’d be sitting mending a fishing net in the huts. There was always someone around the harbour that you knew. I can still remember the smell of the bait barrel! So many happy memories of living at the harbour!
“I remember waking up one morning to find a lobster climbing up my bed !!!! Needless to say we had lobster for tea that night. It nearly broke my heart putting it into boiling water.”
Brian S: “I used to meet the McMullan trawler every morning to get the small flukes to use as bait for our lobster pots. My means of transport was a message bike with a carrier over the front wheel. The trawler was normally crewed by Albert operating the engine throttle at the bow and Bobby steering and John throwing the rope ashore.”
Caroline Dorsett writes, “Brilliant David, I got totally lost in it! Photos are fantastic. I remember dad filling some of the boats with fuel and being given huge (well they seemed huge to a child) bags of lobster. We wondered why the dog was acting strangely one night and wouldn’t come in. He had found one of the lobsters making its way down the garden, having escaped from the bag and ultimately the pot. Dad then took it down to the rocks and released it, saying it had earned its freedom after its encounter with the dog! “And I remember the fishing competitions later with massive conger eels being hung up to view. Is it any wonder that I’m not a fan of swimming in the sea – its got bits in. Sometimes big bits! Great stuff David.”
Eleanor Bond: “David, this is my dad, John McMullan, with the cap, and Kenneth McMullan, sitting on the big stone at the side of the shed that used to be near the bridge many years ago.” And Margaret continues, “It was sad day though when they took the huts away – it was the meeting place, the talking place, where the fishermen met and watched the weather to decide if it was suitable to set sail.”
The photograph above of the harbour in 1960s shows a smaller fleet, now, only four trawlers. David Patton writes, “The photograph and the painting of the four fishing boats is the harbour as I remember it. Looking back at the Dock Head wall with the big billboard, Minihan’s shop and of course part of the old Ramore street. The Harbour Bar, the old wooden shed at the railway crossing bridge that always smelled of tar. Across the bridge there was a pub that belonged to a Kitty Quinn. I can remember as a wee boy looking for my father: I would look in the pub to see if he was there and if he was, he would put me up on a stool and treated me to a glass of Club orange.”
And below, “My brother Torney took a photo of the fishing boat as it arrived at the harbour, in 1968, and that was the inspiration for my painting it. Torney knew two of the men on that boat, Richard McKay and Jimmy Stewart.”
And Margaret McMullan continues: “We used to get quite a lot of prawns when the boats called in – we were eating like royals and never appreciated it at the time! Lovely salmon in the salmon season, and now I have to buy it and it never tastes as good as it did then. Monkfish boiled in milk and onions and some times made into scampi .
“I remember you had to hang the monkfish to bleed it; Trevor hung it out at the bottom of the clothes line, but a neighbour came to my door and said, ‘I don’t want you to get a fright but someone has hung a nasty thing on your line.’
David Patton writes, “Again, all credit to you David, I love reading your writing, you have captured a time in history that could have been long lost.”
Fishing, always peaceful and happy? Rather a valuable and scarce resource, and stocks and fishing rights have been managed for centuries. to be managed, and poachers and over-fishers dealt with. Above left is 1950 and the Fleetwood trawler has been fishing off Portrush and Portstwart for 9 days, then sails over to Donegal but is attacked by three motor boats, with 20 irate Irish fishermen in each, with the cabin sprayed with bullets! Centre right, 1970, a Donegal trawler caught by a Royal Navy, fisheries protection boat, for illegal fishing off Portrush, withpunishmens of fines and nets confiscated. And right, salmon wars of early 1980s, with a couple of fisheries protection vessels against an armada of Donegal trawlers, fishing just off the Portrush coast. From early June, three months of the salmon running to the rivers, with some successes of trhe protection vessels like with impounding a drift net that was an enormous 4 miles long, but puny against the increasing size and commercial aggression of the larger trawlers being used.
In the 1960s there were royal air force boats stationed in the harbour, as support vessels for RAF Ballykelly as described in the blog ‘Leander House girls and RAF lads‘, informally helping the fishing fleet in rescues though not as protection vessels.
As we have seen, the big plan for Portrush harbour as headquarters of a fishing fleet back in the 1930s came to naught. Another innovation for harbour commercial activity in the 1960s though, was as a container depot, with the quayside developed with big cranes for hoisting containers onto ships:
Above left, photo courtesy Pete Doherty: ‘The photo says on the back ‘Jimmy Doherty, harbour-master, with Captain Jones of the MV Wirral Coast. The container service commenced on 13th September 1963. Closed down 15th June 1968. Jimmy Doherty died on 3rd May 1968.’ He was harbour master before my dad, but tragically died at the age of 47 I think.” The activity traded for 5 years, but I guess the size of and access into the harbour went against the location.
Arthur D: “My grandfather Arthur Dunlop was the foreman docker at the harbour in the ‘sixties when the container ships came in. He came hone every night with a bag of fish. He loved the job and the fishermen who he became friends with. I remember him mentioning the Doherty’s.”
Complementing the trawlers out at sea, Joe Mullan was promoting sea angling. The photo caption above reads, “Fisherman Joe Mullan, Chairman of the Ulster Federation of Sea Anglers, who travels far and wide for the sport. He is a Master Angler and an Irish Boat and Shore International.”
Garry McI:lwaine: “I was a regular at Joe Mullan’s fishing tackle shop on Main St. As a youngster, any walk “down the street” would include a diversion to Joe’s. “Outside I’d drool over the line of rods and reels in his window. (I’d seen them many times but the sin of coveting is deep-set!) “Inside, there was always a welcome from Joe. When three or four of us wandered into other shops like Graham’s or The White House, we always got that feeling that eyes were on us! Not with Joe. He was always engaging. He loved telling us about his black and white photos and stories behind them. He said that he’d love one of us to earn a species specimen badge. We always tried to find out where the best place to dig for rag worms was. He’d have two answers: it was a secret he’d never tell anyone, or he dug them at night so nobody would would find his place! That was Joe… especially as we’d often see him collecting his “fresh worms” from the platform at the railway station!”
The Belfast Telegraph’s Peter McMullan, writing about his day of plentiful fishing in July 1968. The trip was prompted by Joe Mullan and hosted by Jimmy Stewart (left in the photo) on the Girl Phyllis, Jimmy taking a break from sleeping after his day job of night shift of drift-netting for salmon. Mr Mullan’s efforts led to investment by Coleraine Council on the slipway and facilities. The article writes about 30 boats exclusively for sea angling, with over 300 sea anglers a week visiting Portrush.
Going back to the trawlers, Margaret continues, “My late father-in-law Bobby and his brother Albert McMullan and John McMullan known as Roses John fished the Family Friend – my husband Trevor worked on the oil rigs, but if he was home or his work got slack then he often helped out. The fished local waters but it depended what they were fishing as to what time they fished.
Er, why Roses John? Eleanor Bond replies, “My father’s mother was called Rose, so he was referred to as Rose’s John – that’s how they referred to the different McMullans.”
Margaret, I ask, what happened when the boat arrved back at Portrush with their catch? “Well, there would have a buyer for their fish waiting on them at the quayside. Then, the boat was cleaned and nets were sorted for their next trip. During salmon season their nets, drift nets, could be seen spread out on poles to dry, at the harbour. There were nets, they were fixed nets, that were hung at the salmon fishery as well.”
David Patton: “My brother Terry, with nets spread out on the old railway crossing at the harbour, 1960s, with the fishing boats, four, in the harbour.”
Kerry Gregg writes: “I was lucky enough to get out fishing on the “Family Friend “ with Bobby, Albert and John. I was about 10 at the time, I was out many times and always on a Saturday morning or on the school holidays. We lived at the bottom of Kerr Street so it was just a short walk over the bridge to the quayside I would ask Albert the day before and set an alarm for 4am and away we would go, usually over to the area around the temple at Downhill and they would “shoot” the nets and ropes – the method was called seine netting. I would sit behind the wheel house and watch for the net to be brought up and the catch sorted into size and then into wooden fish boxes, that was repeated a few times then they would steam home and land the catch.
