1984 - 2004, 20 YEARS OF NORTH DOWN HERITAGE CENTRE
Welcome to a special edition of ‘The Bell’, the
journal of North Down Heritage Centre! It is twenty years since the Mayor
at that time, Councillor Mrs Hazel Bradford, officially opened the new
venture of North Down Borough Council. The thinking behind it was to improve
the quality of facilities for visitors to the area, which had in many
ways been in decline in the 1960s and 70s, by putting to imaginative use
potentially very attractive old out-buildings of the Town Hall, Bangor
Castle (1852). A piece of wisdom in the museum world is that if you have
an attractive and historic building, make it your first exhibit, and our
visitors, locals and tourists, do appreciate the atmosphere of the buildings,
and the tranquil setting of Castle Park.
How successful has the Heritage Centre been?
It is tempting to quote the words of Mao Tse Tung when asked about the
significance
of the French Revolution : “It’s too soon to say”. Of course
we are taken up with our week-to-week activities : temporary exhibitions;
crafts days for children; ‘living history’ sessions; working
with the franchisee to run the restaurant efficiently; answering almost
daily queries on all manner of local topics, etc. But the role of stewardship
of artefacts in public trust renders twenty years a very short time –
the ‘Bangor Bell’, our finest object, is 1,200 years old. The
unique and much-admired folio of maps by Thomas Raven is nearly 400 years
old. What will happen to these and many others over the ensuing centuries?
This is a question found nowhere else in the diverse range of responsibilities
and problems local authorities shoulder.
In 1984 North Down Heritage Centre was a fresh venture. In 2004, we can
at least safely say that it has become embedded in the community. School
classes, play groups coming to see the beehive, tourists from scores of
countries, painting tuition classes, bus parties from retirement homes,
charities using the venue for events, walkers with our park nature trail
– wouldn’t you miss us if we weren’t here?
Why is it the Heritage Centre and not the Museum?
What’s in a name – quite a lot in this case. It proved much
easier tactically for the Council to call the project a Heritage Centre
and obtain grant from the Dept. of Economic Development in the early 1980s,
than term it a Museum and take on the Dept. of Education! Because the
role as a tourist attraction was heavily emphasised, and the Borough was
clearly in need of higher quality attractions, this approach succeeded!
In 1993, we attained Registered Museum status and to all intents and purposes
are run on the same basis as the other local authority museums.
How many visitors are recorded?
Over the last ten years the average annual figure is about 47,000 –
about 900 people per week. Some museums are now beginning to employ the
term “users”, and counting those who make e-mail inquiries for
information (more and more common) and who attend “outreach”
activities – in our case, for instance, slide shows in retirement
homes. And, of course, ‘virtual’ visitors to a website –
ours being the first among smaller museums in N. Ireland. But it is believed
since 1984 around 3/4 million actual visits have been made!
Have you tied in to other Council functions?
Very much so! Most importantly, our Arts section. Because North Down has
no Arts Centre, several of those functions since 1984 have been undertaken
in the Heritage Centre: a venue for performing arts, most notably musical
events and the major annual festival of Irish writing, ‘Aspects’,
which began in 1992. Also, tuition classes and visual arts exhibitions.
Our Parks section colleagues, as well as keeping the flower borders and
Victorian courtyard spruce, are often on hand to guide children round
adjoining Castle Park. Of course, the helpful staff at the Tourist Information
Centre, Tower House (1627 – another historic building!) are always
directing people our way and seeking help with enquiries at the counter.
Community Development and Community Relations staff frequently overlap
with us, while the Council’s new Countryside Officer has been pleased
to find that our mission statement doesn’t neglect the natural heritage!
