Steinbeck's Redemption

Walking the Cassie cattle trail: 5. The final stretch - to Dalway's Bawn

2012-01-04T13:49:00.000-08:00

Leaving Poag's Hill on the last section of my walk with Ray Cowan along the old cattle trail from the Commons to Dalway's Bawn, the 'Cassie' develops a different feel. The final stretch is more wooded as we come near to the edge of the Dalway's Bawn home farm, but at the start, after Poag's Hill, the Cassie becomes obviously well-used - with some new houses behind the occasional 'modern' garden hedge!

Thinking we were about to arrive at the end of the Cassie, I was soon disabused of that idea, as Ray explained that these houses were still only accessible from the old lane way - and that the 'road junction' ahead was nothing other than a side lane leading to the old Caldwell and Hay farms among others, including the original Andrew Jackson Homestead (no longer accessible).

Soon we leave this strange, cluster of side lanes and drives to dispersed isolated houses, and - straight ahead in the above photo - the Cassie reverts to its country lane character.

As we walk down this stretch of the Cassie, it once again feels like a lost, ancient world.

On the left, great views appear of the Bella hill countryside, with another last glimpse of the Irish Sea.

The next photographs take us down through a beautiful, wooded stretch signalling that we are now not only down into the 'lowlands' but also on the edge of the wooded margins of the Dalway and Dobbs landscaped demesnes.

At the last bend in the lane, a view to the right confirms that we have reached the demesnes of Dalway's Bawn (below the middle horizon) and Castle Dobb's (middle horizon).

And so down the final 100 yards or so of the Cassie down to Dalway's Bawn Road.

Out on the road, a last look back up the Cassie

- before the photographic evidence that Ray and I have indeed reached the road outside Dalway's Bawn.

Thanks again Ray for the conducted tour. We have reached the end of the Cassie, but not the end of the story!

Walking the Cassie cattle trail: 4. Onwards to Porg Hill

2011-12-21T12:31:00.000-08:00

Leaving the witch thorn and stories of fairies behind, Ray Cowan and I journeyed on towards the next landmark - a hill rising to over 600ft above sea level, which has traces of a ring fort on its summit. Maybe this 'Porg Hill' was a 'fairy forth'?

- We'll see!

Walking down towards the bottom of this wide, open stretch of the Cassie, a new (early 20th century) road cuts across our path. This new road runs from the Beltoy Road to Ballycarry and gives access to dozens of farms that once could only be reached from the Cassie.

But once over the road, we continued straight on, until we started to climb another short rise towards Porg Hill on the right.

The 'new' road just crossed is not shown on the following 1860 map of land holdings, but on the map it can be seen that the fields on the Thomas Hoey farm (plot 17) run from the Cassie at the witch thorn right down to the house that was the Hoey/Hay farm for generations. This farm belonged to Bob Todd's great, great grandfather as described in the last post. You can see from the map that the Hay family farm was originally accessed from a side lane off the Cassie that originally went on to and through another six or seven farms (including the ancestral home of President Andrew Jackson).

This farm (17a on the map) is still called called 'Beech View', and has been in Hay family hands for over 400 years - as the following account sent me by Bob Todd testifies (it was written as part of a book 'The Hoy's of Maryland' by a Captain Charles E. Hoye, following a visit by him from the US to the Beech View farm which - in 1938 - was owned by Isaac Hay):

"There is a tradition among the Hoys in County Antrim that their ancestor came from Scotland as groom in charge of John Dalway's horses, sometime between 1578 and 1606. As a groom, most of his duties were at the castle and bawn (barn), but in time he leased from Dalway a farm about a half mile northeast of the castle on the hill overlooking the Muttonburn valley. This farm, or part of it, now belongs to his descendant, Isaac Hoy, and the present Hoy home here was probably built by the original Scotch settler.The Muttonburn (burn = creek) flows south into Belfast Lough northeast of Carrickfergus, draining part of Dalway's Manor. From high ground near Ballycarry the beautiful little valley is in view, a bit of the Lough and County Down in the distance.
During the last century Hoys were numerous in the Muttonburn Valley; so numerous and so devoted to such Christian names as James and John that some of the descendants of William and Alexander Hoy changed their name to 'Hay'."