“I still remember after 55 years the tea that was served! Loose tea, sugar, milk all in the same pot and heated up – little washing up to do! Looking back on it now I was more of a hindrance than help but Bobby, Albert and John were the best of people, all very decent and they put up with me and my thousand questions about fishing.Such wonderful people and times.”
Time moves on though. Margaret tells me of the retirement of the McMullan family and then that the Family Friend boat was sold in 1974. “I never had a run out on it myself”, she says, but I used to get out on the lifeboat when they had a special day for flag sellers. My late father-in-law Bobby McMullan was cox’n.”
Interviewed in 1975, below, Tommy Doherty comments, “..out of a fine fleet of fishing vessels only one remains, because there isn’t much left in that part of the coastline to fish for”, and the too-quiet harbour is put up for sale:
“The present owners, Anglo-Irish Transport, a subsidiary of P&O, want to get rid of something that isn’t making any money….. For the present harbour-master, Tommy Doherty, it may mean the end of a job that he has held for 6 years. In fact, Tommy’s family have been connected with the harbour since the ‘Forties. His father was harbour-master and when he died, his son Jimmy took over. He died suddenly in 1968 and Tommy was given the job.”
Three big men of the harbour: Louie Craig, Tommy Doherty (Harbour-master) with Billy Gregg (boatbuilder / Willie Gregg’s father), about 1997.
Trish Gray: “David I remember so many of the names in this post. Bobby McMullan was such a lovely person, kind and gentle. Jimmy Stewart (coxswain of the lifeboat after Bobby, I think) had a small fishing boat – The Lady Phyllis, I think! Jimmy used to allow us ‘Lifeboat kids’ access to his rowing boat – Ian King, Dorma & Alan Cunningham, my brother Martin, myself and I suspect many others. I seem to recall Ian saying he used to ferry some of the RAF crew to the other side of the harbour!
“I laughed about Butch spooking the horses during the war and collecting the dropped coal! I remember coming home from high school, to a black bin bag on the kitchen floor, making strange noises – lobsters! Like Margaret McMullan says, we were living like lords and didn’t realise it!
“I remember huge conger eels being landed near the high diving board! I was very glad though, that no-one suggested we should have it for dinner!
“One year when I was heading back to Edinburgh, 1980, my Dad got up at 5am to meet Jimmy Stewart coming in to the harbour, and got a salmon. That salmon got well packed in ice, wrapped in a black bag, and put in my suitcase. You can imagine the face of the airport security guard, searching my case. They let me through with it – with hindsight, I’m surprised it wasn’t confiscated… I haven’t tasted salmon like it since!”
Evening glow, Portrush harbour and west strand (photo: author)
Pauline Rigby: “Oh David, you have brought tears to my eyes! FYI My side note: my dentist here in Scarborough remembers the likes of Butch Fleming and Dessie, and his brother has a yacht in Portrush harbour now! Its a small world! His assistant laughs at the pair off us when I go for treatment and a check up (a catch up!) 😂😂xx
And finally, the photo below, one of my Portrush summer holidays, 2013, 10pm at the harbour, seeing the unloading of the catch of cod and the higher-value scallops, and the chinese restaurant up lower main st buying the bucket of scallops. Dessie Stewart there told me, they’ll get a few hours sleep then 4am sailing back across to Scotland.
Time moves on, things change, morph, transform, renewed – hopefully I can do one more blog of today’s geeration of fishing. And as I’ve said before, I don’t go for the Good Ol’ Days view of history myself – after all, in 30 years the kids today will be remembering these days as being the Good Ol’ Days – but rather, the life lessons, the example that these folks gave us, of hard work, modesty, humility, respect – and of hilarious fun and stories.
All the postcards and photographs that I see, like the 1930s one below, Portrush harbour looks pretty quiet, low key, idle, under-used. The Scotch ferries that used to deliver thousands of visitors onto Portrush quayside, stopped at WWI and did not re-start.
So, 1930s, and Portrush is tranquil, lovely, holiday mode.
All that is to end: a quiet harbour no longer. 1932 was going to be the big year, the big turning point. Ten years since the Partition of Ireland and Mr Steven, the Minister of Fish in NI, thinks of the marine and fishing heritage of Portrush, and of the links with the mainland, and proposes a boom, with those links upgraded to an industrial scale – a production line of Scottish and English deep-sea steam trawlers, processing eight a day through Portrush harbour.
“Mr. G. Steven, Inspector of Fish (second from left)”, with ship-owner, skipper, & fish salesmen. Actually I think Mr Steven looks like de Valera – the same tall, lanky imposing – and visionary? With his cunning plan, Portrush will become the headquarters of the north sea fishing fleet (see the last blog), with fifty sea-going steam trawlers a week off-loading their slippery catches on the harbour quayside, for curing and pickling.
“It is part of the scheme between the Ministry of Commerce, the Portrush Urban District Council, and the LM.S (N.C.C.) railway company, to make Portrush an important fishing port,” and, “with thanks to the great cooperation from Portrush Urban District Council, PUDC,” he enthused. His Big Plan was seemingly coming to fruition, with the first boats of the season, the Fraserburgh-based trawler Brecoden, landing its catch at Portrush on February 19th 1932..
The year before, the headlines heralded, “Portrush as a base for the fishing fleet – history repeating itself!” But some reservations, and other headlines, a month later:
“Portrush as herring port?” – read: “Portrush as a herring port???????? Go and boil your heid.” And a ‘reliable authority’ said, the prospect of that happening was remote.
I think the Steven Plan was unravelling, right from the start.
Its impact on tourism? Oh the plan was clarified, downgraded a bit, it was not for Portrush to be a curing centre, with the industrial units that would involve – but just off-loading, barreling, and despatching the fish off to the mainland and elsewhere. And to be sure, Portrush’s primary role was leisure and health, and that lesser fishing activity would not affect that.
We are going to welcome with open arms the sea-going trawlers from Scotland and England, fifty per week, dragging their 400 feet long nets behind them, stripping the seas of fishing livelihood? Portstewart fishermen had already complained about the trawlers at the fishing Inquiry a bit earlier, in 1930. They had won a three mile exclsuion zone around the coast – but the steam trawlers were happily fishing within that zone. Local fisherman would (bravely) approach the intruder trawlers, record their name and number, and pass the informaton to the Ministry – but no action would be taken. Fish stocks were being depleted, even in close to the shore: Portrush’s John Stewart’s complained that he could only make a living at fishing within the confines of the Skerries.
After the trawler Brecoden in mid-Febriuary 1932, Mr Steven expected 15 trawlers during the rest of February, building to fifty a week when the herring season started in April. I suspect that in reality that the pace was rather slower. There was no mention of trawlers or fishing business for the next weeks, and the next news is at the end of March, that more large steam vessels were due to arrive at Portrush on Tuesday:
It was almost a disaster though. The two big trawlers, Ocean Lifebuoy and Ocean Sunlight, were outside the harbour on the Tuesday, but had to wait before entering, because of the sea swell.
A few days late but their arrival on Friday, 1st April, was announced with great success, with their catch being paraded on Portrush quay.
Harbour, slipway at the little beach – 1910s, 2023
The vessels had been stuck out in the bay on the Tuesday, were still stuck there on the Thursday afternoon and then, unable to delay any longer, they had moved off to steam for Moville.
Mr Steven was not well pleased by their lack of appropriate commitment to Portrush as a base. The article says he motored over to Moville and commandeered the pilot boat to take him out to the trawlers. I imagine him berating the trawler captains, beating them mercilessly until they submitted and agreed to steam back to Portrush. They were ‘escorted back to Portrush’ – Mr Steven leading a naval fleet of destroyers, gunships and helicopters to ensure that they did not deviate from the intended route to Portrush.
