The Story of Ballyferris. Chapter Fifteen. Donaghadee.

 Donaghadee

Pearl of the Ards Peninsula

Long long before Belfast became a city...before Samson and Goliath, the giants of Harland and Wolff's cranes towered over the houses in that city, Donaghadee was the main port on the east coast of Ulster carrying out business with the ports of Scotland and England. It is the closest point to Scotland and was the landing place for the Ulster Scots who settled in the north of Ireland travelling from Port Patrick in Wigtonshire. 

My paternal family left the Scottish borderlands in the mid 17thc to eventually settle in County Armagh, and my storytelling mind has left me imagining that they may have landed at the old harbour in Donaghadee. I like that thought! The sea route between Larne and Stranraer came much later.

Our route from the caravan to the Dee, as we all called the town, took us past the little shop at Ballywhisken, and on through Millisle and the icecream vendor's place where a filled ice cream cone could be dipped into melting chocolate. What a joy! Dad often stopped  and treated us as a start to our holidays.

And so on to the town of Donaghadee.

In the early 50s, before dad bought the old black Austin that later took us to the caravan at Ballyferris...kitchen sink...grandfather clock... et al... we were often thankful for a lift to Donaghadee from Wully Hope. If I remember correctly he too had an Austin, but this was a little two door version. How we all fitted in can only be imagined. Dad in the front with Mr. Hope, mum in the back with Rosie still a baby, on her knee and Ian and myself squashed in as best we could.  Ian was by then at least 13 years old so no skinny kid! I was only eight or nine. Of course there were no safety car belts in those days...so perhaps that made it easier to fit us all in. 

Once parked,  the first thing to do was to take a walk down the harbour to the lighthouse. Stop at the deep end, gaze out to sea to the Copeland Islands and then walk around it and back into the town. We still do that every time we visit. It feels right and you just never know who you might meet.

 The next best place to go was always The Cabin icecream parlour and cafe. 

Up the little wooden stairs we would trundle and find a table big enough to take all five of the McClellands. Then a young local girl dressed in traditional cafe, black dress with white pinny would arrive to write down our order. Dad would josh...joke...with her and she would blush as she wrote down our desires for tea and cake and usually an ice cream in a glass bowl for each of us. And if there were any other tables occupied there might be a bit of chat and banter from dad ....much to my embarassment....me wanting to appear sophisticated even then and pretend that this was normal and not as dad said "a special treat".

I doubt that the tables and chairs have changed in any way over the 60 years and more since we went to eat at The Cabin....this photograph was taken recently and they are still just as I remember them. Wonderful! 

Below is a glass cabinet in the cafe with momentoes and memories of the years that the Cabin has been serving the people of the Dee.

...and on the wall are these three historic photographs of some RNLI men who volunteered for service on the Donaghadee lifeboat.

The seas at this part of the coast are known to be very dangerous. On the 31st January 1953 the MV Princess Victoria sank in a fierce storm. We were already caravanning at Ballyferris and even though I was young the sinking stayed in my memory and worried me when from time to time I took the Liverpool Boat back home to Belfast to visit family. Again in the early days of the caravan, when we were all sitting in the early afternoon, mum remarked that the little fishing boat in our view had disappeared. The men on it had gone down immediately...the story is that they never learnt to swim and always wore heavy rubber boots... theory being best to go down quickly... and even though the rescuers came as fast as they possibly could...no remains were ever found as far as I know. A lifeboat station was set up in 1910 and as with all RNLI boats local people manage it as volunteers.

We grew up and made it to the town ourselves often hitching rides or managing to get a lift from the older members of the caravanners. Derek Cathcart or maybe June McKee. With a newspaper steaming with the treat of delicious chips...seldom could I afford fish as well...or an icecream poke...yes that's what a cone gets called in Ireland!...we sat on the wall together or lounged in the amusement arcade where we offered our pennies into the one-arm bandits. Noone asked our ages...and anyway there were maybe only a few machines in the small room opposite the wall. June was an adult by then and had made friends with the lads who owned the fishing boat called "The Brothers". So if business was a bit quiet with them, then for a small nominal amount, as we knew June, we got to go out mackerel fishing by the Copeland Islands. I tried to be brave if I managed to catch a fish but I was always thankful for the fishermen who helped me to take the squirming fish off the hook. Mum refused to accept my catch when I proudly brought it back to her as she scoffed at mackerel telling me they were the bins of the ocean and who knows what they had eaten. I'm very fond of a mackerel now though I have recently read that they too are becoming scarce.