The map shows that the farm between the Hay's and Porg Hill (18) was owned by John Caldwell in 1860, and indeed the Cassie runs right through this farm. Although Ray Cowan's mother was a Caldwell (and indeed it was her family of Caldwells that bought out Dalway's Bawn and farm about 1900, after Marriott Dalway left for Australia), it appears there were two separate families of Caldwells in Bellahill, and this John Caldwell may not have been directly related to Ray, actually belonging to the Bellahill 'Calwells'. Today these families are distinguished by the spelling of the surname (Calwell and Caldwell) but like many other family surnames in the area, the older records often spell the same person's surname in different ways. Anyway, for Ray, this stretch of the Cassie absolutely 'hotches' with family history.

When we reach Porg Hill, the Cassie sweeps round to the left, and to investigate it properly a diversion is needed through a gate to the right.

Looking back from past this gate that leads up onto Porg Hill, we can see the line of the Cassie running back to the site of the witch thorn on the horizon.

It certainly looks as if the Cassie originally came up over Porg Hill on the side track we are now on.

Approaching the summit of Porg Hill, the outline of the raised platform of an ancient earthen fort can be seen on the horizon ahead.

And from the top, the remains of a 1,000 year old earthen ring fort are faint but unmistakable. Remarkably, this is not a recognised ancient monument site - or at least I couldn't find any record of it in the Archaeological Survey archives in Belfast. But looking at it in from the air in the satellite photos, again a circular shape is visible.

Porg Hill sits at the center of the Poag farm as it was in 1860 (Thomas Pogue 21 on the map). There were two Pogue (Poag) farms in Bellahill in 1860, both off the Cassie and owned by two brothers, William and Thomas Poag. Although the Poag farm at Porg Hill was owned by Thomas Poag in 1860, it was a James Poag living here in the 1830s when his account of the witch thorn was published (see previous posts), and in 1833 when the Ordnance Survey Memoirs for Bellahill mentions the fort on Porg Hill:

"Fort in Bellahill.

On an eminence in the above townland, and holding of James Poag, there stood a fort 21 yds. in diameter. Some traces of the parapet is still visible."

But if anyone should doubt that this was an important strategic fort site in ancient times, they should do what Ray and I did, and stand in it to survey the spectacular views of the sea - from Belfast Lough right round to the Irish sea and across to Scotland.

This is the only site I know of in the region where there is such an unbroken view of the entire coastline. The following views take you in a panorama from Belfast Lough to the right, panning left towards the Irish Sea. In the first view, Belfast sits at the head of the Lough, right in the center:

The above photo is looking across the mouth of Belfast Lough, towards County Down. The rough remains of the fort wall are in the foreground.

And in the next photo, the Irish sea can be seen continuously from the mouth of Belfast Lough to the right, to the open sea towards Scotland to the left.

Further left still, and the Irish sea view is only slightly interrupted by the tip of Muldersleigh Hill in the center of the above photo. Muldersleigh Hill, beside Whitehead and the Gobbins Road in Islandmagee, being the final destination of the old cattle trail before the cattle were shipped to Scotland.

Once again I am grateful to a Canadian descendant of a Bellahill exile for filling me in on much of his family history around Porg Hill. This time it is Barry Poag who I have mentioned before. His great grandparents were William and Mary Poag in the center of this family photograph taken in Bellahill about 1900.

Four of William Poag's sons also in this photograph emigrated to Canada soon afterwards: Samuel Jackson Poag in 1912, Robert Poag (Barry's grandfather) in 1914, David Poag in 1920, and John Poag in 1921. This amazing exodus of four brothers appears to have been in the wake of their cousin, James McMurtry Poag, who had emigrated to Canada in 1906.