There were good sales though of the fish though on Portrush quayside:
….and the skippers said they were “more than satisfied with the harbour and the facilities provided.”
The skippers having read out the statement prepared by Mr Steven to the TV cameras, Mr Steven ordered his gang to take off their blindfolds and to untie them, gathered up their fingernails and gave them back to the trawler captains. They were released, otherwise unharmed.
It was hoped their fingernails would soon grow back.
The photo above: “Mr. George Steven, HM Inspector, NI Dept. of Fisheries, discussing operations with the captain at one of the fishing boats.” The photo shows the skipper, doing his best to hide, forcing a sombre grimace of a smile for the camera under the menacing glare of Mr Steven, towering treateningly over him, with his hands, bleeding and bereft of fingernails, buried deeply at the bottom of his great-coat pockets, out of sight of the cameras.
The newspaper photo caption, “Ocean Lifebuoy and Ocean Sunlight, the two trawlers moored at Portrush harbour. Portrush Fisheries Development – drifter trawlers arriving at Portrush, which is ideally suited for the landing of fish” And on the right, “‘Admiral’ Fleming waiting to welcome the trawlers at Portrush” – you may like to say, which Fleming that is of.
I read that routinely, the trawlers followed the shoals to off the cöast of Iceland or to the White Sea – up over the top of Norway and down to Arkangel in the Berents Sea, the coast of Russia – phew what a terrible treacherous journey. The prospects now of trawling in the local fishing gounds, only about 20 miles from Portrush, and the catches landed daily. The fish will be fresher, at better prices without the transport distance and costs, and will be in Ulster markets the day after. The freshness of the catch was indeed great – so fresh that some of the plaice were reported as still jumping while they were being boxed up.
“Ulster fish buyers are greatly interested in the project” but there was near-disaster from the first, with unfortunately “a number of them at Portrush on Tuesday were disappointed when the trawlers failed to arrive.”
Courtesy Eleanor Bond, “This is a painting a man in Portavogie did for us – that is where the boat originally came from.” Inscription, “MVV Family Friend, Portrush 1955 skipper Bobby McMullan, crew Albert McMullan & John McMullan“
The rest of April was then quiet for trawler news, until reports of those two Ocean’ sea-going trawlers landing their catch at the end of April and early May – the lack of news suggests the 50 trawlers a week just wasn’t happening. And the vagaries of Atlantic weather: “owing to the strong north-westerly gale, the trawlers had to cease operations in her last trawl for fully two days.”
With not everyone happy at the idea of a big fish industry in an otherwise tourist town; of bad weather cutting short the number of trawling days; of difficulty of access to the harbour in bad weather; of weather delays meaning wasted journeys for Ulster fish buyers, at the quayside waiting to buy….. The omens are not good.
And the behaviour of the sea-going trawlers and the impact on local fishermen? The next fishing article I see is our friend the Ocean Sunlight vessel, of Great Yarmouth, that darling vessel that offloaded at Portrush in April, but in June she is getting in the bad books and being fined for trawling too close to shore, as in the article above.
The big plans for big scale trawling came to naught. I do not see it mentioned much more. The expected fifty sea-going trawlers a week landing catches at Portrush became rather a small number, perhaps just a few trawlers. Even those few trawlers caused aggro for the local fishermen, with their long dragnets, and coming in so close to the shore, to scour what shoals they could find.
Kerry Gregg writes of family photo above, ‘My grandfather Willie Gregg, beside dad’s boat, in 1965’ and reviews these articles and writes, “Morning David, I have just read it and all is good. You must have done some digging to get those paper cuttings etc. The big development of the harbour never happened of course. A pity, but a fact that there’s not much out there to catch anyway now. With modern fishing methods and high quality electronics, all very high tech, and we have become too good at catching fish (imo). “I love the old photo of the steam powered trawler alongside the quay – they were a common sight in Fleetwood and other big fishing ports around England, but I suspect were always a bit of a rarity in Portrush.”
Portrush settled back to its holiday-making focus. The next year, 1933, townsman visiting Portrush “will find hours of interest in the magic of little coasting steamers and salt-crusted deeop sea trawlers” off the Blue Pool – which suggests to me that trawlers were an infrequent and unusual sight.
(Oh and for interest, you see there that Portrush population in 1933 was 2,952, half-day was on Wednesday, and there were FOUR arrivals and departures of Post daily.)
PUDC councillors go a round-Britain tour in 1934 and come back with big plans to deveop tourism in the town, including developing Portandhu. The fishing industry goes quiet, in the background; a next big fish news item in 1938, with a review of the prospects for the herring industry, looking at Ardglass.
The article uses a stream of bad words for the fishing industry, like “is in a precarious position,” “inability to find a market for the glut of fish,” their catch “practically unsellable.” Mr Steven is still in place as Inspector of Fish, is readying lorries at Portrush and Ardglass and Larne to tackle the distribution problems in getting the fish to Ulster depots. He moans that the Province buys in one quarter to one half a million pounds of fish, but bought and brought from Hull and Aberdeen, and is there not enough fish in Ulster waters? So many French trawlers spotted off Adglass, 23 of them, and there are 54 fisher girls from Scotland and Wicklow ready and waiting to prepare the fish – but the vagaries of the weather were keeping boats in harbour, there was bad luck with finding the shoals, and long periods of idleness.
Weather – finding the shoals of fish – delays – markets & distribution – times of a glut of fish, other times of drought – unable to get the fish to market, the wrong type of fish. All in all, the big plan for Portrush harbour as headquarters of a fishing fleet in 1932 came to naught.
Jumping on to 1950s, the postcard above, the harbour still looks quiet. There was another attempt to make Portrush a commercial harbour as a container depot, in the 1960s; another was for catamaran to Oban, in the 1970s.
The photos above, the activity of Portrush as base for shipping containers to Fleetwood, I assume the same issues of size of and access to the harbour were too challenging. Photo, left, courtesy Pete Doherty: “…says on the back ‘Jimmy Doherty with Captain Jones of the MV Wirral Coast. Container service commenced on 13th Sept 1963. Closed down 15th June 1968. ‘Jimmy Doherty died on 3rd May 1968.’ He was harbour master before my dad, tragically died at the age of 47 I think.” (left photo watermark indicates L’Atlier, the ‘Photographer of Portrush’, see blog.)
And David Patton (with his long family connections with the harbour), remembers and paints the 1960s: “The photograph and the painting of the four fishing boats, above, is the harbour as I remember it. Looking back at the Dock Head wall with the big billboard, Minihan’s shop and of course part of the old Ramore street. The Harbour Bar, the old wooden shed at the railway crossing bridge that always smelled of tar. Across the bridge there was a pub that belonged to a Kitty Quinn. I can remember as a wee boy looking for my father: I would look in the pub to see if he was there and if he was, he would put me up on a stool and treated me to a glass of Club orange.”
All in all, the big plan for Portrush harbour as headquarters of a fishing fleet in 1932 came to naught.
In this blog I have teased about Mr Steven, one might say of his ‘old-fashioned’ interest in solid things, products, Tangibles, not just in Portrush as a ‘service’ industry, Intangibles. But full credit to him: he had a plan, thinking what can be done, aiming to make things better for the populace, and he worked tirelessly for it – as I think the vast majority of public servants do.
Evening glow, Portrush harbour and west strand (photo: author)
PS Reviewer comment: “..I love your bit about imagining the wonderful Mr Steven brow-beating the captains and crews to come to Portrush! “ David: Er, why do you think I am joking? Reviewer: Er, you are, aren’t you?