This is the boat called "The Brothers" still to be seen in the harbour.You know how things can seem enormous when you are young...like the size of your bedroom..or the back garden at home...well that is how I thought of the boat called "The Brothers". I thought it was really big! Once when Rosie and me were in the Dee alone we decided to go out on a trip in it and land on one of the Copeland islands. Being adventurous we set off to walk the whole shore around it. It was a special site for terns that we chose and it happened to be the prime breeding time. As we walked we started to be attacked by the worried birds. We ran for the safe shore and made it to the boat unharmed ...apart from our pride. Terns are also now on the decrease..whether or not on the Copelands I'm not sure. There is a story that Dean Swift who wrote Gulliver's Travels took the idea for the islands from the Copelands. It may be so as he lived locally and took the hill outside Belfast we called Napoleon's Head as the thought behind his giant. And mum used the Lilliput Laundry in Belfast which was on Lilliput Street....not named after Swift's book! 

 

Finally...The Warren..a rabbity land south of the main town which was another wonderful place to walk where there were swings and pitch and putt and benches to sit and do nothing more but dream ...

..and on the way there maybe stop and buy a bag of dulse from the garden behind the whitewashed wall with the red gates and the notice..."Dulse for sale." Hard to believe now that a bag of dulse....seaweed found all the way along the coast and dried in the sun...could be thought of as a treat when you were only eight years of age in the 1950s. But I still keep a bag of it in my food cupboard..very tasty fried for a minute or two in some butter.

 I was reminded recently that the little end cottage to the left of the lane leading down to the beach was lived in by a local man who collected dulse each morning at low tide and dried it in the yard at the back of the cottage, and then bagged it up to be sold in the town. ...memories.

...oh!...that could be the potter on that swing...early days at Donaghadee.

Daisies

Donaghadee and the daisies that I picked as a child at Ballyferris to bring back to the caravan for mum.

You're still my favourite.

The Story of Ballyferris..Donaghadee....reviewed...April 25th 2013

Here is a chapter in the Story of Ballyferris......reviewed, pushed around a bit and rescripted until I felt more satisfied with the rhythm of the story....I hope you enjoy... even if you had already read it the first time!


It was always just a little town. Not that much going on really, yet it was Mecca in the days when we were teenagers and needed a place of excitement away from the caravan field.
To get there depended on whoever had a car and also if you were "in" on that day with those who considered themselves our leaders!
 In the early days of our life at Ballyferris, it was upon the kindness of Mr Hope,  that we were dependent. Few buses passed along that country road.
But eventually the McClellands' had their own transport.

That's dad...and a very shy..Rosemary... standing beside him. We could really pack family and friends into this car. No seat belts then....  and so four folk seated in the back with three others on their knees was not at all unusual.
But best was when the oldest one in the gang  who had managed to pass the driving test and get a car....might say, "Anyone fancy a trip into Donaghadee for some chips?" The cars were always wrecks! but that  made it so much more interesting. It might not make it there and back, you might have to walk all the way back in the dark...but it would be with the farmers' lads.
There were two main attractions, three at the most. A fish and chip shop, a pokey little amusement arcade and an ice-cream cafe.
Fish and chips were as everywhere else in those long gone days, eaten out of a newspaper. I assume that there was some greaseproof paper in between the chips and the newspaper...but I couldn't swear to it. The smell of the lard on the chips, the vinegar they were souced with and the special smell that only comes from a harbour...of sea, diesel and ozone.... never leaves you as an eternal memory. We leaned against the harbour wall eating the dripping morsels, ignoring the chill wind coming off the waters separating the mainland from the Copeland Islands.
Now.. we go down to the coast to relive these memories, and lean and dream against the harbour wall.
It's only right and proper.

  The harbour was a great draw. Harbours are.There were always ancient fishing boats moored up alongside one another. One in particular was called, "The Brothers". Some of the older members of the Ballyferris gang knew them well enough to be invited to crew with them.  That meant that somehowyou  had a kind of a tenuous link.... and so when you went out stream fishing with them, to catch mackerel, you could almost believe you were part of the crew!
Rubbish of course!   I always had to pay!
It was and still is a way for fishermen to supplement their income during the summer months.
We fished with line strewn with vicious hooks, and we caught many, many mackerel.  I longed to take some back to the caravan and have them fried in the pan, glossy with butter and tangy with lemon.......but was  informed by mum that they were the rubbish bins of the sea and she wouldn't touch them with a barge pole!
What would she say today about my  mackerel pate? "Nice dear ...but I'll have a tomato sandwich if you don't mind"!

Further along the promenade, turn left up a little narrow street, cross to the other side, and there is the icecream shop...

.., even today  "The Cabin Ice-cream Salon".

 Dad loved good ice-cream. He would stop the car anywhere if he'd heard that the product was a winner. And the Cabin was one of the best,  still is to have endured for 50 years. In fact if you pop over to this site you may be amazed at how long it has actually  been open.
 My favourite spot to sit and eat was up the steep stairs to a seat by a little window. The big decision was always whether to have a poke or a slider! A poke was what is  called a cone now, but maybe it's still called a poke in Donaghadee. A slider is of course a sandwich of ice-cream.

