Glenmanus – The Irish Rover

Greenacres

My father’s WWII duty ended in Northern Germany, at Lübeck, northeast of Hamburg. He was demobbed in late January 1946, after more than six years of active service, having been involved in the invasion, wounded in the fighting in France, Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany. He made his way back to England, where he received £95 and a suit from the UK government, visited his parents in Norfolk, and reunited with my mother in Glenmanus, a small rural village just outside Portrush on the north coast of Ireland.

Nine months later, almost to the day, I was born.

My father had a commitment from his former employer, Sainsbury, to enable him to resume his pre-war managerial career, but he turned it down. Despite having no agricultural background – his father was a classical musician and his mother a teacher, he had decided to start a poultry breeding farm. His interest in poultry dated from when he was rested from the fighting and spent two weeks at a poultry farm in The Netherlands. With most of his limited capital, he bought a pedigree cockerel and twelve hens and started his fledgling breeding farm on a small plot of land allocated to him by his father-in-law.

In the meantime, while his stock of birds slowly expanded, he subsidized his income by playing piano with his dance band, initially at Barry’s dance hall in Portrush, and later at the Northern Counties Hotel, in that era one of the premier hotels in Ireland.

By 1951, the poultry flock grew too large for the small plot of land in Glenmanus. My mother’s uncle Bill Douglas, a retired farmer, granted my father a 99-year lease on some fields that he owned beside Carnalridge Primary School, on the road to Coleraine. A new house was built and in 1952 we transferred to our new home. It was the start of Greenacres Poultry Farm. Expansion was rapid and within a relatively short time, the fields were fully utilized. All income was reinvested, and my parents never had a holiday; they worked every day of every year. There is never a break from livestock on a small holding.

The house and farm buildings, the photo dating from circa 1960

A schematic layout of the farm, together with the neighbours – Ard Rua, where my paternal grandparents lived, the Collins farm, the Bankhead (the Carnalridge headmaster), Boyd and Gurney, Houston and Walker.

The fleet of small arks that housed the young chickens, while they grew accustomed to being outdoors. The arks were moved every few days across the field, leaving behind manure to fertilize the grass.

There were four houses thay housed the free-range laying flocks. In the background can be seen the family house.

One of my father’s Light Sussex cockerels. Note the spurs!

A small flock of Brown Leghorns, with a laying house in the background

My father’s reputation soon spread and in 1958 Silcock, the leading animal feed company, sponsored a ‘Poultry Demonstration’, to which were invited farmers over all the north of Ireland. A large tent was erected, with tables and chairs, and for two days the invitees arrived and were hosted with presentations, demonstrations, tours of the farm and Irish hospitality.

It was judged to have been a great success and my father’s business prospered.

The farm was never exclusively for poultry breeding. A herd of pigs was introduced together with a small flock of 30 sheep, to keep the grass under control. In addition a flock of turkeys was added and once a year pheasant chicks were hatched for a local landowner.

But disaster struck in Northern Ireland in about 1964 with a severe outbreak of fowl pest, a devastating chicken disease. Ireland was very dependent on its agriculture and despite strict quarantine practices, somehow the disease had entered the country. The government mandated that there could be no movement of any livestock between farms. My father had little capital and in a short time he was out of cash. Despite his years of being a solid client, his bank was of no help. It was yet another example of banks being your fair-weather friend!

Everything on the farm that could be sold was sold and with the pittance that he accumulated, he bought a small grocery business that was then available in Portrush, across the road from the train station. It belonged to a Mr Gibson, who was retiring.

The business was never a great success. Portrush was in long-term tourism decline. There were fewer and fewer visitors and a new supermarket in Coleraine negatively impacted local small grocers. My father persisted for several years but finally surrendered to the inevitable and finished his working years as the store manager at Kelly’s, a nearby complex of hotel, bars, restaurant and nightclub.

After my mother died in 1985, my father returned to his first love – music. He bought a then-state-of-the-art organ and re-established his reputation as a talented musician. And until the week he died in November 1995, he provided background music in several local hotels and restaurants.