As we saw in the first blog, Portrush – to be the headquarters of the fishing fleet, with the big sea-going steam trawlers to land their catch and for fish processing at Portrush, then a quick turnaround and the trawlers back out to sea again. Fish in Ulster shops to be so much fresher, higher quality, and so much cheaper.
Fifty trawlers a week expected to be landing their catch at Portrush from next month.
“Portrush as new fishing port – history is repeating.” When my dad moved in to Portrush in 1960, he asked around to learn of the history of the town and was told. “It doesn’t have any history.” That was very unfortunate and ill-informed, as I hope from these blogs that you know now of the rich history of our town! Even back a hundred years ago, in 1932, Portrush had centuries of history and there were plans to re-new itself as a big port and for fishing.
Like, a thousand years ago, Portrush and War Hollow out towards the White Rocks features as a battle ground at the end of the Viking era; and Dunluce Castle and the big abbey at the Northern Counties feature throughout the Norman era. For fishing, there’s that sea-faring Portuguese map of 1468, the oldest map of Ireland, with Portrush marked, a place of note, a place for doing trade.
The 1600s were bumper years with Sorley Boy MacDonnell at Dunluce and Portrush as his port for nipping back and forth to his homelands in Scotland, but Plantantions, and those naughty King Charles’es and troubles and invasions, resulting in the destruction of the castles around Portrush . a century of troubles.
The big men of ancient Portrush: Magnus Barefoot, the last of the maraudng vikings; Strongbow, de Clare, of the Normans, who drank and fought his way up to Dunluce Castle; of Sorley Boy MacDonnell, there at Dunluce Castle, him finding the wealth from the Girona; and the Elizabethan Sir Thomas Philips, wanting to make Portrush headland an island again, as a garrison
The 1700s: decline dead derelict dilapidated dirge-y drudge decades, and departures to the New World. French and Belgian boats fished in the area and called in, but the harbour wasn’t up much, just a blip in the lee of Ramore head. A visitor in 1750s described it as being like a Cornish creek, with sandy banks. I guess it was small, tidal, something like Portandhu. No accomodation, nowhere for the traveller to stay,
In that 1820s map, there is still only that one road leading from the town to Coleraine. In an 1839 survey, the population of Portrush was only 337, with “employment based entirely on the sea”. Those early 1800s years, writers say of salmon smacks from Mayo calling at the harbour, at ‘Paddy’s Pier’, a rough quayside, as a drive-through at Portrush to order ice and then to dash on to Liverpool to win the prize of being the first and bringing the freshest catch.
The harbour was built in the first half of the 1800s, and then in the second half of that century, the growth of the town with the railways and the Causeway tram and there is boom in visitors.
There’s been a hundred years of big ferries from Portrush – that advert on the left is the regular ferries starting up, 1836 – but in 1932, Mr Steven is saying, Yay! Fishing is our Business! Fifty trawlers a week expected at Portrush from now on!
Amazing sketch and paintings of the harbour, from David Patton (he has just completed a successful exhibition of his work at the Arcadia). “David, really great writing, I love it. I came across a couple of drawings, one of Portrush harbour in 1835 from the West Strand. I made a sketch of the drawings, and added colour and I send them to you to include, if you like.”
=========================================
In Portrush Tales, I like eye-witness accounts, and backed up by other documents. One delight is to find the newspaper article of October 1883, where the writer is chatting with an old Portrushian, 91 years old so born about 1792, and who remembers Portrush through the 1800s.
The article, such great turns of phrase such as a “ramble in imagination”, “preserved in imperishable lines” on the “memory of my quondam friend.” Yawn, what on earth is he rambling on about?? Its like watching the 1950s movies of excursions to Portrush: sooooo slow, one wants to wind them up to go three times faster. So where I have quoted from the article, for your relief I have taken out the most drivelous pieces of his writing.
I imagine the scene, the two guys sitting on a bench at the harbour gossiping – just like the photo below, sent me from Eleanor Bond: “David, this is my dad, John McMullan, with the cap, and Kenneth McMullan, sitting on the big stone at the side of the shed that used to be near the bridge many years ago.”
And I imagine the 91-year old gentleman’s kids and grandkids coming and going, enjoying listening to their grandad’s stories, joining in, just like in the photo below, from Sheila Stirrup: “Outside the fisherman’s shed, my Uncle Ken McMullan, fisherman and lifeboat man. He is with me (Sheila Hamilton), my sister Joanna Hamilton, and my cousin Jennifer McGuiness nee McMullan, in 1961.”
The guy remembers Cranagh hill, that was quarried out for stones for the harbour wall and became Waterworld, and he remembers that post was brought on foot, by a runner. About where Portrush fishermen lived, I assumed that they were always around lthe quay head, like where Ramore St is. But the guy says that it was the principle businesses of Portrush that were around the harbour:
And at the top of the quay was the big house, the biggest in the town – maybe one-time the customs house, and hotel where VIPs like Sir Walter Scott and Thomas Carlyle stayed on their literal visits to Ireland. The Portrushian remembers, “The road sloped down to the water; there was then no walls at the place, and the water-cress grew in profusion on the sides of a little spring of water.”
The grandkids like hearing his stories an he tells them: “Two or three little houses stood where the Northern Counties Hotel now stands, in one of which there is said to have resided a man, so fat that he could turn the scales with forty-two stones on the opposite scale.”
The writer comments that “Portrush must have been for long years a non-progressive place” – I think for sure that applies to the dilapidated 1700s century. But he recognises that even through those drab years that hardy fishing folk lived in the town, generation after generation, as we saw with the Patton family.
It all sounds very bliss and romantic.
David Patton: “Memories of my late brother Terry, on the old railway crossing at the harbour, with the fishing boats in background” ; and right, of lobster pots, down along the harbour wall.
The stories of Portrush history recount of the large fleet of sailing smacks, carrying salmon from Ballina to Liverpool, with Portrush to replensish ice on their catch. That period is described as ‘before the harbour was built’. I presume that the large commercial vessels in the harbour pushed the smaller smacks aside, with the local boats moving over to Portandhu.
As well as the harbour busy-ness, the news is of salmon stocks being depleted was also a smack to that salmon activity. An 1844 article says about ‘the laws lately made for the preservation of salmon’ –
Years later, 1894, maybe another sign that fishing as a livelihood is supported by visitor trade, the writer for ‘The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic news’ rag describes his happy tour of the salmon fisheries at Portrush and around the coast:
Do I remember one of the benefits of Brexit as being that it will be wonderful for the British fishing industry? In reality here we read of the depletion of salmon stocks and the need for regulation of salmon fisheries, away back in the 1840s. Still in 1906, a big Inquiry to try to recover salmon stocks. The article reports of the boom of trawlers around our coast – 125 trawlers with drag nets of 400 feet, 4 men per net, so a huge industry with 500 men – and of the Department trying to impose a 3-mile exclusion zone to recover fish stocks. Portrush and Portstewart fishermen face the ruin of their livelihood.
My assumption is there is always a dispute between local boats trying to make their way and to preserve stocks for life, against commercial sea-going trawlers and ocean-going Japanese whalers, asset-stripping the area and moving on, leaving the seas dead.
My perspective, I see of the happy excursion trippers to Portrush, enjoying sunny day boat trips to the Skerries and to the Causeway. The 1883 writer drools over the humble fishermens’ cottages, thatched roofes held down with bog-wood against the storms, with fishing nets hanging out to dry, oh how lovely, oh how photogenic, giving “a picturesque appearance to the locality, and would have made excellent material for the art-lover to transfer a representation of to his portfoilio.”
But of the reality of the hard grind of fierce winter storms (salmon fisheries photo below, courtesy Maureen Kane).
Maureen: “Excellent blog, such a good article. gladly do use the photograph. I did notice an error though, you had only one ‘m’ in ‘accommodation’ in the paragraph beginning 1700’s. “
The ferocious storm described, 1894, batters the town, and two fishing smacks being sunk at the harbour, with several fishermen and their families deprived of their livelihood.