Considering that both Canadian contacts mentioned in this post - Barry Poag and Bob Todd - are descended from the Poag and Hay family farms on this part of the Cassie trail, I am very grateful that they have shared so much of their own family history researches of Bellahill with me from the other side of the Atlantic. But the hub of this genetic wheel of local knowledge is, of course, my traveling guide and old school chum Ray Cowan, whose great, great grandfather John Cowan's farm (not to mention those belonging to the Caldwells and other closely related families in Bellahill), was also part and parcel of the historical context of the Cassie. Yes, the landscape itself speaks, but not so much as the memories of the families that lived in it.

Just below Porg Hill, at the bottom end of the old Poag 20-acre farm, are the ruins of its farmhouse - marked as 21a on the 1860 farm holding map. Again I am grateful to Barry Poag for sending me this photo of the ruins taken when he visited the site in 2008.

So, back to Porg Hill. On the ground, and from the historical records, it is a spectacularly important strategic fort site.

The modern map above shows how it dominated the lowland coastal approach of the old cattle trail that had - from the earliest times - lead up to the uplands and commons behind Carrickfergus. As a defensive site, it dominates the Dalway's Bawn 'cattle fort' that replaced it 400 years ago. The broader context in the east Antrim coast can be seen in the next map. See if you can trace the Cassie from the south of Lough Mourne past Porg Hill and down to Bellahill and Dalway's Bawn on this map and the one above.

Some time ago, Barry Poag asked Ray and I what the origin of the name 'Porg' was, and if it could have been a corruption of 'Poag'.
Well, I think both of us agree that that is the case. There is no Irish Gaelic, Old Norse (Viking) or Ulster-Scots etymology for 'porg' that makes any sense. Even more convincing is the fact that the name does not appear on any old map or document before the late 19th century - by which time it had been firmly located right in the middle of the Poag family farm for at least a century! It is easy to see how a non-local map surveyor might have misheard 'Poag Hill' for 'Porg Hill'.

But as for fairies on Porg Hill? So far, not a whisper!

Walking the Cassie cattle trail: 3. More light on the Witchthorn

2011-11-17T07:54:00.000-08:00

Before moving on from the site of the Bellahill witch thorn and the Witchthorn National School (just past the Resting Slap on the Cassie as described in the previous post), I found some more information which I think is worth relating.

The above-mentioned illustration and account of the Witchthorn from Alexander Johns of Carrickfergus in 1849 is not the only source of information on these. The Ordnance Survey Memoirs for the Parish of Kilroot dated 1839 records that the Witchthorn and the school were on the farm of Thomas Hay, and this source gives the following account of the witchthorn:

"Gentle Bushes
On an eminence in the townland of Bellahill, and holding of Thomas Hay, there stands a large ancient thorn locally called the Witches' thorn and gave local name to a national school situate at that place. This school is known by the Witchthorn National School.
There are a few other ancient thorns in the parish, and esteemed sacred as being fairy abodes and consequently remain unmolested."

Well, as we saw in the last post, by 1849 branches were being removed and it disappeared before 1900. The title of the OS Memoir account - "Gentle bushes" show that they viewed the superstitions here to be the same as those common throughout Ireland, and related to the "gentle folk" or Fairies. Incidently, a fairy was by no means "gentle" but the term comes from 'gentile' and the Irish "ginte" (gentile, pagan, heathen Dane) - and from which word we get the local family name of McKinty/McGinty (meaning 'son of the Danish man or Viking').