My father was talented at everything in which he was involved. He was a brave and courageous soldier, wounded but refusing to succumb. He was an innovative farmer, who challenged the boundaries of poultry breeding. He survived through his prior training in the grocery business. And his talent as a musician never failed him.

He has proven to have been a difficult act for me and for my sons to follow.

First Light

Until the completion of the harbour in 1835 and the arrival of the railway in 1855, Portrush was but a tiny insignificant fishing village, with but a few families huddled under the headland, separated from the mainland by a range of sand dunes.

With the harbour and the railway came investment, development, and the creation of a popular holiday resort. But in the late 1800s, Glenmanus remained a rural village, separated from Portrush by a belt of agricultural land.

In the centre of the following photograph can be seen a large white farmhouse, with an attached dwelling. That was Seaview Farm, the ancestral home of my mother’s ancestors, the Douglas. They lived and farmed in Glenmanus from the late 1600’s. It was there that my mother saw first light and where I spent my earliest years.

On the right of the photo, is the corner of a field, opposite a small group of farm buildings. It was there that my parents lived for a few years in a tiny wooden hut, while my father worked on his fledgling poultry farm across the road during the day and on his dance band at night.

Today, Glenmanus and all the fields have disappeared under an ugly carpet of council housing, caravan parks and private dwellings, and there is not a green field to be seen.

Glenmanus, as seen from Loquestown, circa 1900 (photo from internet)

I was not born in Glenmanus, but I saw my first light in the Mary Rankin Maternity Hospital, in nearby Coleraine, as did my brother and sister. The Mary Rankin was on the Castlerock Road, opposite the Court House. I passed it every day that I went to school at C. A. I.

The Mary Rankin Maternity Hospital (photo from internet)

Like Glenmanus, the Mary Rankin has long since been demolished and replaced by yet another ugly two-story apartment building. Gone are the lawns, the ivy and the trees, replaced by bricks and asphalt.

Perhaps it is pure nostalgia on my part, but I prefer to remember Glenmanus and the Mary Rankin as they once were.

My mother’s early years

On my mother´s side, I am descended from the Douglas family of Glenmanus, a small farming village about one mile south of Portrush, on the north Irish coast. Until the completion of the harbour in 1835 and the arrival of the railway in 1855, Portrush was but a tiny insignificant fishing village, with but a few families huddled under the headland, separated from the mainland by a range of sand dunes. In contrast Glenmanus was a thriving rural community.

But the new harbour and the railway brought new business opportunities to Portrush, especially in the field of tourism. Over the next 150 years, the town expanded relentlessly, and Glenmanus was swallowed up. Today little remains of the original village, save for a few renovated houses and the name on a street sign.

According to my ‘family legend’, the first Douglas arrived with General Munro’s Scottish army during the 1641-49 conflict, after which he remained, settling in Glenmanus, possibly with a small grant of land. I have no evidence of this claim, but certainly a John Douglas (c1734-1771) and Eliza (c1731-1800) lived and died there. I have succeeded in tracing my own ancestral line back as far as my third great grandfather, John Douglas (1811-1876). My maternal grandfather was Adam Douglas (1900-1977)

Glenmanus — Obituary of Adam Douglas, my 2nd great grandfather, who died on Thursday, 3 May 1917

My maternal grandmother was Mary Elizabeth Wilson McCloskey. Her father, James McCloskey (1852-1933), and his father before him, James McCloskey (c1808-1890), had a farm at Bannbrook, between Coleraine and Castlerock. Mary was the fifth of seven sisters and one brother. She married my grandfather on 14 February 1924. My mother, Beatrice Elizabeth Stewart Douglas, was born four months later on 15 June

Kilcranny House, the McCloskey farmhouse at Bannbrook, near Coleraine

I know nothing of my grandparents lives during that era, but I suspect that life was not easy for the young family. I cannot imagine that their parents were thrilled with the premature arrival of a granddaughter; their strict Protestant religion has never been renowned for its tolerance of human weakness. And how the self-righteous neighbours must have talked about the young couple! Despite my grandfather being the eldest son and the logical inheritor of the Glenmanus farm, in 1927, when my mother was two, he took his family and migrated to Canada. They left Belfast during late March on the Aurania and arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia on 3 April 1927.