(And, just my guess, that one of those two wrecks was uncovered at the inner beach at the harbour, last year.)
Sheila Stirrup: “The fisherman is William McIntyre. William lived in Garden Court too. I bought the canvas in the gallery in Giant’s Causeway car park. His grandson painted his portrait.” And a grandson, Jim Allen, found the photograph, described in the Portandhu blog.
The 1883 newspaper writer noted about hardy mariner families, living in the town for generations, like the big Macs – the McMullans, the McIntyres, and Mcallisters. I had noticed this newspaper advert, 1906, with the drontheim boat of the late John McAllister for sale, and I see that family name, about the big catch in 1907.
By coincidence, Ken Mcallister contacts me today, with the story of family tragedy: “My great grandfather, James Mcallister, was drowned in the old lifeboat, trying to save lives.” I see his name:
===================================
And so, we are back around now to 1932, and the prospects of Portrush as big fishing port again. There is the scene below at the harbour, May 1932, the first of the big steam trawlers unloading their catches, with fifty trawlers a week expected.
And a quieter scene at the harbour, Valentine’s postcard from Sheila Brown’s collection I think, that looks like a steam trawler at the quayside:
=========================================
Hopefully I can gather some bits to bring the story up to date.
David Patton (exhibition at the Arcadia) ; Pete Doherty: “The big mullet haul”
“Our first Christmas party was when I was a young 19 year old and was held in the newly refurbished Magheraboy Hotel. This was my first ever ‘proper night out’ so it was very memorable! The highlight was waltzing with May Galbraith (Tights and Bags) and jiving with the very glamorous Marion McDowell (Ladies Fashion). I felt so grown up.. lol.”
Many thanks to Gerald, continuing with his story of his years at The White House…….
“The 3 years working in the China Department was a healthy mixture of hard work and fun , when the boss wasn’t about anyway!
“I somehow became the in-store organiser of Days and Nights out. It must be where my love of planning charity events and all manner of things that require organising came from.
Left: Betty McQuilken (my mum), me and guest Louise Stanley – dancing at the Causeway Hotel Right: Kathleen McLean (Toys) dancing with Gerald McQuilken (China) – Christmas Dinner in the Eglinton Hotel
“The Annual BBQ was one of the highlights of the annual White House calendar. It was always on the first weekend in September and was a great way of transcending from a crazy busy summer, with over 60 staff, to the much quieter winter months. I am not sure if mum appreciated 60 folks in our garden but I’m sure she secretly enjoyed those nights.
“They were always a fun filled evening with more food than necessary and dancing until the wee small hours. Every year we were blessed with amazing hot weather making the BBQ evenings much more delightful.. friendships from these hessian days are still going strong. And my Christmas card list still contains many from Ye Olde White House days…
“This was one of the many dinner dances I helped to organise during my time there. This one was at the Causeway Hotel, about 1987”
“The annual Christmas night out was a must. It was booked in August and always took the form of a Dinner Dance. It was in a different hotel every year and all loved getting dressed up in their finery and enjoying the festivities together. My dance card was full and I enjoyed dancing with many of the staff.
Christmas Dinner Dance in the Bohill Hotel: from the left: guests Alison McQuilken and Sharon Devenney with Marion McDowell ; Gerald Mcquilken (China), & guests Alison McQuilken and Mrs McLean, Lesley Duffin (Shoes)
“Our first Christmas party was when I was a young 19 yr old and was held in the newly refurbished Magheraboy Hotel. This was my first ever ‘proper night out’ so it was very memorable. The highlight was waltzing with May Galbraith (Tights and Bags) and jiving with the very glamorous Marion McDowell (Ladies Fashion). I felt so grown up..lol. Some photos I can show. Others ….not. What happens at the Christmas Night out..stays on the Christmas night out!!!
“There was also an afternoon Christmas Dinner usually in the Londonderry Hotel next door to the White House or on a few occasions in the beautiful Castle Erin. This was to accommodate all staff who may have been too elderly to attend the evening Christmas party. Recall some of the older staff were aged around 123!!! Or maybe they just seemed that way.
Betty Sharkey and Madge Cox (Office staff) Hazel …..? (China dept), and The one and only Margaret Spence (Toys)
“We did manage to work occasionally but not without another event squeezed in on the May Bank Holiday. The only day in the calendar that the White House closed, apart from Christmas Day and Boxing day. Off we would set on the bus for our May Day Away…(I’m a poet at heart. Lol) We would get into our comfy shoes, don our hats at a jaunty angle, hip flask hidden away and off we would set.
White House day trip, to Glenveagh, 1980s (photos above and below) – Right, Nan Patrick (Fashion), Eileen McAllister (Children’s Clothing), Ann Francis (Ladies) and me –
David: well, there’s Gerald, Marion McDowell, on the right Margaret Spence, Peter Kane, …..
Day trip 1980s : Beth Anderson (Household dept manager), May Galbraith (manager of Tights and Handbags), Margaret Spence (Toys Manager), May Millen (White House Manager), Sally Simpson (Ladies), Margaret Hamill (Haberdashery) and Joan Kerr (Toys)
“Being the younger members of staff, Kathleen McClean, Margaret Hamill, Yvonne Farquhar and I would avail of the back seat of the bus.. We really did laugh on those outings until our sides were sore. We visited Mount Stewart, another year we would visit Enniskillen, taking in the Belleek factory, and another year visited the beautiful Glenveagh Castle in Donegal. As I was working in the China department the Belleek factory was of particular interest as we sold it in our department. We also sold Royal Doulton, Waterford Crystal and overall beautiful, quality pieces – items that are now worthless even though they cost a small fortune back then. This was when only the best of stuff was sold at the White House. Sadly the stock sold was to take a huge turn from quality to tat, but that’s a story for next time along with drips, buckets and finally the demolition of most of the existing building. Those days and nights out creating many wonderful memories, not least the party which always ensued once we departed the bus. I think Yvonne Farquhar was responsible for leading us astray. But it was back to work the next day and running our departments in the Harrods of Portrush.
Retirement dinner, held in The White House, for Lexi Frazer: Gerald McQuilken (China) & Margaret Daly; Peter Kane (Furniture) & Andrew Fullerton (Menswear Manager); Lesley Duffin (Shoes), Eileen McAllister (Children’s Clothing) & Iris Kane (China Dept)
Next time will be the transition from class to tat – and then of course back to the beautiful store we now know.
Many thanks to Gerald, continuing with his story of his years at The White House…….
“I’ve described my first Furniture delivery trip out in the first blog on this White House topic, with the difficulty of the getting trapped trying to take the wardrobe up the spiral staircase, and having to dismantle it! It is just a coincidence that my stint in the Furniture department was cut short, but I will say that a vacancy arose in the China Department, down that solid oak staircase at the Trocadero side of the store. I was to work under the legend that was Miss White – her name nothing to do with the White House name, as she was often asked.
Left, 1970s, with the big arcades at the front, that were good shelter for the times of summer downpours! And right, big refurbishment, 1990s, under Dr Moore of Coleraine. Gerald writes, “One of my tasks was to ensure that the nice tiles in the arcade area were spotless – tasks of scraping off gum – so that customers got a good impression of the store from the start, as demanded by the manager – and a discipline that I have tried to follow ever since.” Photos source: https://www.whitehouseportrush.com/our-history/
David: me, working in the Furniture Dept day time, once or twice a week also in the Menswear Dept on the 7 to 10pm shift. Mum and Dad would sometimes drive up in their orange Austin Allegro car and collect me. One evening, after 10pm closng time, nice the Allegro was there. I crossed the road, opened the back door and got in……. before I realsied it wasn’t our car. Oh dear – it being the bad years, 1977 – must have been an extremely anxious moment for the people in the car, before I mumbled Oh! sorry and got out.