LOOKING BACK
In 1997, not long after I joined NDBC, I was involved in
the Shamrock and Thistle festival, celebrating our links with Scotland
and, more specifically on this occasion, the links of our Christian ancestors
from the monasteries at Bangor and Iona.Ocean Youth Club were booked to
take a group of young people from the Borough who represented different
religious backgrounds and, in the spirit of St. Columba who died 1400
years previously, retrace the journey to Iona. The group was accompanied
by Rev.Willis Cordiner of the Clergy Fraternal. The trip proved to be
a great success, with favourable weather and good team spirit on board.
Although I was unable to accompany the group personally, I enjoyed hearing
first hand at a reunion of the events of the trip. I was impressed by
the value of the experience for each member of the group. I think it was
something which they will remember for a long time
to come.
In the same year (1997) I was able to bring together the Science Discovery
Bus from the Ulster Museum with many other folk involved in environmental
education and have our first ever Environmental Discovery Day for local
schools. Workshops were provided for approximately 200 primary school
children. There were workshops on recycling by Mr Cairnduff who was able
to make the most amazing and effective things from waste materials, -
musical instruments from coke bottles and bicycle wheels, furniture from
cardboard boxes and kites from crisp packets. Children were fascinated
by Phelim Breen and his observation beehive. He is, of course very well
known in The Heritage Centre and has brought the bees here every summer
for many years. The Science Discovery bus, which sadly is no more, was
a wonderful portable mini museum of fossils, semi precious stones from
South America, smells of the rain forests and more. It proved to be a
transportation to another place and climate with lots to see and handle.
Ulster Wildlife Trust worked with us to provide excellent guides for outdoor
games and education including a bat workshop. It was always very satisfying
to see the look of enjoyment on the children's faces at the Environmental
Discovery days.
On a couple of occasions I have organised a Heritage
Bus Trip for elderly folk of the Borough. The target group was elderly
folk living in sheltered dwellings or nursing homes, who were no longer
able to get out and about independently. We were able to accommodate 15
folk, a few of whom were in wheelchairs. The bus took a tour of local
historic places of interest such as the Abbey, the harbour, Groomsport
via Six-Road-Ends, where we were received at the cottages to see and sample
freshly baked soda bread. After a few more stops with Mr Ian Wilson giving
an informative commentary, we returned to Castle Garden Restaurant for
a delicious lunch. It was a wonderful opportunity to enable those who
were housebound to reminisce and enjoy a day out together.
Heather Curran, Education Officer
BANGOR, THE SHADOW OF A GREAT NAME
The legend of Bangor runs through many of the stories that
have survived from mediaeval Ireland. The antiquarian Sir James Ware referred
to “Bangor, alias the vale of angels… it took its name from
a beautiful choir (ban chor)” We can trace this angelic connexion
back to a life of St. Patrick written by Jocelin of Furness, a Benedictine
monk who was probably invited over to Inch abbey by the Norman conquistador
De Courcy in the 1180s. Jocelin relates that when St. Patrick visited
Bangor, he found it flooded with heavenly light, the venue for a multitude
of the heavenly host singing “the psalmody of the celestial choir”.
In hagiography angels are always a sign of sanctity and divine favour,
and Jocelin makes his St Patrick prophesy the great works of St Comgall,
Bangor’s founder, and of his successors.
Of course, it is quite probable that Bangor as a placename goes back to
pre-Christian times. The Dindsenchas, or the lore of high places, an early
Irish topography, gives an alternative explanation:
Inver Bicne, why is it so called? Not difficult that, Bicne MacLoeghaire,
Conall Cernach’s servant, died there while driving the kine that
were brought out of Scotland after the great cattle disease that befel
in the time of Bresal Bodibad, named “cow
destruction” … Bicne died when driving them ashore, and ‘tis
there that (in grief for him) the cattle shed their horns. Whence Bennchor
Ulad, “the Horn casting of Ulster” is said and Inver Bicne,
Bicne’s estuary is named.
Another version of this story appears in Geoffrey Keating’s History
of Ireland. An Irish king, returning from Britain after a successful cattle
raid, slaughtered a great number of the beasts, so that their Beanna or
horns so covered the place that it was known as Magh Beanncoir.
