Leisure and playtime

What in general comes across from the interviews is that the children of yesteryear spent far more time outdoors than youngsters today. In the words of Edmund McLarnon, ‘It was an outdoor life when you were young’.

According to Leslie Bell, when he was growing up there was ‘No scarcity of fun, no scarcity of things to see and no scarcity of people to play with.’ The leisure activities engaged in by the interviewees varied considerably and depended a great deal on where they lived. Residents of Whitehead, for instance, had many more leisure options than those in Toome and Doagh. The need to help on the farm meant that the children of farmers often had less time for leisure activities than those whose parents worked in other trades and professions.

Expense was another factor in determining which leisure activities were possible. As Isabell Cooper recalls even if she had wanted to play hockey she could not have afforded a hockey stick. Robert McConnell put it simply that young people had no money to go places. An indication of the value of money for one of the interviewees is reflected in a story told by Owen Gribbin. He remembers an occasion when he was given two shillings and half a crown for serving at a Mass for a wedding. As he recalls, ‘I thought I was made up for life’.

Those interviewed indicated that their childhood toys were few in number. ‘There was no money for buying toys’, according to George Laverty. Roisin McLernon had a couple of dolls when she was a child: ‘I thought I was very rich’. Derek Lorimer recalls making a go-kart made with pram wheels and a wooden box. He points out that during the war toys were ‘virtually unobtainable’. Brian McKenna recalls the imaginative approach that his father, Arthur, adopted to acquire toys for his children during these years. During the war his father, a dentist, would have treated American soldiers stationed at Kilroot. These troops made toys and rather than charge them for dental treatment, Arthur accepted these from the soldiers. Brian remembers receiving such gifts as a scooter, rocking horse, wheelbarrow, and steam engine – all made of wood as metal was almost impossible to obtain because of the war.


Home entertainment in the evenings was simple, but enjoyable. Music featured strongly. George Laverty pointed out that his father was a good singer, while they also had a gramophone in their home and would have listened to it in the evenings. Wilma McVittie’s father played the fiddle and ‘could play it rightly’. Bessie Quinn’s grandfather taught the fiddle and she recalls that ‘the house was always full of music’. Mary Ann Higgins remembers a ‘wee bit of ceilidhing’ and that their neighbour Big Jamie McErlane came in nearly every night for a good chat.

Holidays were comparatively rare occurrences and for many of those interviewed did not feature at all in their childhoods. However, visits to grandparents and other family members did take place. John Cushinan had a sister who married a man from the Moy on the Tyrone-Armagh border whom he visited, riding there and back in a day on his bicycle – around 80 miles. From the age of 8, Leslie Bell cycled to his maternal grandfather’s farm at Mullaghboy, Bellaghy, a distance of some 8 miles. Mary Ann Higgins also remembers staying on her grandparents’ farm near Cloughmills and her mother coming to collect them in a pony and trap.

Swimming

Trevor Monteith looks back fondly on growing up in Whitehead: ‘I had a very happy childhood … The town was buzzing for young people. … I got up in the morning and my mother hardly saw me till I came back in again at teatime.’ He had no watch, but every day at around 5.20pm the Ardrossan ferry passed Whitehead which indicated that it was time to go home for his tea.

The County Antrim Yacht Club in Whitehead was one of the main focal points for leisure. Another was the outdoor swimming pond or pool which was opened in 1931. ‘We all learned to swim in the pool … everybody went to the swimming pool’, remembers P. J. O’Donnell. It was, however, renowned for the coldness of the water. ‘It was freezing’, recollects Eithne McKendry.




Trevor Monteith recalls the swimming pool in Whitehead:

Any time we went in for a swim in the pool we never went straight into the pool – you … went up on to the diving boards and dived into the sea outside, swam there for five minutes or so and then came in … the pool always seemed a lot warmer than the Belfast Lough! It was terrific.

Brian McKenna recalls the popularity of the swimming pool, noting that the entrance fee was six old pence, while a season ticket cost 10 shillings. Frankie Dale also enjoyed swimming, though for him it was in Lough Neagh. ‘The lough was beautiful at that time’, he recalls. The man who taught him to swim was David Bailie, later to serve as a Presbyterian minister in India and Bangor, whom Frankie describes as ‘a great gentleman’.