Enlarge the passenger list to see my grandparents at the bottom of the left hand page

They then travelled across Canada to Saskatchewan, most likely by train, and settled in Simpson, a small town situated about 150 k northwest of Regina and 140 k southeast of Saskatoon. The nearest rail station was at Watrous, some 25 k to the north of Simpson.

Why did they decide to leave Ireland? Perhaps there was an unbearable relationship with his parents or with his siblings or perhaps with other villagers. Or maybe the family farmhouse became intolerably crowded with an eight adults and a baby. Or like me, he just wanted to see something of the world and have a better life. It is most unlikely that we shall ever know the real reason. In those days life in Ireland was not easy. The standard of living was poor and mainly based on the farming of small holdings, like that of my ancestors. It was not unusual for young people to migrate to the industrial towns of the UK, or further afield to Canada, Australia or New Zealand, the latter countries willing to pay the cost of transportation.

The little I know about my grandparents in Simpson was provided to me by Mrs. Beatrice Crew (née Allen) of New Westminster, Canada. She was a childhood friend of my mother and despite their having been separated at a young age, they corresponded until my mother’s death in 1985.

I recall my mother telling me that her father had once been fired from his job. The farmer for whom he was working at the time was being cruel to a horse and my grandfather hit him. I have always felt proud of him for having done that. I don’t know who the farmer was. I like to think that I would have reacted in the same way.

Mrs. Crew told me that initially my grandfather worked on ‘little’ Fred Wilson’s farm outside Simpson, then for a summer for Frank Witley, before moving to a cottage in Simpson. Adam worked for farmers and my grandmother did house cleaning. She also provided full board to Bill Libby, who ran the Simpson Trading Company.

In August 1932, my grandfather’s father died, but it was not until the end of 1933 that the family returned to Ireland. They arrived in Liverpool on 17 December on the Duchess of Atholl, from St. John, New Brunswick, giving Kilcranny House as their proposed address. They may have initially stayed there, but must have eventually moved into Seaview Farm, where Adam’s mother was still living, as my mother never mentioned them as having lived elsewhere.

My maternal grandparents outside Seaview farm in Glenmanus

Why did they decide to return to Ireland? Until recently I had assumed that there was something outstanding or in dispute, resulting from his father’s death. It was one of my mother’s cousins who recently shed new light on the question. He said that my grandfather’s mother wanted my grandfather to inherit the farm after she died and had come to an agreement with the other siblings to accept her wishes and not make a claim.

So my grandparents and my mother moved back to Seaview Farm in Glenmanus and worked the land. My mother went to Mark’s Street primary school and left at the earliest opportunity to help her parents at home and on the farm. As she never mentioned that era of her life to me, I assume that it was uneventful.

My mother with the farm horsepower, in the late 1930s

It was when World War Two broke out, that my mother´s life changed dramatically. But that is a story for another day.

The Bicycle

I was seven years old when I had my first bicycle. It was a sturdy, very old-fashioned heavy tricycle that had been my father’s. My paternal grandparents brought it with them when they moved from Harpley in Norfolk, to live opposite us in a large house, then known as Ard Rua. I used to ride up and down the lane that led to their house, past the farm of Old Joe Collins and do skidding turns on the gravel slope outside their my grandparent’s front door.

When I was twelve, my father bought me a second-hand bicycle. It has no gears, but then I never ever knew anybody who had any. My great uncle Bill Douglas used to visit our farm almost every week day. He used to push his bicycle up the hill and freewheel the one mile back down to Glenmanus. If you have ever ridden a bicycle with no gears, you will know that going uphill is no picnic.

I used to sit on my bicycle on the road outside our house at Islandflackey, and without making any effort, see how far I could go into Portrush. I used to sail down the first hill past Carnalridge school, slow down to a crawl before the crossroads at Magherabuoy, and fly down the hill past Glenmanus, past Glenvale Avenue, until slowly grinding to a stop shortly after. No matter what I did to lower air resistance and in spite of the weather, I always ended up within spittle distance of the house of Reverend Perrin, just before the Metropole.