In modern times, the poetry and romance of Celtic legend have been confirmed
rather prosaically in the annals of the British House of Commons. In 1809
it published a report on marine communications between Britain and Ireland:
the situation of Bangor… is distinguished very particularly by the
two conspicuous headlands which form the entrance into the bay; the western,
or Wilson’s point projects into the loch considerably further than
that on the eastern side, consequently in sailing from the Copeland towards
Bangor Wilson’s point marks distinctly the
situation of the harbour.
The cows’ horns of the legends are probably a reference to thisgeographical
feature. There is a similar feature at Beanna strand in Co. Kerry. The
love of story telling, however, embroidered a physical feature into the
high deeds of an Irish cattle baron. Such stories concerning placenames
abound in the Ulster cycle of epic tales. In the words of Matthew Arnold,
thank goodness the Celt is “always ready to react against the despotism
of fact”
To such a place renowned in pagan lore came St Comgall to set up his church.
“The little places that were occupied by twos and threes, they are
ruama “Romes”, with multitudes, hundreds and thousands”.
A legendary spot had to be thronged by fabled
numbers of religious. The sainted greats of the early Irish church enjoy
a tradition of promoting Christianity on the grand scale. The Tripartite
Life of Patrick credits the national saint with 370 episcopal ordinations,
5000 ordinations of priests and 700 church foundations. Or compare this
from the Book of Lismore: “the saints of Ireland came to Finnian
of Clonard to learn from him, so that there were 3000 saints along with
him, and from them, as the learned know, he chose the twelve bishops of
Ireland. And the learning and the writings declare that no one of these
three thousand went from him without a crozier, or a Gospel or some well
known sign: and round those reliquaries they built their churches and
their monasteries afterwards”. Clonard would have needed an army
of scribes and ecclesiastical outfitters to supply such a demand! The
Martyrology of Oengus tells us that there were 900 monks at Bangor, 600
at Antrim and 500 at “Connor of the combats”. In St Bernard’s
Life of St Malachy we read that Bangor produced “many thousands”
of monks and that Oengus’s 900 were slaughtered by Norse raiders
in one day. The Life of Comgall claims that he ruled over 3000 monks in
the associated abbeys and cells of the monastic family of churches. The
Irish Litanies increase this number of 4000; by comparison Mochoe of
Nendrum reigned over a paltry “nine times fifty”.
The question of Bangor’s swarms was first raised by Patrick Fleming
in his Collectanea Sacra, written in 1667. Fleming did not think thousands
of monks living in a single monastery implausible. The ultimate source
for the idea of these fabled swarms comes from the home of the monastic
ideal, the deserts of Egypt. St Columbanus wrote of the Egyptians and
their legend of holy living. Even the heroes of Bangor’s golden age
indulged in their own myths which they tried to emulate. Some of these
Egyptians, or perhaps just their sainted relics, made it to Ireland, and
were honoured at their hermitage known as the “Desert of Ulster”.
Bangor became the centre of the cult of its founder. The power of the
mediaeval holy man drew followers and wealth to the church that could
lay claim to him. Hence arose the battle between Armagh and Down over
the copyright to St. Patrick. As his reputation grew the promoters of
the cult strove to identify the very spot where the saint lived, the tree
he liked to preach under or the bed on which he lay. St Malachy returned
to Bangor in the twelfth century because of its ancient reputation. There
are more modern examples of this hero worship. A tree in the grounds of
Bangor Castle is venerated by Orangemen for its associations with the
Duke of Schomberg. The good people of Newtownards have lately raised a
statue to their own martial hero, Blair Mayne. Such saints are the symbols
of their devotees’ power: “Protected by
Finnian of Movilla are all the Ulaid… the Dal nAraide (S Antrim &
N Down), the noble, the amiable are protected by Comgall”. The promoters
of the cult collected these traditions of their patron saint into books
of “legends”, which were read on the anniversary or feast day
of the saint. These stories of the saints often attempt to outdo one another
in descriptions of extremes of suffering or wonder working. They are rather
written to impress than edify.