“I was probably one of the last people to ‘serve my time’, learning skills on how to speak to customers, wrapping and posting items around the world etc. At this time the stock for sale was Waterford Crystal, Royal Doulton China and full dinner service sets. My colleagues were Hazel Mcauley and Iris Kane in this department. There was a mixture of hard work and lots of shenanigans. Another colleague Margaret Hamill was always encouraging me to get up to no good. Margaret worked in the Wool Department..- yes there was a wool dept. In fact there was a Tights Department too, and a Haberdashery Department as well – many now would question what that even was!?
“We by this stage had mastered the art of skiving, and of hiding in the lift if we wanted out of a hard task!! The secret was, when in the lift, if you gently tugged the iron gate within, the lift would stop, stuck. We made sure though that we had plenty of sweets for the time that we were ‘stuck’ in the lift, only shouting for help when the sweets were eaten.
David: me, my couple of summers in the Furniture Dept.. Better than trapping yourself in the lift, I think it was the van-driver Isaac who showed me how one can hook string over the inside door of the staff lift mechanism; so when the staff went down in the lift, you could tug the string and the lift would stop, half-way, trapping them. But I also learned that it was best not to keep them stranded too long though, as they started to kick and the metal link doors made an awful racket…..
“I learnt a lot of valuable skills from the wonderful Miss White but I always found time for messing, around much to Miss Millen’s dismay. She had the patience of a saint.
Sindy S: “Great read, and a good laugh picturing you jump in to that Orange Allegro! and the disappointment of then having to walk home! The arcade must have been rather noisy at times, I remember racing round it listening to my own voice echo! Other great memories of the White House were with Granny Mac (McFetridge) taking us to see Santa. The Grotto was like an Igloo I think and was it situated just at the top of the stairs?”
“Kathleen McLean was in the Toy Department and was also up for much frivolity when the boss or manager wasn’t about. My three years in this department were great times. The weekly pay was certainly not great but the memories and friendships we made have lasted a lifetime.
More next time with some ghostly goings on.!! “
White House day trip, 1980s
———————- Blogs: “Leadership at The White House” – the story of the White House, and of my summer job there! I had a couple of summers, working in the Furniture dept, about 1976 and ’77, as an extra pair of eyes for security, with Peter and Arthur White, and delivering stuff in the van with Isaac, and wee Hughie and Lexie on the front doors.
Gerald, I said, do I see that you worked in The White House? Do you have any stories from there, do you fancy writing them up?
“Aye sure. I’m at bit busy at the moment, you know, entertaining James Nesbitt, running the pantomime, oh several engagements with Dame Portia La Rush, dance classes, spicing up the British Red Cross shop and volunteering at New Beginnings charity shop in Portrush, taking my mum and sister on birthday weekend treats, ……… When things are a bit quieter for sure I will write.”
After about 18 months of asking and reminding Gerald, and giving him tips to help with IT, the first story appeared. “I’ll aim to do a story every day”, he said. That was a week ago.
“Hmmm, there are so many stories, where would I begin…….”
“This was one of the many dinner dances I helped to organise during my time there. This one was at the Causeway Hotel, about 1987”
Oh, and we’ll aim to add illustrations of White House from postcards from Sheila Brown’s collection, and photos wherever we find them.
Gerald writes, “My first experience with the White House was on a summer’s day in July 1985. I am having the best summer holidays ever, as college was over for ever and a new world of work awaited. This would be my last taste of freedom before entering the world of work.
“Sunbathing on the beach after a swim, I heard my mate Mark Mitchell call my name from the prom. He shouted that there was a job going at the White House and I was to go and see Miss Millen, the Manager. I went immediately, and was interviewed – me wearing shorts, T-shirt and flip flops, complete with sandy feet and wet hair!!
“I started the next day!! Doing Security at the door with Lexi Fraser – that’s a whole other story!! Job description: search bags !! Little did I know that this job, which was meant to be for the few remaining weeks of the summer of ’85, became a 5-year job, me working up to manager of Menswear, and with a few friendships and stories and lots of laughs in between. That summer gave me my first romance, my first pay packet and first real job. Many stories to follow on the lifes and loves of a White House employee.
Theatre & pantomime. Left: “Found this on my memories. Choreographing ‘Wizard of Oz’ for Portrush Music Society, many moons ago, early 70s.” Right, A guest appearance at Portrush Theatre Group, pantomime! So, did you meet him? I asked. “Unfortunately I was waiting to go on stage, so I missed out on a photo with him.”
“That was my first summer job, expecting to be six weeks at the White House, and then I would go off to Jordanstown to do primary school teaching. I saw it at the time as quite the accolade, to be working in the ‘Harrods of Portrush’!! Then the offer of full time work tempted me to stay, and the Education system’s loss was Retail’s gain. It must have been the £30 a week wages that swung it!!! Lol
“The store then was of course very different to today’s. Solid oak counters displaying silk gloves, beautiful arcades, each displaying wares from each department – Grace Brother’s springs to mind – and only the best of classic furniture and carpets in my new place of work. Winters were quiet in the White House, but busy beyond belief in the summer. Opening times were 9am to 10pm; closed for dinner 1pm to 2pm; and closed for evening tea 6pm to 7pm. Wednesday was closing day, so we all had the same day off.
“I took the post of Sales Assistant in the Furniture department of this beautiful store and the rest as they say is history.. Promotion from searching bags to selling carpets and furniture was quite the step. Peter Kane was manager of the Furniture Department. I remember my first week with a mix of feelings as wasn’t sure if I had made the right choice. But looking back at my working life, I wouldn’t change a thing. First funny story of many was when delivering a wardrobe to a house with a spiral staircase – we managed to get stuck on the stairs, me on one side and Andrew Fullerton on the other. Eventually the only way out of this was to dismantle the wedged wardrobe. Not a great start..
“My stint then in the Furniture department was rather short-lived, about 6 months, and then I was changed over to the China Department.
“I was to stay with the White House for almost six years, so there will be many tales, stories, and shenanigans to come….. Stories of ghosts, lifelong friendships, romances and much more to follow. Yes, the ‘Harrods of Portrush’ has many stories within its walls…… bear with me over the next weeks and I will forward some fun and interesting stories. Regards Gerald.”
Oh thanks so much Gerald, looking forward to hearing more! /David
———————- Blogs: “Leadership at The White House” – the story of the White House, and of my summer job there! I had a couple of summers, working in the Furniture dept, about 1976 and ’77, as an extra pair of eyes for security, with Peter and Arthur White, and delivering stuff in the van with Isaac, and wee Hughie and Lexie on the front doors.
The same family names pop up, generation after generation, in the story of Portrush, living around the harbour and with their lives based on the quayside and the sea. One such, the Patton family. I see they appear in news articles back in the 1850s, with Samuel Patton being the harbour-master and David Patton as Captain, speaking up for making a ‘Harbour of Refuge’ at Portrush, to create a safe harbour out to the Skerries.
A contact via these blogs is of that family, a David Patton. He grew up in No. 3, the Old Coastguard Station, in the 1950s and ’60s, and remembers scenes of his childhood and now records them in paintings. He kindly let me use his view of Minihan’s shop at the top of the harbour hill, and the image above of the fishing boat coming through the harbour mouth, in this and other blogs.
David Patton now lives in Ballymena. I hear of an expression though, ‘You can take the Man out of the Port but you can’t take the Port out of the Man.’ The richness of his harbour heritage comes through in his art.
Photo about 1960 – David Patton, centre, with David Thomas and his brother Peter. “The photo was at the Recreation grounds, where the swings used to be, standing on top of the hill which led down to the putting green behind us. To tell you the truth I don’t remember this photo being taken – but I do remember the very jumper I was wearing” “There were lots of kids around the area to play with – Peter Morrow, Brian Lavery, the Murdocks and the Chambers, Laurence Minihan – naming but a few.”