Shortly after the limits of Portrush, was the house of David Hunter. We had both gone to Carnalridge Primary School and then on to CAI. In our summer holidays I used to glide down on my bicycle and we played cricket against his parent’s garage door, using a tennis ball. We were usually joined by a combination of Dennis Green, Derek Aiken, Martyn Lewis, Michael Moore and Nicholas Stevens-Hoare, all of then living within a short distance.

One summer, Derek Aiken’s father bought a rowing boat, and berthed it in the harbour. What fun it was to row around the harbour. Once, on a sea-calm day, we decided to row to Portstewart, a rather long way across the bay. After we exited the harbour mouth, we had not gone far before sight of land disappeared with the swell in the trough of a wave, to reappear on the peak of the next. We did not go very far until we decided that it might not be such a good idea and returned.

Portrush with its harbour and the West Strand, circa 1960

On other occasions we use to ride our bicycles to the parking area beside the East Strand. There we would race around the marked course that was used for occasional Go-Kart races. Or we played football on the packed sand of the beach. Afterwards, I had the gear-less struggle back up the hill to our farm. But the memories of that era are fond.

After I dropped out of grammar school in 1963, I lost touch with my summer friends. David Hunter went on to Oxford to study law and ended up as a QC in Belfast and Dennis Green studied dentistry. I was once told that his practice was in Derry. After university, Derek Aiken joined his father’s timber business in Coleraine, but sadly died in 1991, at the much too early age of 44. I always visit his grave on my infrequent visits to the area. Martyn Lewis became a household celebrity, reading the BBC evening news for many years and later hosting his own television programs. Michael Moore qualified from Queens University with a PhD in Marine Biology and later became Professor Moore. I don’t know what ever happened to Nicholas Stevens-Hoare. I seem to remember that his father was in the military, so perhaps he relocated.

Derek’s grave in the Ballywillan cemetery

And I don’t know what happened to my old bicycle. In the unlikely event that I should ever have another, I will insist on its having adequate gears, sufficient to enable a relatively easy ascent from Portrush up the hill to Islandflackey or the equivalent.

Or perhaps I will just stick to my lifetime habit of walking.

What’s in a name?

My parents named me Leonard Douglas – Leonard after my paternal grandfather, and Douglas, my mother’s maiden name.

The Douglas are an ancient Scottish clan and in the late 1600s, one of the Douglas soldiers settled in Glenmanus, a tiny rural village just south of the North Antrim port of Portrush. The descendants of the original Douglas remained in the village and farmed the land until recent times. Two of my cousins still live in the village, but most of the land has long been sold and has disappeared under a modern housing estate.

Until I migrated to Canada in 1965, I was only known as Leonard, although at grammar school, I had the nickname of ‘Blackie’. Indeed one of my good friends from my schooldays, Hugh Brewster, still refers to me as ‘Blackie’.

immigration card

Soon after I arrived in Toronto, I found myself being called Len, and that name has stuck ever since. I don’t recall how my name got changed, but I suspect it was something to do with my rugby mates. In any case I prefer to be called Len; Leonard now seems rather formal to me.

One night in 1974, I went to my favourite jazz club in Sydney, The Basement. I was quietly sitting in the shadows at my usual table, sucking on a bottle of red wine and listening to the music, when I was invited to join an attractive girl and two guys at a nearby table. I felt that it would have been rather rude of me to refuse the invitation, so I moved to their table. They thought that I looked very sad and needed cheering up, when I was actually quite relaxed and content, lost in my thoughts.

The introductions were made and everyone seemed to be in good humour.

‘I confess that I have never liked the name Len’ said the girl. ‘Don’t you have another name?’.

‘My second name is Douglas, but nobody would know me as that’.

‘But that is so much better. I love that name. I am going to call you Douglas’.

I never thought that we would meet again, but we eventually did, and for our next few years we were a couple; in Australia, across the Pacific, through Central America, in California and across the U.S and Canada, and finally in England, where we eventually parted. At times, I felt as if I was leading a double life; to my own friends and in my work, I was Len, and in her social life, I was Douglas. Of course my parents and siblings still referred to me as Leonard.