The mediaeval map of the world, the Mappa Mundi, shows four places and
two rivers in Ireland. These are the twin pillars of the ancient Irish
church, St Patrick’s Armagh and St. Brigit’s Kildare, Dublin,
the centre of English rule, and Bangor, renowned in
Europe through the efforts of its hagiographers. Despite the incomplete
nature of the evidence, it is clear that Bangor’s house of monks
held a revered place in Ireland. A work entitled the Triads of Ireland
lists the chief religious places; Armagh is the “head” of Ireland,
Clonmacnoise the “dignity”, Clonard the “wealth” and
Kildare the “wealth”. Ranked eighth, Bangor enjoys the soubriquet
the “seniority” of Ireland. In a land where tradition is paramount
it is a fitting tribute.
Kenneth Robinson
FAVOURITE BUILDINGS IN THE BOROUGH
If you are asked to name your favourite food it is probably
not some exotic piece of nouvelle cuisine that comes to your mind, but
more likely a comforting childhood dish like syrup pudding or buttered
scones. The grandness of the chef and the rarity of the
ingredients are not likely to figure heavily on your choice. In the same
way a selection of favourite buildings is highly personal, and not largely
dictated by considerations of greatness.
I was brought up in Bangor, but as I have lived elsewhere for many years,
my vision of the town is still largely coloured by impressions of it as
it was before bombs and developers decimated the main streets, and while
it was still possible to walk out into a countryside where sticklebacks
darted in streams, frogs jumped in dells and the seashore had more pondlife
than plastic flotsam.
The buildings that loomed large in my life were ones like Barry’s
Amusements, with its fairy-story turrets and the wonderworld of ghost
trains and the penny-in-the-slot tableaux of executions. It was only later,
when it was about to be demolished, that I found out it had been built
as the Grand Hotel about 1895 and had at one time been “the Largest
and Best Appointed Hotel in the Town”, boasting no less than three
upright pianos (that was in the days before piped music).
Cinemas were important, although when you were in the darkness watching
Davy Crockett or Moby Dick it didn’t much matter if you were in the
fake mediaeval Tudor Cinema in High Street or the palatial Tonic in Hamilton
Road. However when the
multi-coloured Compton organ rose up from the floor in the intervals at
the Tonic the subtle shades of John McBride Neill’s art deco interior
told of much greater sophistication. I was very familiar with the great
curves of Snowcrete and rustic brick on the outside of the Tonic too,
for I went to school in the old golf club beside it, by then known as
Connor House. We didn’t know that the reason it had a verandah was
because members had wanted to watch the progress of their pals on the
green in front, because by that time the course had been built over with
streets and houses; but it made a very pleasant and happy school.
I rarely went to the nearby metropolis of Holywood, but was always impressed
by the jazzy frontage of Tog’s Ices on the Main Street, so much flashier
than Caproni’s which seemed to be more interested in putting on dances
than selling ice cream. The
Maypole was always intriguing, and the gablets and chimneys of the Tudor
Houses on their elevated site seemed more impressive than our own Bangor
Castle whose chimneys had been shaved off.
In those days there were thatched cottages near Bangor, notably the little
fishermen’s cottages on the shore at Groomsport, which I photographed
in their state of dereliction with my box camera; and another little cottage
on the road to Donaghadee which is still standing but no longer thatched
- and looks likely to disappear
altogether to make way for a much larger house a-building behind it. Happily,
Cockle Row still survives as a reminder of what was once a common type
of house in the borough.