Sport

Sport provided a relatively straightforward means of enjoyment. As Frankie Dale remembers, ‘heard a ball bouncing, away you went’. For those who grew up in the countryside there was no shortage of open space in which to play. The simplicity of the sporting equipment used was recalled by a number of the interviewees.

Cahal Boyd and the Gribbin brothers remembered playing football with a pig’s bladder as a ball. The bladder was a by-product of slaughtering and cleaning out a pig. As Mickey Gribbin explains: ‘In the process of taking the inside out there was a thing called a bladder and the bladder was precious because you could blow up the bladder with a straw … and that was the football.’

Matt Quinn describes playing football as a boy:

We were mad about football. Many’s the time we would have gathered up in some field along here, a lot of us. … What we used to do was to get a bundle of cloth and tie it all up together and play football with it – we hadn’t a ball, but anyhow enjoyed it.

Tom Andrew talks about childhood games:

There’s a field just out beyond our garden there and how my father ever made any use of it … in the summer time we played cricket in it and in the autumn and winter we played football, and at certain times of the year … we tramped around there on the bikes – the nearest we got to cross-country motorcycling. … At this time of the year [June] every night the local guys appeared from far and near and played cricket. The 5-gallon drum was the wicket … the guys were tough nuts, there were no gloves or pads … you stood there and faced the music … the only thing that was real about our cricket was the ball, it was the real thing alright and if you got whacked with it you knew all about it.

While much sporting activity simply took the form of games among friends, some of those interviewed did play at a more formal level. Some of the Gribbins, for instance, played Gaelic football at county level, while Matt Quinn played for his local team, Cargin. William Andrew Turkington played association football for several teams around Ballyclare and Cogry, winning a number of medals. James McAdam started playing hockey when he was 16 and continued to play until he was 60, turning out for Parkview and Antrim.

Cinema

To provide entertainment for the workers at Cogry Mill, a cinema, known as The Picture House – was opened in 1919. This had seating for 400 people and included a stage for concerts. It proved hugely popular, not just with the mill workers, but with people throughout the district.

Florence Mary McDowell, who was a great singer, sang at the ‘silent pictures’ in the cinema. William Andrew recalls people thronging to the cinema. He also remembers a number of individuals dressing up in costume and travelling around the countryside promoting the films being shown. Growing up in Ballyeaston, Greta Milliken was aware of the cinema in Cogry as her music teacher, Mrs Moore – a sister of Mrs McDowell – who was blind, played the organ in it. The cinema at Cogry closed in 1932, though it continued to be used for concerts, some of which were organised by Florence Mary McDowell. There was, however, a cinema in Ballyclare which many people from Doagh visited.

William Andrew Turkington recalls the cinema at Cogry:

I mind one day I was going up to my mother’s and when I got to the Cogry picture house the big gate was open that let you into the yard and the two doors of the picture house itself were lying open. And I stopped a minute or two and I looked around and there seemed to be nobody about and I said “I’ll go in and have a look at what this place is like.” Wrecked it was and it was some picture house. There was a stage and in below the stage there were dressings rooms. And McMeekin has his wee box up nearer the roof. And they let it go like that. What I heard about it when I was a lad – it was built as a working men’s club … John Duncan was the projectionist. And on a Thursday night that place was packed – I saw them lined to the Cogry corners from Ballyclare and all over the place. ‘The Three Horsemen’ – that was the name of the film that was on. … Who done the wrecking of that place I could not tell you.

The picture house in Whitehead opened on Monday, 28 June 1937. The main film shown was Luck of the Irish and its star, Richard Hayward, made a personal appearance. Sheila Herdman’s father had complimentary tickets for the opening night of the cinema in Whitehead as he knew the man who had built it. A film viewing cost six old pence. ‘The cinema was terrific’, recalls Trevor Monteith, who remembers in particular Scott of the Antarctic, Ben Hur, and endless John Wayne films. He believes that not only was the cinema a big attraction, it was also a focal point for Whitehead. The cinema closed in the 1960s and, after a series of uses, was opened as the town’s community centre in 1981.