I don’t remember when the airlines first started to insist that a reservation had to be in our passport name. Certainly after the New York 9/11 attack in 2001, it was mandatory, in my case the name had to be Leonard Douglas Blackwood. A booking in any other than that exact name could result in boarding being refused. With the expansion of internet booking and with travelers keying their own data, inevitably mistakes occur. And most, if not all airlines, charge for name corrections.

Capture

Apart from air travel, until recent times I remained as ‘Len Blackwood’, until my UK bank suddenly demanded that I prove my identity with a notarized copy of my passport, and proof of address. The fact that I had held accounts with the bank for more than 30 years was irrelevant: I was a money laundering suspect until I proved myself innocent. As I was not in the UK at the time, it was an inconvenience, but eventually all was resolved. At least I hope it is. The banking bureaucratic wheels can turn ever so slowly.

And it is not just in banking that passport names can be required. In recent years I had keys of a French rental property sent to an address in Sweden. Unfortunately they were addressed to Len Blackwood and my ID was in my Leonard name. Everything else matched, but it took a long telephone discussion to a head office responsible to have the package reluctantly released.

I suspect that all the checks by governments and business serve only to keep honest people honest. I can’t believe that they are much of a deterrent to a criminal requiring a false passport or a proof of address. Today, fingerprint and iris recognition are proven technologies, identifying us as unique individuals. It is hopefully only a matter of time until the new technology is adopted by governments and financial institutions and passports and bits of paper are ancient history.

I look forward to that day.

The Wall of Death

In my previous blog, I wrote of some of my earliest memories of Glenmanus and nearby Portrush. I wrote of a couple of stunt motorcyclists and their act, ‘The Wall of Death’, and how they boarded with my grand-parents at Seaview Farm. My memory of their act is so vivid, but I could not recall their names, despite my mother often speaking of those years when they returned for the summer season.

I posted the article and next day I received a comment from Australia, from Iris, who like me, also grew up in Glenmanus. She recalled the couple and said that she remembered their surname as being Goosen or similar. The name sounded Dutch or perhaps German but rang no bells for me.

The Northern Irish marriage records over 75 years old are accessible for a fee, so on the off-chance that they married in Ulster, I went to https://geni.nidirect.gov.uk/. And in 1938, I found a Theunis Christophel Goosen who married an Ena Birmingham in Saint Patrick’s Church of Ireland, in Ballymena. And both had their profession as ‘Amusement Caterer’. It looked as though I might have found them, but I wanted more evidence.

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When I searched on the internet, I found a site focused on the Goosen genealogy (http://www.goosen.nu/index.php/documents/192-wall-of-death) and in it was an article about Chris and Ena Goosen.

217_chris_and_ena_goosen — Chris and Ena Goosen (from the Goosen genealogy site)

wallofdeath

I am almost certain that I have found the couple and how thrilled my mother would have been to read my little account.

Perhaps the warm and contented feeling I am experiencing tonight is a reflection of her approval, and maybe also that of Chris and Ena Goosen.

Early Memories of Portrush

What is your earliest memory?

Are you certain that your earliest memories are genuinely your own memories, or are you remembering and imagining what your parents or others have told you? I confess that I am never quite certain of the authenticity of mine.

My early years were spent in Glenmanus, a small village now totally enclosed and obliterated by the relentless expansion of Portrush. Until I was five years old, my parents lived in a small wooden hut, at least I recall it as being small and wooden. It was just up the road from the farm of my great-uncle Bill Douglas, and great-aunt, Letitia. I can clearly remember going down the steps to the stream that flowed in front of Bill’s farmhouse and falling in the water. And in an out-building, Titia making butter in a large churn, paddling up and down. And offering me a ‘piece’, a thick slice of bread, coated in butter and jam. Delicious it was. The stream has long since been piped and covered over, and the farmhouse demolished and replaced with modern houses, owned by two of my cousins, Hughie and Brian Douglas.

ef2e7f3d2a249d7eeca776e10e459c69--vintage-antiques-butter — A butter churn, similar to that of Titia

And one freezing morning in winter, when the older boys came flying down Loquestown Hill on a sled, and one of them crashing into a hedge, and injuring his cheek. I remember it as being Maurice Elliott who crashed, but he has no recall of it. One of us is correct…

My mother contracted TB when I was very young, and for some six months she was interned in a sanatorium in Derry. It was Louise Wilson who looked after me, while my father worked on the farm during the day and played piano with his dance-band at Barry’s Ballroom at night. My only clear memory of that era was sitting at the table, having breakfast and my father telling me that a fox or a badger had broken into one of the hen-houses and killed all the hens. He could probably have ill-afforded the loss, as he was just starting out on his new farming venture.