Living in the Metroland of Baylands, I was vaguely aware that its little
cottages, many with diamond-shaped slates and brightly painted verandahs,
set in their neat gardens with hydrangeas and privet hedges, had a distinct
charm. The car has since taken its toll by demanding concrete parking
bays and garages, and plastic windows have replaced so many of the original
designs. Those years ago, the only change was a very modern house at the
corner of Fifth Avenue and Third Avenue: Henry Lynch Robinson’s flatroofed
design of 1951, with its porthole door and enormous glass
staircase window, seemed the epitome of space-age modernism. While enjoying
a row in one of Laird’s boats in Bangor Bay one could admire the
grand houses of Princetown Road with their rolling manicured lawns, and
the old pine trees that whispered over Pickie Pool. Seacourt and Glenbank
were then still private houses and secluded behind tall walls, making
the end of the Marine Gardens towards Stricklands Glen quite mysterious.
Going back to Bangor and looking at it with an architect’s eyes I
am mainly struck by how much has been altered and lost, with seemingly
no thought for retaining the gracious or glamorous character of what had
been there. A building does not have to be listed to be worth looking
after, and even a modest building looks so much better when its original
features have been kept. Not so long ago, one could walk along the seafront
from Ballyholme Esplanade to Stricklands Glen and enjoy a practically
unbroken Victorian and Edwardian townscape. Now it is broken up by unsympathetic
apartment blocks and gap sites, and many of the old gardens are built
over or tarmaced.
The few buildings that have survived unaltered are a pleasure to see and
something which Bangorians should treasure. The Royal Ulster Yacht Club,
Vincent Craig’s late Victorian pile, is still remarkably intact.
Bangor Castle likewise, although every year more of its parkland seems
to disappear under new building, often of a very mediocre quality. The
Ulster Bank at the top of Main Street by James Hanna was threatened with
demolition but thankfully reprieved - probably because I threatened to
remove my overdraft from it if they proceeded with demolition plans. Ernest
Woods’ Carnegie Library in Hamilton Road seems to have a question
mark over its survival at the moment, but it is a fine building that deserves
to be cherished. And the intricate nearby Masonic Hall still stands with
its mysterious symbols and open Bible.
Bangor has many groups of buildings and streetscapes that are undervalued.
With its “chaste villas” and elegant public buildings, it used
to be a “pretty and convenient watering place”. It may never
attract bathers in the same numbers, but if its older houses are cared
for and restored they will continue to attract visitors and residents.
Marcus Patton
WALKING ORLOCK
The townland of Orlock lies east of Groomsport village between
Balloo Lower and Portavo. (IGR J558 838). Orlock Point, the northern portion
of the townland, projects into the North Channel at the mouth of Belfast
Lough where the Copeland Islands lie a mile to the east.. The foreshore
is owned by the National Trust, a gift from the Ker family, the local
landlords of Portavo.
Standing Stones
I approached the shore through the stile at the southern, Donaghadee,
end of Orlock point and made my first discovery. To the north of the remnants
of a private garden is a standing stone (IRG J5645 8295) situated about
15 m. from the foot of the raised
beach and the same distance from the high tide mark. It measures 1.20
m. high and its width varies between 0.50 m. and 0.80 m. The stone is
not made of the local greywracke and its roughly oval and smooth appearance
suggest that it has been rolled by the sea or ice, possibly a basalt immigrant
from the Antrim side of the lough.
Although this stone stands close to the National Trust path it was not
listed in the official Sites and Monuments Record held by Protecting Historic
Monuments. The practice of erecting such unmarked stones began in the
Early Bronze Age (2,500 – 1500 B.C.). Some were erected as grave
markers while others probably commemorate a significant event or person.
This practice of erecting standing stones has continued to the present
day as demonstrated by the spate of stone raisings about the country commemorating
the beginning of the present millennium. About
1/2 mile to the north of this stone is another (J5609 8347) which is remarkable
in that it stands on the shore and is washed twice a day by the tide.
Greatly puzzled for some days by this I eventually discovered an informant
who explained that the stone had been put up in the 1960s or 70s to mark
the burial of one of a pair of porpoises that had been washed up on the
shore The other grave is identified by an upright piece of cut sandstone
at the edge of the high tide mark.