Other forms of entertainment

Around Doagh, Holestone Young Farmers’ Club was very popular. Billy Robson joined this club when he was 12 or 13. He describes it as ‘a tremendous organisation’. Billy also drew attention to an earlier organisation with similar aims that was formed in Kilbride with Mr Spence, the teacher, instrumental in its creation.

Mary Moore remembers taking part in the stock-judging competitions, evaluating hens and cattle. Tom Andrew also belonged to this club and he recalls the public-speaking competitions and the amateur dramatics.

Dances and ceilidhs were also popular. Sarah McTrustry remembered the dance hall in Doagh which she went to every Saturday night. On one night she could not get in because she had no money and so some young men from Antrim pulled her in through the window. For anyone living near Whitehead, or indeed from much further afield, the Rinkha was the place to go on a Saturday night. It was here that Wilma Shaw met her husband. Mary Ann Higgins attended ceilidhs in Toome and Moneyglass. She walked to them unless offered a ‘lift on the bars of a man’s bike if you were lucky’. Matt Quinn went to ceilidhs in the evenings, some of which were in the open air, such as at Creggan where a wooden platform would be erected on the grass. Maureen McMeel met her husband Owen at a ceilidh.

William Andrew Turkington remembers the singers in Cogry when he was young. Mr Spence, the principal of Kilbride school, would stop his car to listen to them: ‘He reckoned there were more tenors in Cogry than in any other village in Northern Ireland. They were good, boy, there’s no doubt about it.’ The singers would sing until the early hours of the morning.

Cahal Boyd remembered an old man named Quigley coming from Portgleone to Moneyglass to teach Irish dancing in an old World War I army hut beside the chapel. The same man would have taken them to a Feis at Newbridge. Cahal was also involved in a number of cultural activities focused on Moneyglass. George Laverty was also involved in the drama group at Moneyglass, starting when he was 16. He points out that one of the leading figures in it was a Ballycastle tailor called Richard Mooney whose claim to fame was that he had made a suit for Roger Casement.

Cahal Boyd talks about the Moneyglass drama club and concert troupe:

When I was 18 we started the first Moneyglass drama club. Then we started Toome Easter festival in Toome fair. Then we bought and fixed Moneyglass community centre. And then we went on to Moneyglass concert troupe. And the Moneyglass concert troupe travelled Ireland, England, Scotland and America and made a lot of friends.

In the middle decades of the twentieth century there was a flourishing tourism industry in Whitehead. It had long been seen as an attractive place for visitors, but in the 1930s tourism began to take off and in the post-war years it was, according to P. J. O’Donnell, ‘really booming’.


The Urban District Council began to issue an official guide that emphasised on its front cover that Whitehead was ‘The Popular Northern Irish Health and Holiday Resort’ and included information about the various facilities that were available and activities that visitors could enjoy. In the summer Whitehead was popular with day-trippers who would arrive by train. The excursion platform was built to cater for the arrival of groups such as Sunday school outings. The major figure in Whitehead’s tourist industry was W. T. Devenny who established Devenny’s Irish Tours.

Brian McKenna remembers Devenny’s Irish Tours in Whitehead:

Devenny’s Irish Tours started up and brought people from the north of England … They came over to Larne in the boat, were picked up in a bus – there were up to ten buses every week in the summertime. They stayed for a week, about £15 full board – travelling and everything. All working class people. They were fed well, looked after well, and they really enjoyed themselves. They’d have gone in the buses during the day around the north of Ireland – Giant’s Causeway, Belfast, even went on the train to Dublin. A dance every night in the hotel. I remember going to sleep with the noise of the ‘okey, okey pokey’ every night. … They came on a Saturday and went back on a Friday.

Brian McKenna remembers that the police would not allow people to park near the hotels to keep the spaces free for buses. John Milliken recalled that because of the high number of visitors Whitehead ‘absolutely buzzed in the summer time’. The outbreak of the Troubles, coupled with the advent of cheaper foreign holidays, effectively put an end to Whitehead’s tourist industry.