And there was the day when my mother took me down to Portrush, through the archway under the railway embankment, and we sat up on a sandhill, waiting for the ‘mock invasion’ to start. In those days there was no seawall, only sand dunes leading down to the west strand. Out in the bay there was a battleship and it began to fire its guns and then several landing craft were launched. The troops were disgorged just offshore and there was lot of firing of machine gun blanks, as they charged up the beach. Predictably the ‘enemy’ soon surrendered. For many years after, until I was about 16, I dreamed of joining the military, despite my father’s lack of enthusiasm. He had had enough of war after six years of fighting in WW2 and wanted me to join him on his farm. I ended up doing neither farming nor military.

In those days there was a tram that ran from Portrush to the Giant’s Causeway and I remember seeing it setting out past the gasworks, down Causeway Street. It was probably one of the last trips, as it stopped functioning at the end of the 1949 season.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, my father’s dance band played every night in Barry’s Ballroom. My mother took me to see him play one evening, and afterwards, we went outside, to an exhibit called ‘The Wall of Death’. It consisted of a circular wooden tower, inside which a couple rode motorbikes. We stood at the top of the tower and looked at the bikes going around and around, horizontal to the ground at dizzying speed. I later learned that my mother knew the couple. During the war, in the summer season, they used to board at my grandparent’s farm in Glenmanus. I wish I could remember their names.

So few memories, but so vivid are the few. I sometimes wonder which vivid memories of their early years my four sons will recall, when they are older.

Hopefield

Hopefield Cottage Hospital was situated on the edge of Portrush. It was one of the many rural hospitals that performed minor operations and provided for the chronically sick. It enabled local patients to remain close to their families and the latter to avoid having to travel to a distant county facility. In the years before and after the 1939-45 war, few local people had a car. It was to Hopefield that I was taken when I was six years old, in 1953.

In my early years, I was a sickly child, repeatedly suffering from sore throats and fevers. The medical verdict was that I had to have my tonsils removed. I have only two vivid memories of Hopefield. The first was of my lying on a bed beside a window, looking out across fields. The other was that of a man in white, picking me up and carrying me to another room, laying me down on a table, and a black hissing thing that smelled strange, being placed over my face. I have no recall of my mother or father being there at any time; I just remember feeling alone and scared.

Of course, I soon recovered, put on missing weight, and health-wise, I have never looked back.

It was in Hopefield that my grandmother, my father’s mother, died in 1958. She already had had two strokes and had been bed-bound for several years. She did not survive the third stroke. I remember my father putting down the phone and saying, ‘She has gone’. Before that I had never seen him cry.

Beside the hospital lay the fields of Caldwell’s farm, the fields that I looked out at from the hospital. When I was young, during the summer season a small plane used to land on those fields, and for a fee the pilot used to fly tourists over Portrush, the Skerries and along the north coast.

Every Easter Tuesday, always a public holiday in Ulster, those fields were the scene of the Glenvale point-to-point horse races. It was a grand occasion and people drove, cycled or walked from a long way to be there. The venue was only a mile from our farm, so I often went too. It was exhilarating to be close to the horses as they galloped by, jumping the hurdles and hedges.

Access to the Glenvale races was along a lane beside John Rainey’s house and past Caldwell´s farm. The entrance to the lane was off the Coleraine Road, opposite to the road that led into Glenmanus. In those days Glenmanus village was on the edge of Portrush and on the road to Coleraine were just fields and the occasional house and farm buildings.

It was at the entrance of that lane that I had arranged to meet my first love. We were too young to be seen alone together, so she brought along her best friend, as did I. We slowly walked the length of that secluded lane to the far end and back. We held hands and said little. We were eleven years old.