The landlord, smuggling and the Coastguard
In his excellent book, Portavo, Peter Carr names several local people
who have family memories of smuggling at Orlock. Such activity was common
place all round the Irish coast in the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, but it is rare for there to be archival evidence of a district
magistrate and large land owner strenuously obstructing the Revenue in
their attempts to curb smuggling as appears to have been the case with
David Ker, the landlord of Portavo in the early 1800s. When the Coastguard
was being set up in the 1820s Mr. Ker successfully blocked the building
of a station on the Copeland Islands. In a Customs Outport Establishment
book of the time a double page was prepared with the heading Copeland
Isl. written in immaculate script. This has been carelessly scribbled
out and Donaghadee
inelegantly scratched in as though by an irritated clerk. A small vessel
in which the men lived was afterwards moored off the island, but Mr. Ker
would not suffer it to remain there and only agreed the islands be visited
twice a month by the Donaghadee station. As a contemporary report noted,
this did not prevent the smuggling of tobacco, rum brandy etc to a considerable
extent for the islands afforded a convenient receptacle for illicit goods,
from which they could be transported at leisure to the mainland. Ten years
later Mr Ker tried to frustrate the Customs once more in their plans to
establish a station at Orlock Point. This time the Customs
were more determined and following an inquisition of 1833 the Customs
were put in possession of half an acre of land. David Ker was so incensed
he refused to accept the £5 annual rent and after his father’s
death Richard Ker claimed back rent of £60 from the Customs. The
coastguard cottages were built by 1837 and stand today on the ridge of
the raised beach with a commanding view of the Copeland Islands.
The Coach Road
Perhaps the most impressive and certainly the most puzzling of the Orlock
enigmas is the so called Coach Road. This is the remains of an old roadway
built by David Ker in the 1830s. Beginning at the north at Sandeel Bay
it terminates at the edge of
Portavo Bay to the south. It appears to have been built as a continuation
of the Groomsport to Orlock road that ran along the coast before turning
abruptly to the south at Sandeel Bay. Near the end of my present researches
I was most fortunate in being contacted by Patrick Brow who had been reared
at Orlock and who has proved a most informative and obliging guide to
the area. Patrick holds a Masters in Engineering Geology which makes him
well qualified to make judgements on the building of the road, The National
Trust path follows the course of the road along
the northern coast passing through two rock cuttings before continuing
along a low causeway that crosses marshy land. Patrick pointed out the
mark of a quarrymans spike on the rock face of one of the cuttings confirming
that the passage through the rock was not a natural formation. About half
way round the Point is a tunnel measuring 5 m. long by 2.5 m. high and
between 3m. and 4m. wide.
The tunnel is marked on modern Ordnance Survey maps as Natural Tunnel.
Patrick refutes this. He showed the two spike marks on the walls that
clearly demonstrate the tunnel was worked by men. He explained that the
evidence for the modern construction of the narrow gorge south from the
tunnel is in the smoothness of the sheer sides which have not suffered
weathering over geological time. Another significant factor is the soil
balanced on the top of the sides of the gorge which presents a perpendicular
face as though it had only just been cut. With slippage over time it will
settle on the edge at an angle of 45 degrees. Patrick’s conclusion
is that the walls could not have been cut more than 200 years ago.
The gorge opens onto a stony cove bordered on the far side by a 6m high
cliff on the top of which can be clearly seen the profile of the road
cut through the rock. In 1930 a local farmer recalled how his father remembered
a massive railroad style embankment traversing the cove and an embankment
here is also noted in the
Ordnance Survey Memoirs. There is no trace of this embankment now. From
here much of the road has been cut through the live rock with the sides
rising to 3m. in places and the width varying from 2.50 m. to 5.50 m.
The road runs is so close to the sea that where there are breaks between
the rock cuttings where natural gullies open to the sea all evidence of
the road has been washed away. The length of the road from the tunnel
cove to its abrupt southern termination at Portavo Bay is 610 m. of which
414m. have been cut through the live rock.