As the townland of Bellahill was overwhelmingly Presbyterian, such superstitious beliefs (particularly in fairies) were generally held in ridicule, and so the identification of the tree with witches rather than fairies. In the early 1900s John Hay from this farm in Bellahill told his daughter-in-law (Mrs Susie Hay) a story of how Mr Dalway had ordered the men to clear away an ancient motte-like mound or 'rath' from near the bottom of the Cassie. The hero of the story was a local man who used his sister's tiny clog to make fairy footprints around the 'fairy fort' and play a practical joke on the whole countryside. Susie Hay then based her ballad, 'The Rath in the Valley' on that story (Note that 'freit' is an Ulster-Scots word for 'superstition' and 'moat' for 'motte' or 'mound' - but in this poem these words are used by the 'English' landlord!):

THE RATH IN THE VALLEY
By Susie Hay

Once upon a time, so I've heard tell,
A Rath was in a valley, and fairies there did dwell.
None dared molest the "Wee folk" who came when moon was clear,
And everyone for miles around that Rath did well revere.

The landlord of the valley came unto the mound;
Said he, "By Irish 'freits' I never will be bound;
That moat doth spoil my field, so to my men I'll say,
Go at once to that low field, and clear the Rath away."

The men obediently went off, with shovel and with spade;
Upon that Irish Rath an attack they fiercely made;
But the truth of all the matter was that they were Irish too,
And the fear of Irish fairies did thrill them through and through.

The first day of their labours, all went very well,
And nothing but the sound of spades resounded through the dell,
And driving off with carts of mould, they did not their work leave,
Until above the valley, shone the first faint star of eve.

Lo, see them the next morning, as to their task them come,
From different cots around the vale, a-straggling one by one,
Scarce wakened from their night's deep sleep, scarce seeing the right
path,
But from their stupor quickly roused, when near the Fairy Rath.

The first one who did reach the Rath, to all began to shout,
"Oh hurry, hurry, hurry, boys, the fairies have been out."
And sure enough, around the mound,--this tale is really true--
Were marks of tiny footsteps, as of a fairy shoe.

The men were seized with horror; their very bones did freeze!
And shouts of wild excitement filled the early morning breeze,
And wafted them right up unto the very mansion house,
To where the lordly master was sitting with his spouse.

"Now what, now what, now what," he called, "is this unearthly row?
"What's happened that wild Irish crowd, what are they doing now?"
"Oh sir," a messenger replied, who came, all pale with fear;
"The men won't touch the Rath because the fairies have been here."

So down unto the valley strode the irate English lord,
Said he unto himself, "I'll quell that Irish rabble horde."
But not a man of all the crowd would ever put a spade
Into the Rath, the fairy marks had made them so afraid.

When some time passed, so I've been told,
The work was done by other men, who were by nature bold,
And had no fear of Little Men, Banshee, or Witche's wail;
But still the "fairy shoemarks" stay an ancient country tale.

The secret of the tale was kept, until 'twas told to me;
The solution was quite simple, as you will plainly see;
A 'divil-of-a-fellow' a-livin' near the bog,
Marked all the 'fairy footsteps' with--his little sister's CLOG.

This, and much more, information about the Hays of Bellahill was sent to me by Robert (Bob) Todd of Nova Scotia in Canada, who contacted me after reading the blog. The Thomas Hay on whose farm the witch thorn stood in the 1839 account was Bob Todd's great, great grandfather. The OS Memoir for 1839 also says that Thomas Hoy (the spellings Hay, Hoy, and Hoey seem to have been used interchangeably for the same person and family) was 'librarian' of the Bellahill Book Club, established in 1837, with 8 members and 23 volumes of historical works. It almost certainly met in the Witchthorn National School, which was also on the 'holding' of Thomas Hay.

The Witchthorn National School sat on the wide verge on the right-hand side of the Cassie as shown here. In the I839 OS Memoir it is described as sitting "on the old road leading from Bellahill to the commons".

It was a small, thatched, single-story building, only 18 feet long by 15 feet wide and had been established about 1800. The 16 scholars were all Presbyterian, and the master was a John Saunderson, also a Presbyterian. The school was 'visited' by Rev. William Glendy, a 'minister of the Remonstrant Congregation' and was 'well furnished with desks and forms'.

As we leave the Witchthorn and move on down the Cassie towards Porg Hill, it is quite a coincidence that the history of the two family farms on either side of the cattle trail (the Hay's and the Poag's) has come to life by means of two separate Canadian descendants (Barry Poag and Bob ('Hay')Todd). But more of that soon ...