The oldest pub in Ireland is in Donaghadee, Grace Neill's Bar, but I didn't get to enjoy the pleasures of this old bar...I was much too young ... much too good! ...what a missed opportunity that was! The story going around was that Mr Hope had some link with the bar and that was why his younger son was called Neil...but that may have been simply the romantic babblings of some of the locals.

Watching over the town was the Moat.

Rather shabby then and broken down. Not any more... as the rest of the town has  also has been gentrified over the years. I love the new colours, well I love colour... however I adored the grey that was then the hue of the local buildings. It was a Co. Down colour, everybody recognised it and now it could be Cork or Southwold or wherever.

The gang didn't stay together for long. Life came in and changed all of that. Jobs and college and universities beckoned. And it being Northern Ireland we all went our various ways often abroad or at the very least over the water to the mainland.

But a last little gem about Donaghadee....we loved sweets  and chips of course...
... but....I loved dulse! Seaweed with a salty, tangy, mineral kind of  flavour. Deep red and  delicious. Well my opinion. Locally gathered from the rocks around the coast.
 I always keep a  bag of dulse at the back of the food cupboard, and now and then  take it out, open up the bag...and take a long dreaming smell of it,
And I'm transported back to those heady days again.

The Story of Ballyferris. Music at the Caravan.

Music at the Caravan

When we were all rather young, that is, before we became teenagers, a barn was set aside at Turkington’s caravan site, ( the one on the Millisle side of Hope’s) in which  caravanners could gather,  to have a bit of a concert . Well that was always such a good old sing song, and in the inimitable Irish way if you felt like it, you could get up and strut your stuff musically!. Noone  minded... if you got all  the notes ...even if they were not exactly in the right places!

I remember one of the regular favourites was... “Look over your shoulder, I’m walking behind”……now who on earth sang that? Does anyone remember?

Google tells me it was Eddie Fisher !

In the fifties in Ireland I don't remember singing many national folk songs. You would be more likely to hear a country and western being rendered..or mangled, depending on how it came out. But the enthusiasm was boundless.In fact my drama teacher was surprised when upon winning a prize at school I opted for a book of Irish "come-all-yees"...dad's name for Irish songs.

This was at the end of the fifties when Elvis broke into our world and thrilled us with songs such as   “ Teddy Bear” and “ Jail House Rock” and you know…. we kids wanted to rock it up in the Barn.
 I remember one day in particular... at the swings in Turkington's yard with Vicky another caravanner and close school friend....when we must have sung "Teddy bear" constantly all afternoon...and I mean...all afternoon!!

In  Ballywalter... in Lemon’s Café and Fish and Chip emporium..., we often gathered in the store room at the back of the shop to feed our money into their exotic juke box. Bill Haley, Little Richard and The Big Bopper fed our fertile minds and brought us dreams of faraway places and possibilities in distant lands. Could that be one of the reasons why so many  left Ireland for distant shores, as soon as  teenage years were behind them?

For me, even more important than all of this, was the scruffy caravan in Hope’s second field. A musical cooking pot full of enormous significance for my young enquiring soul.

The van was owned by Derek Cathcart.

He was much older that me, and in my young eyes... very worldly-wise. He played guitar and more than that,  played and sang regularly in local pubs. A fount of musical knowledge of a genre  I had never heard before.

I often waited until the other "van" kids were in his scruffy abode some early evening... before he sallied forth to the bright lights of Donaghadee, Millisle or even Ballywalter...and creep in to sit  at the back of the caravan... near the door. A thick smokey fug filled the space and  meant that you could hardly see to the opposite end... and I’m sure more than contributed to his throaty singing voice.

He sang the usual country and western songs of those days. Do you remember..."It wasn't God who made honky tonk angels" ? or Jim Reeves and "He'll have to go"? Oh my ...you  and I are old!!
More important to me however was the jazz that he sang... and in particular the blues  I heard for the first time in my life.

From Derek I learnt to sing "Beale Street Blues, St Louis Blues" and many many more.

One song in particular that I loved to hear him sing, was his rendition of "Miss Otis Regrets".
..I still sing it today.

I was probably only ten or twelve at the most when I first sat in that caravan, and I had already had quite a few years studying drama and music, but this new sound was something that entered my soul and  stayed with me ever since.

Though a  rough diamond, he was kindly. He seemed to recognise something in me and encouraged me to sing. I found that I had a natural inclination to harmonise and so when he launched into some blues piece, I would quietly sing along  absorbed in this wonderful world of music. More often than not I received an encouraging word  from him at the end. That did more for my confidence than all of the scales and classical pieces given to me by my singing teacher .

 I have a memory that once, in a lesson, she informed me that if I continued to sing in the lower register I would absolutely ruin my voice. Ooops!

Ah me what a great memory. Who could better that instruction with so much fun thown in. It was many years before I met any one else who had such confidence in my vocal abilities.

Thankyou Mr. Cathcart wherever you are.