Although local tradition holds that for a while the road was ridden over
by David Ker in his coach, crossing over inlets that were then bridged,
I do not believe that the road was ever completed.
While both the OS Memoirs and local memory refer to the embankment across
the cove by the tunnel there is no mention of such an embankment where
the road terminates on the cliff edge at the north. Also, while the majority
of the surviving road
remains levelled with stone rubble now sealed by grass and earth, some
34 m. from Portavo Bay there is a stretch of rock-cut road that runs for
about 54 m. where the rock floor is fully exposed and without any vestige
of grass cover. The rock is deeply corrugated and would be quite unnegotiable
by horse drawn vehicle. It is unlikely that only in this cutting the surface
material would have been washed away so thoroughly.
If the road was used then I would suggest that somewhere before it reached
Portavo Bay the route struck out up the raised beach and over the fields
to the county road. There are several places where this could have been
accomplished.
Of course the most puzzling question is what was the purpose of building
the road on such an extraordinary route so close to the sea where it must
have been realised that it would not survive for long? Peter Carr discusses
several possibilities.
1. the road was for transporting quarried stone (impractical route);
2. it was some kind of a folly;
3 it was a convenience for smugglers. (“It was ‘common knowledge’
that smugglers made habitual use of it”.
Also the possibility that it was not completed following the acquisition
of land for a coastguard station adds weight to the smuggler argument.
But Peter Carr admits that the possibilities are not mutually exclusive.
I have heard another curious story told by Capt. Ker, the late occupant
of Portavo, who said that family tradition held that the road had been
built by his ancestor for his wife who disliked seeing the poverty of
the peasants and preferred not to be looked at by them (Frank Capper,
pers. Com.). The road remains an enigma without any reasonable explanation,
perhaps because reasonableness was not part of the concept.
The Rath
Patrick’s parents home is called Rath House and he volunteered to
show me where he believed the rath to have been situated. The feature
presents as a small rise of ground on top of a spit of land that extends
seaward from the tunnel. I have to admit that for the one and only time
I am cautiously sceptical of Patrick’s interpretation of a topographical
feature. Raths are the remains of Early Christian farmsteads built from
about 400 AD to 1,000 AD. They are circular in construction and enclosed
by a bank and outer ditch. When I walked the site I could find no evidence
of either a ditch or a bank, although the vegetation was dense and features
might have been concealed. The position of the site on a narrow coastal
promontory is an unusual place for a farm even allowing for much of the
features having been destroyed during the excavation of the gorge to the
tunnel. Could it be another type of archaeological monument? Promontory
Forts built in the Iron Age enclosed areas of land much larger than that
available on any of the Orlock promontories. A small cairn? A return to
the site in the
early spring when it is less thickly covered by plants could be useful.
It is intriguing that the modern dwelling is called Rath House because
such sites are more usually referred to as ‘forts’ in the country
and were designated as such on `the first Ordnance Survey six inch maps
of the 1830s. A field in which a rath stood in Balloo Lower is called
‘Fort Field’ and a similar site at Ballymacormick Point is known
as ‘Danes Fort’.
A wooden floor on the sea bed
Some years ago an amateur diver Noel Kirpatrick exploring the inlet beside
the tunnel discovered rows of iron bound interconnected wooden slabs lying
on the sea bed11. Colin Breen of Ulster University Maritime Archaeology
Department suggests that these boards may be connected to a W.W.2 submarine
fuelling station that is reputed to have been situated close to Orlock.
My late father-in-law had also heard of such a station when he worked
in Londonderry for the Admiralty during the war. Set upright in the shingle
of the same cove above the low water mark is a row of five wooden slabs.