Walking the Cassie cattle trail: 2. From the 'Resting Slap' to the Witchthorn

2011-11-11T07:56:00.000-08:00

Leaving the Resting Slap with its views of Belfast Lough and Carrick Castle, the Cassie trail opens up from an overgrown path to a tractor-friendly country lane. My original intention, as promised in the last blog which covered my walk with Ray Cowan from the Beltoy Road to the Resting Slap, was to continue on down the Cassie past the Witchthorn as far as Porg Hill. Porg Hill is where the Poag family farm had been.

There are no Poags still living in Bellahill, but a Barry Poag had read this blog some time ago and wrote to me from Canada (where his grandfather Robert Poag had emigrated to, from here, in the early 1900s). Over the past year Barry has been corresponding with Ray and I regularly. He has shared a wealth of material from his own family and local history research. There will be much more of these Bellahill Poags when we do eventually reach Porg (or should it be Poag?) Hill. But first of all, Barry has sent some printed information on the Witchthorn - and this opens up a whole new story.

The excerpt is from a book on "The Forest Trees of Britain" published by the well-known English naturalist Rev. C A Johns in 1849. It was supplied to C A Johns "together with the annexed sketch", by the author's uncle, Alexander Johns of Carrickfergus, and it describes the Witch thorn at "Bellahill" on the estate of M. Dalway, Esq. The significance of this discovery for Barry Poag lay in the detail of the account, for Alexander Johns' informant was none other than Barry's great-great-great grandfather James Poag (who indeed states that he remembered the tree 70 years beforehand, that is, in the 1770s!):

"The schoolmaster of the Witch-Thorn National School (the tree has given its name to the place) referred me to an old man named James Poag, residing about a quarter of a mile from the spot. I found him at home, but gained little information; he is 87 years of age, a tailor by trade, and was busy at his work, three lads plying the needle with him; he said his sight was not so good as it had been, and his hearing rather dull! He invited me to take bread and butter and milk, all his house afforded, and told me he remembers the tree for 70 years, and that from his earliest recollection the trunk has always been as large as it is now. Within these few years some branches have been cut off, (a very rare occurrence indeed with an aged Thorn) which being reported to the agent of Mr Dalway, that gentleman went to the spot, and has taken steps to prevent a repitition of the act. The large trunk is 4 feet 2 inches in circumference, and the other 3 feet 6 inches; the thorn is about 20 feet high. It stands on high ground, and the father of the present proprietor told my informant that he had seen the Witch Thorn from the Scotch coast."

The map shows the section of the Cassie from the Resting Slap as far as Porg Hill and the Poag farms in Bellahill, and the sites of the Witchthorn and the Witchthorn National School. Neither of the 'witchthorn' sites survive, although Ray was able to point out the their sites from what he had been told.

Older maps show that the school was there in the 1830s, and it must have survived until the 1870s when the two 'new' Bellahill National Schools were built. These were located on 'proper' roads a t either end of the Cassie (the Beltoy Road, and the Dalway's Bawn Road).

The precise locations of the Witchthorn and the Witchthorn National School are both marked on this detail from an 1858 land valuation survey. A thick red line marks the townland boundary between Crossmary to the south and Bellahill (Ballyhill) to the north and east. Carrickfergus County (North-East Division) is to the west of the Copeland Water.

The thin red lines are farm boundaries - the farm at the top marked 10A is the Cowan home farm, and the one marked 21 bottom right is the 'original' Poag farm.

The Cassie runs across the top of the Cowan farm to the Resting Slap (which is where it meets the top 'point' of Crossmary townland) and then down past the Witchthorn along the townland boundary towards Porg Hill on the Poag farm. The Witchthorn therefore would have been a townland boundary marker before enclosure, not to mention a distant landmark for those on the cattle trail droving towards the 'Resting Slap'. It is fascinating that the 1849 account states that M. Dalway's father told James Poag that the tree could be seen from the 'Scotch coast'.