Now harbour folks as you know are very quiet reserved people but I eventually got some of the story of that painting out of him:
“Well, that painting of the fishing boat arriving at the harbour is based on a photograph that my brother Torney took. He always had his camera with him, he loved taking photographs, and one day he was down at the harbour when that boat was coming in, and he captured that scene.
“The first time that I saw that particular photograph, I loved it for its colours. Later I realised that those boats are no longer there, and that that image is all part of the history of Portrush harbour that I wanted to capture.
“My own family have been associated wih the harbour and the sea and the Portrush lifeboat for generations. I knew that my grandfather, Tom Patton, was a fisherman, and like other sea men he also used his skills to help others on the water as crews on the lifeboat. One of the precious family memories is of him in a photo of a launch of the lifeboat, in the days that it sailed from the old boat house at Landsdowne.
“Later, my grandfather was in the team who built the new lifeboathouse within the harbour.
Above left, 1928, and the construction of the lifeboat house in the harbour is in progress – this view extracted from a family photograph taken by Lee, the ‘Photographer of Portrush’. Right, “The commemorative photo of the team on the construction of the lifeboathouse, with my grandfather Tom Patton standing just on the left of the hull.” (Photo left, courtesy Trish Gray; right, photo from David Patton, of a picture in RNLI Portrush lifeboathouse.)
David Patton continues, “I never knew my grandfather though, he passed away in 1948, a handful of years before I was born.” From newspaper search, David Martin has found some astonishing history of him from the local newspaper archives. He is described in 1901 as being coxswain on the lifeboat. Later he took up a new post on the SS Ganiamore in 1912, ferrying between Portrush and Glasgow – ‘he had occupied the [coxswain] post for a number of years and was a efficient and capable coxswain.” All ferries stopped in wartime and Tom became coxswain again in 1916. He led the crew who brought in the new lifeboat to Portrush in 1924. (That lifeboat was given the catchy name, ‘T.B.B.H’, after the initial letters of the key donors. It was the first lifeboat at Portrush to have a motor – all previous ones were oars – me, I would not like to row it all the way from Cowes.) And the new lifeboathouse was built, for better launch location and facilities.
The crew with Tom as coxswain are mentioned in numerous rescues and several awards. His 27 years of faithful service were recognised at his retirement service in 1932.
David Patton comments, “I did not know any of that story of my grandfather.”
Photos: “My grandfather Tom Patton, with my grandmother, Letitia. Right, with his grandson Sydney Watson and my sister Maureen, about 1946.”
People in Portrush in the 1800s were clustered around the harbour. My grandfather was born in Bazaar Street and lived there all his life – that street was re-named to be Ramore St. (His brother David lived at ‘North Street’ – I see a 1900 newspaper with proposal to rename it to Princess Terrace.)
“The previous generation, we reckon that my great-grandfather, Thomas Patton, was born around 1840. We reckon that they were stone masons, living in a small village down a bit from from Glenmanus, before Portrush expanded. They actually built the hall for the Church of Ireland in town. (“There is a funny story about this, maybe for another time.”) The family tree that my sister has built shows he married my great-grandmother Nancy in 1866. Over the next few years my grandfather was born, followed by William James, then David. I am named after that David, my grandfather’s brother. I do remember being told that he drowned, but that was all I knew.
“Great-grandfather passed away in 1875. Nancy re-married, to a Johnny Logan, another long-standing and upright Portrush family – you may know O’Hara Logan, who was the headmaster of Portrush Primary School.
“Christian names were passed down the generations. So my great-grandfather was Thomas Patton, then my grandfather was named Thomas known as Tom. Then my father was Thomas known as Tommy; and my older brother was Thomas, known of course as Torney. And Torney’s son, who lives in Australia, is Thomas too.”
Er, why the name Torney? “Actually, I don’t know why but anyone who knew him called him that.”
From my research (this is David Martin speaking – whew so many David’s in this blog – and Thomas is my middle name!), the ‘David’ name also appears throughout the Patton generations too. We read of the earlier version of David Patton, the captain speaking up for the harbour of refuge in 1858. A generation or two later, a Thomas & David Patton make the news in the 1880s and 90s, doing well in local regattas in their drontheim sailing boats; and David was awarded for a life-saving rescue in the harbour in 1891. But his death was a handful of years later, aged only 26. William had also passed away, a few years earlier, also at the age of 26. Maritime life has many pleasures but risks and hardships too.
(Oh and by the ways, that Samuel Patton (a great-great-uncle?), the Harbourmaster: in the 1850 advert below he is agent for the new iron steam ships sailing to Troon and Fleetwood. And amazing, we ‘hear’ his voice ‘speaking’ – his testimony about the need for a railway line to Portrush is reported word for word in the Chronicle in 1853. He describes himself as being in shipping at Portrush for 20 years – that’s since the early 1830s, the earliest days of Portrush harbour. Later he is a trader, bringing in coal and having shares in the gas corporation in Portrush, and in 1884 he travelled to London to speak up again for the harbour of refuge to Select Commission meetings at the Houses of Parliament. He must have been was a well-respected and learned expert, although in the end the decision of the Commission went against Portrush. What a story! ..to be there at or shortly after the building of the harbour and for the next 60 years.)
“Oh,” David Patton continues, “my own middle name, Matthew, is named after my grandfather on my mother’s side, Matthew McDowell, who worked in the railway station, Portrush or Coleraine.” There is such a rich heritage in Portrush history.)
Photos above, 1952, “before I was born! My mother Ernestineand father with my two sisters, Maureen and Pat. (The photos are at Coastguard Cottages, their outside appearance of the houses have not changed since I was a baby.) And below, “my family: my father, Tommy, sisters Pat and Maureen, and brothers Torney and Terry and me, the baby of the family, about 1957.
“My father Tommy Patton was a plumber by trade. He was very creative with his hands and was very good at building models of boats. I remember one that was in a glass case at my granny Patton’s in Ramore Street, a model of the Cutty Sark. But the one I remember the most, as a wee boy I played with it a lot, was a model of the Golden Hinde.
“Those model boats didn’t come in a kit form like you would buy today, rather everything was handmade and put together. I learn that my Father sent away for the detailed plans and worked from those, making the hull from wood and the sails from the skin of an old drum . I remember those models and the details in them so well – that is probably why I love to paint details too in my paintings.
“The Golden Hinde model was on a wooden stand that I could play with. It was really detailed, with railings between the decks, with wooden steps between the lower deck and upper deck, and there were port holes with small cannons poking out on either of the boat, and with cannons on the decks too – I loved playing with those. There were rigging, ropes, a crow’s nest for lookout, even little lanterns here and there on the decks. The sails were cut out in the shape of the sails blowing in the wind – it was all so great for my imagination and fun. I remember there was a Spanish crusader-type cross painted on the main sail of boat. Also the whole boat was painted – and I don’t mean just a splash-on, everything was painted precisely as it should be.
Left, David Patton exhibiting in Antrim along with other artists from the Ballymena Vis Art club, a few months ago. Right, “The photo of the fishing boat that was the inspiration for my paintings It was taken by my brother Torney in 1968. Torney knew two of the men on that boat, Richard Mc Kay and Jimmy Stewart.
“The photograph and the painting of the four fishing boats, above, is the harbour as I remember it. Looking back at the Dock Head wall with the big billboard, Minihan’s shop and of course part of the old Ramore street. The Harbour Bar, the old wooden shed at the railway crossing bridge that always smelled of tar. Across the bridge there was a pub that belonged to a Kitty Quinn. I can remember as a wee boy looking for my father: I would look in the pub to see if he was there and if he was, he would put me up on a stool and treated me to a glass of Club orange.