For my part, my attraction to her remained intact. We had little opportunity to meet. She went to the grammar school in Bushmills and I went in the opposite direction, to that of the C.A.I. in Coleraine. She lived in the town and I in the country. Our paths sometimes crossed in church, but she was always with her parents. It was only at the rare church or school social event that the flame was temporarily relit, only to be once more extinguished. In 1965 I migrated to Canada and she finished school and moved away from the area. We had no further contact.

Today, the Hospital at Hopefield no longer exists, and the Glenvale races ceased to be held around 1977. For many years they continued at Myroe, near Limavady, before recently returning to the fields of the old Adams farm at Loquestown, just across from our farm at Islandflackey.

Action from the 1977 Loquestown races (photo from internet)

The former Caldwell fields are now under a maze of new houses and Portrush no longer ends at Glenmanus Road, but advances relentlessly towards Coleraine. Soon there will be no fields left between the two towns.

The romantic lane of my youth still exists, albeit sandwiched on both sides between the rears of houses.

But my memory of how it used to be is indelible.

Bertie Law

Since my mother died in 1985 and my father in 1995, my visits to my homeland have been few and far between; Portrush is about as far from NW Europe as one can go.

In the spring of 2005, I drove over to Ulster, via Stranraer and the ferry to Larne, to spend some time in the archives in Belfast; I wanted to research part of my Irish family history. And afterwards, for two glorious days I went walking in the Mourne mountains.

An abandoned ice-house on the lower slopes of Sleive Donard, in the Mourne mountains

Instead of returning directly to Larne and Stranraer, as I had intended, I decided to take a detour north to Portrush and around the stunning coastal road. Almost without exception, when I have returned to Portrush, my first stop has been the graveyard of the ruined church at Ballywillan. For in that graveyard are buried my Douglas ancestors, as far back as the early 1700s. My parents and paternal grandparents are also buried there and for a while I wander from one known grave to another, lost in memories of when many of them were alive, especially in the case of my first schoolmaster (see Jimmy) and Derek Aiken, a school friend, who died at age 44.

Existimos mientras alguien nos recuerde

(We exist while someone remembers us)

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Further down the hill, was the grave of Molly, the wife of my first cousin, Bertie Law. After leaving the graveyard, I intended on passing by his house in the hope of spending some time with him. I had just found new data on ancestors in which I knew he would be most interested, for like me, he was an enthusiastic amateur genealogist.

But when I arrived at Molly’s grave I was momentarily confused; she had been dead for thirteen years, yet the soil had still not settled. And then of course it dawned on me that Bertie was dead, and only very recently buried.

Bertie’s mother, Annie, was my grandfather’s sister. She died three days after giving birth to Bertie’s younger brother, John, commonly known as Jackie. Twenty years later, Sergeant John Douglas Law of the R.A.F. died over Germany and is buried at Rheinburg War Cemetery. I believe Jackie to have been the only WW2 casualty of the village.

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Bertie was my mother’s first cousin and the most complete example of a handyman that I have ever known. He was an accomplished carpenter, bricklayer, plasterer, roofer and decorator. He built his own house in Glenmanus and most of the buildings on my father’s farm: the housing for the incubators, chicks, poultry, turkeys, the pig pens, and all of the storehouses. And when my mother was on one of her ‘I’d like to change this room’ moods, Bertie would construct cupboards and partitions. It was through observing Bertie at work, that when the need arose, I knew instinctively how to lay bricks, plaster, rebuild a shower, decorate etc.

Bertie was something of a workaholic. During the day he worked as a conductor for the local bus company and later he would work on the farm buildings. And when he returned home, he would spend time in the evening in his extensive vegetable and flower garden.

It was after the death of my father that I discovered Bertie’s interest in family history. He showed me the charts that he had drawn and we ended up by combining our research. And we supplemented it by mail, by telephone and occasional visits by me. Bertie’s charts are the backbone of what I know today of the history of the Douglas family of Glenmanus.

I felt very sad that day in May when I eventually left the graveyard. It felt like the end of an era, for Bertie was my last close contact with my parents. I still have two cousins living in the village, Hughie and Brian Douglas. I have recently renewed contact with them and long may that contact last.