Each measures 0.76 m. (30 inches) wide by 0.065 m. (2 1/2 inches) thick,
composed of double sheets of wood bound by angle iron, with a large oval
metal plate holding a pair of metal rings. (As they are partially buried
their lengths remain unknown). Whether these are the same type of boards
that line the floor of the cove can only be ascertained by the inspection
of the submerged boards by a diver.
Local people have interpreted the four visible slabs as part of the door
of the hold of a Kelly’s coal boat that is said to have sunk close
by. This has been a deduction made by association with the large quantity
of coal that used to be washed ashore during
northerly storms. However there appears to be no report of a coal boat
having been sunk in this area. Also Kirkpatrick describes the wooden slabs
forming a ‘man made floor’ out to a depth of around 40 feet
and makes no mention of seeing anything of a
sunken boat.
World War 2 and Orlock Point
Orlock Point was first identified as an important situation for military
defence of Belfast Lough in 1912 when it was established as a Port War
Signal Station (this and the following information has been gleaned from
Bill Clements’ Defending the North). At the outbreak of W.W.2 an
electrically controlled cable was laid across the Lough between Black
Head and Orlock Point with the purpose of detecting submarines as they
passed over it. Orlock was also the command post for the Royal Navy Extended
Defence Officer whose duty was to control an electrically operated minefield
also laid across the entrance to the lough. A cable can still be seen
stretching out from Sandeel Bay. On the rocks can be seen the remains
of two brick artillery search light enclosures which once had armoured
glass shutters. Two 6 inch (152 mm.) BL guns were mounted at Orlock, both
protected by concrete gun houses. One of these gun houses has been adapted
as a private residence with the naval PVII mounting surviving as a feature
on the patio. The other gun house has been removed or engorged by a large
new dwelling although the ammunition house remains as a garage.
The generator house which provided power for the whole station was hidden
behind a rock face below the gun houses. It was demolished a little while
ago as it had become an attraction for riff-raff. Orlock Point and the
four other defence batteries around Belfast Lough were the only coast
defences in the army where women were employed in operational roles. This
arrangement had been agreed between the OC Fixed Command in Northern Ireland
and the senior ATS officer in Northern Ireland. As
it happened they were man and wife. The purpose of the arrangement was
to release men for other duties elsewhere but it also relieved the boredom
experienced by men on these stations by providing opportunities for mixed
‘recreational’ activities as
related in an anecdote by Sir Charles Brett in his book Buildings of North
County Down.
An Eerie Coincidence
Anyone engaged in the sphere of museums will know that you can never tell
who will appear out of the blue with what objects or tales to tell. Matters
may be purely routine for weeks on end: budgets, staff rotas, maintenance
requirements, invoices, and
then…..
In the spring of 2004 your editor had been asked by Mike King, Curator
of Down County Museum, to write an article for their yearbook. As the
theme was to be Down Military history it was agreed a piece on the magnificent
World War One Memorial Book, donated to the Heritage Centre by the local
branch of the Royal British Legion in 1998, would be of interest. This
superbly-made book records, with photographs, all men of Bangor and district
who were victims of the conflict. My angle on it was to take a short period,
the summer of 1917, and see how the local newspaper the ‘Co. Down
Spectator’ reported the deaths of those who were lost then, and put
the times in context by examining how it was recording the war in general,
and the everyday local
happenings which of course continued much as usual. One of the men who
was killed was Rifleman John Savage, son of well-known local builder and
Urban District Councillor James Savage, “Mount Herald”. (The
Savage family continued to live at “Mount Herald”, at the corner
of Clifton Road and Ballyholme Road, until about 1980, after which it
was demolished.) Quite an account of his last action was printed.
About two weeks after the submission of the article, a lady phoned up.
She had been over from London clearing a house in Newtownards and wondered
if we would like a very large quantity of family papers, photographs,
etc. belonging to cousins of her late
mothers. They had been lying untouched since 1976 … it turned out
this was an archive of the Savage family, and when it was all assembled
the newspapers reporting John’s death were there, as were a bundle
of letters of condolence …..
Denis Mayne