“Bringing this narrative right up to date, I have just completed a private commission, a painting of a boat at the harbour. A lady asked me if I could do a painting as a Christmas surprise for her husband. They both had the same warm affection for the harbour, loved coming up to the Port with their boat ‘Freddy’. She wanted me to paint their boat with the harbour background and including another boat, the ‘Sally Ann,’ which they had previously, which berthed on the left hand side of the lifeboat.
“So pleased, he was delighted with the result.
“And for me, I so so loved to paint that particular picture. In the scene there is the lifeboat, and beyond is the lifeboat house. And it got me thinking of when my grandfather was helping to build it. He would never have thought that his grandson would one day in future put the lifeboat house, that he helped to build, in a painting.
“So, the harbour, the lifeboat, the lifeboat house: it is my own story, and my father’s story, and my grandfather’s and before that too.”
================ Photographs: images of paintings, and family photographs here are private and copyright to the Patton family, please do not reproduce Newspaper cuttings, from https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk
and below, a selection of news on Thomas Patton, coxswain
In the Portrush series from the Pantheon of Postcards from the Exquisite Collection of Sheila Brown, as we continue our walk and detour down to the Blue Pool.
David Matthew Patton writes: “The Blue Pool was cold – no wet suits, just a pair of trunks – but once you got in and get over the shock of hitting the water, it was lovely and refreshing. There was a changing hut which was never open in my day, we just got changed on the rocks. There was a spring board, a slide and the main top high board. I remember the first time diving, the spring board was no problem but the high board, it was so high!
Late 1800s, people came on the trains from Belfast and Ballymoney and places to the seaside at Portrush, for the sea and swimming, There were swimming places and bathing huts with attendants – with strict demarcation of areas for Gentlemen and for Ladies.
The 1897 article above mentions the multitude of swimmers daily at the Blue Pool, with an ‘immense crowd’ at the diving display at the Blue Pool, aiming to raise moneys for the under-paid attendant there. The 1920s photograph, right, is of Blue Pool attendant outside one of the changing huts, (Photo source: album of Trish Gray, of Lee photographer family)
David Matthew Patton says, “I never heard of anyone swimming to the Skerries.” Swimming in the Blue Pool seemed pretty tracherous to me. But swimming out to the Skerries? and then back?? or to the Giant’s Causeway??? (the Causeway in under 4 hours??) Amazing !!!!
But don’t try that at home! There are several newspaper accounts of people in big difficulty around the Blue Pool area, with several drownings reported in the mid-1960s, which may have reduced the appeal of the pool. The article right is of the lady sitting watching the SS Hazel steaming past on its way to Ardrossan, but of being washed in by the swell (washed in by the swell? not sure whether to believe that story or not!)
That lady, Mrs. McGrath, was sitting at ‘Murtagh’s Mouth,’ described as a Ladies Bathing area, with an Attendant, as listed in the 1903 article below, along with all the other excitement at Portrush!
The article outlines the bathing places, unisex, with Attendants at the Blue Pool, Murtagh’s Mouth, the South Pier and at Rock Ryan – and other activities of golf, the opening hours of the Reading Room (in the Town Hall), of the Electric Tram to the Causeway, the Bath-houses on Bath St, and Keane’s Pierrot Party on the East Strand)
Murtagh’s Mouth? Not a name I’m familiar with, but I see it in a Discover Portrush photo, below the salmon fisheries.
And I find an awesome report of a chin-wag in 1883, above, with a guy who was 90 years old, and who remembered stuff like Cranagh Hill before it was excavated for the harbour. That man tells of the origins of the name, from ‘Murty’ Murtagh Macilravey, saying he explained getting his big catch of fish ‘by the mouth’.
Trish Gray: “Mrs Frizelle ran the Diving displays at the Blue Pool. I saw a couple of them. They came to a halt about 1966 or ’67, I think. After that Mrs Frizzell moved across to West Strand and ran the deckchairs. My first ‘summer job’! About 1968 … On busy days helping her rent them out and retrieving the ones left behind on the beach (and getting the deposits back..) and a few bob depending on her takings for the day! Never took part in the diving displays, but often dived or swam in the Blue Pool. It used to have a chute, a springboard, and a top diving board, every summer.“
Rosemarie Severin: “And Mrs Frizelle organised the Blue Pool diving. What a warm character she was!!” And, “Blue Pool! Well do I remember the exciting diving there and the car going around the town proclaiming “Diving in the Blue Pool !” Torney Patton a renowned diver…“
Pauline Rigby: “Mrs Frizelle and the Blue Pool. The girls that came and did the displays would stay on the top floor off our house 107 Main Street.“
Diving and crowds at the Blue Pool Photo source: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/ left: 20688479523754391 & right: 20688479523754391/
David Matthew Patton: “The Blue Pool was cold – no wet suits, just a pair of trunks – but once you got in and get over the shock of hitting the water, it was lovely and refreshing. There was a changing hut which was never open in my day, we just got changed on the rocks. There was a spring board, a slide and the main top high board. I remember the first time diving, the spring board was no problem but the high board, it was so high! How I eventually got the nerve to dive off it, on the left hand side of the spring board and slide there was different levels of steps facing the pool that you could dive from and each time you dive from one level you had the confidence then to face the high board. When you master that, there was a dive called ‘The Portrush Flyer’ – just like the postcard of the guy diving off the top board. You stood at the back of the high dive board and ran and then you made your dive, flung your arms out and legs straight.
“When you made your run, you made sure you ran left of the high board to face out to sea, as you know the pool isn’t very wide and you could land on the rock rather in the water. (We never known this to happen.) One thing we learned very quickly especially diving from that high, before you hit the water you wrapped your hands together like a fist to break through the water – believe it or not, if you didn’t you would get a very sore face.”
Blue Pool, diving, 1930s (Photo source: History of Portrush FB) Ray Weir: “My granda dived there around that time [1930s]. He gave people a laugh as he wore a top hat and black tailed coat and walked aroung the visitors and then dived in. My dad had to go to side of pool and take coat and hat from him. Granda used to laugh and tell me about it.”
David: I see diving exhibitions mentioned through the 1950s, including by floodlights. Attending diving displays at the Blue Pool is at the edge of my memory, in the 1960s. But they were in decline, with reports of vandalism in the under-used facilities and of dereliction in 1962. There were unfortunate drownings there in 1966 and 1967, which I guess further impacted its use as a public swimming area. In a 1975 article, Harold Alexander reports that the Blue Pool is little used, that the equipment has gone away, and diving displays had to switch to the harbour.
That shore was still great for fishing though:
Diving was obviously a very attractive sport to be involved in and to watch and to be watched. As the postcard below says, 1910, “Things are looking up at Portrush”, and Jerry writes to tell Mrs Farrell in Belfast that he is having a good time.
And David Matthew Patton writes, “Lots of people would comein the evenings to watch and so, us being young, we had to show off.“
And for Life Lessons he writes, “When you made your run, you made sure you ran left of the high board to face out to sea, as you know the pool isn’t very wide and you could land on the rock rather in the water. We never knew this to happen though, but one thing we learned very quickly especially diving from that high board, is that before you hit the water you wrapped your hands together like a fist to break through the water – believe it or not, if you didn’t you would get a very sore face.”
“
“
maybe with a little disc of soap inside, I always thought they were very fancy x”
. Another name I remember was a youngster – well, same age as me – called Billy McLelland. I think his family were fishermen in the 50’s and 60’s?”
“
“
. 
“
!! Little did I know that this job, which was meant to be for the few remaining weeks of the summer of ’85, became a 5-year job, me working up to manager of Menswear, and with a few friendships and stories and lots of laughs in between. That summer gave me my first romance, my first pay packet and first real job. Many stories to follow on the lifes and loves of a White House employee.
. I remember those models and the details in them so well – that is probably why I love to paint details too in my paintings. 
“
Portrush Tales 