Sometimes I feel most fortunate, for I am rich in memories.

My Home Town

Portrush is on the north Antrim coast of Ulster, close to the county Derry border. It was originally a small fishing village built around the port, on a peninsula. The town was recorded as having been granted to Richard de Burgo in 1305. There are many spellings of the name of the town – Portros, Portross, Portrossce – all meaning Port on the headland.

Shortly after the ice age, some ten thousand years ago, the headland was an island surrounded by bog land. Evidence of the bog can at times be found exposed on the West Strand. Evidence of early settlements have been found where the East Strand car park and Causeway Street are now situated.

Above the Harbour next to Ramore head there used to stand the taller Crannagh Hill but it was quarried away to provide the rock to create the harbour’s pier. Also around here used to stand a castle known as Castle an Teenie (Castle of Fire), because a light was shone from it on stormy nights to warn sailors of the rocks all around.

clip_image001 — Portrush in the late 1960s

The village of Glenmanus, where I spent my first five years, is less than a mile from Portrush harbour, and just off the road to Coleraine. Originally Glenmanus would have consisted of a small cluster of houses, surrounded by farm land. When I was young, Glenmanus was on the edge of Portrush, but today it has been swallowed up by the expansion of the town and the old traditional Irish houses have been demolished and replaced by humdrum modern bungalows.

Portrush remained little more than a fishing village, until the railway between Belfast and Londonderry, via Coleraine, was completed in 1855, with a branch line connecting the latter to Portrush. With easy access from the industrial cities, Portrush was eventually transformed into a fashionable seaside resort, complete with hotels, boarding houses, golf course, boating, cinemas, amusement arcades, bowling green, tennis courts etc.

Untitled picture — Portrush railway station in the late 1800s

In 1870 the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway purchased the already established Antrim Arms Hotel and renamed it as the Northern Counties Hotel in 1883. With over 100 rooms overlooking the Atlantic, both at the front and back, it provided luxury accommodation for wealthy tourists visiting the Giant’s Causeway. It even had an indoor swimming pool in an era when few, if any, existed within many miles For many years in the late 1940s and 1950s, my father’s dance band played at night in the ballroom during the summer season, as well as the Easter and Christmas holidays, often with an additional session in the afternoon.

clip_image002 — The Northern Counties hotel

An ancient abbey formerly stood on the site of the hotel and its lawn. It was mentioned in a document from 1262. In 1884 portions of the walls were unearthed, with quantities of human bones.

The hotel was destroyed by arson in 1990 and the owner and two others were eventually charged with paying terrorists to burn it down, in order to claim the insurance money. The owner was Roy Crawford, with whom I used to work at Dalzell & Campbell in Coleraine.

East Strand lies between Portrush and the White Rocks. In calm weather the water looks inviting, but it is both very cold and dangerous, with strong currents and steeply shelving shore. Behind the East Strand lies an extensive area of sand dunes.

About halfway along the strand there is a deep hollow in the sand dunes, between the Strand and the golf course. Here it is believed took place the Battle of the War Hollow in 1103, in which the King of Norway, Magnus Barefoot, was killed along with many of his supporters.

At the eastern strand are the White Rocks, an area of chalk cliffs, with caves, arches and freestanding pillars.

North of the East Strand, between one and four kilometres off shore, are the Skerries, a group of seventeen islets which help create a natural breakwater. There is vegetation on four of them. The islet furthest east is called Island Dubh. It is probable that it was named after Tavish Dubh, a pirate, who once frequented the Skerries, and died in his ship there, and was buried on the island. The place of his grave is unknown. It is said that Tavish Dubh, in 1310, when Edward Bruce invaded North Antrim with the object of winning Ulster, waylaid four English ships bound with provisions for Coleraine, held by an English army, and took their provisions up the river Bann to Bruce, who was in sore straits. Soon after, Bruce abandoned his attempt.

On the east side of the largest of these islands there is good shelter, with an anchorage of six fathoms, a place often made use of in later times by smugglers.

In my time, there was a boat that took occasional visitors around the islands, when the sea was relatively placid, but I personally never knew anybody who had ever set a foot on them.

For most of us, they were so near, yet so far away…