Alexander Johns had supplied an illustration of the Witchthorn along with his account, and this has to be an actual representation because he describes the tree as having two trunks, one 4 ft. 2 inches in circumference, and the other 3 ft. 6 inches. He also states that the tree was (in the 1840s) 20 ft. tall and that branches had been recently removed which he shows on the ground.
Alexander Johns was born in Cornwall in 1784, and was Ordnance store-keeper of Carrickfergus Castle from 1812. He died in the town in 1866 and was an accomplished illustrator, as his following sketches of Carrickfergus demonstrate. Indeed, he provided all of the original illustrations of local antiquities for Samuel M'Skimmin's "History and Antiquities of Carrickfergus"

In the previous post I ended with a photo of Carrickfergus Castle viewed from the Resting Slap, and it fascinates me to think that this was the spot from which Alexander Johns sketched the Witchthorn, after eating a bread and butter 'piece' at James Poag's farm.

Another connection: the Johns' house in Carrickfergus in the 1860s was on the seafront at Joymount where the road leads to the Scotch Quarter, and on to Eden. This photo shows it on the left with a first-floor conservatory. The building (now demolished) was used to house Carrickfergus Technical School when my father was Principal there in the early 1950s.

Back at the Resting Slap, looking back towards Beltoy, is the overgrown path straight ahead that Roy and I had just walked before now proceeding on to Porg Hill. Here the beginning of the wider lane can be seen disappearing into the fields at both sides of the Resting Slap.

As soon as we turn round the corner, the Cassie opens out into a double-width lane, with the worn track only taking up less than half of the total width between the hedges.

And on the ground to the right are the sites of both the Witchthorn and the old Witchthorn National School.

It is not surprising that there is no sign of the school, but because of the superstition against interfering with a 'witch' thorn (the Ulster-Scottish equivalent of the Irish 'fairy' thorn) it is remarkable that nothing of the tree survives. The Scottish beliefs in Broonies (Brownies) and Pechts (Picts) operated here rather than Fairies and Danes. So it was witches, rather than fairies, that were supposed to dance and congregate at these trees - if not live under them! Witch trials were held in Carrickfergus, the most notable one being the trial of the 'Islandmagee Witches' in 1710 when 8 women from Islandmagee (the destination of the Cattle trail) were found guilty in what was to be the last witch trial in Ireland.

And so it's on down the Cassie towards Porg Hill ...

Walking the Cassie cattle trail: 1. From Beltoy to the 'Resting Slap'

2011-10-31T07:58:00.000-07:00

As promised in the last posting, here is the first installment of the walk down the Cassie cattle trail with my re-united primary school friend, Ray Cowan.
We started at the Beltoy Road end of the Cassie, just beside Ray's 'home farm' where he lived when I last saw him (50 years ago). In the foreground of this photo of Ray (with the start of the Cassie behind him), is the Beltoy Road. This 'crossroad' is where the old cattle trail lane from Lough Mourne and the Commons meets the Beltoy Road before the cattle trail continues down the "Cassie" (Causeway) to Dalway's Bawn. This is the point I had got to before in my own explorations, as described in an earlier posting of 29/9/2101 "Along the Cattle Trail - in sight of Scotland".

A quick look at the map shows where we are about to start, marked in red - Beltoy Road. But before we even got going, Ray took me back to the ruined walls of his great grandmother's (Mary Moore) family farm at the end of the earlier section of the cattle trail coming down onto the Beltoy Road from Lough Mourne at Carnmanus - 1 David Moore (1860) on map.

We weren't long rambling round these ruins before the importance of this site to the whole cattle trail became obvious. The Beltoy Road between Eden to the south and Glenoe to the north is an ancient coach road, older than the cattle trail itself, and runs alongside the Copeland Water - the river that marks the boundary between the medieval County of Carrickfergus and the east Antrim lands granted in the 16th century to John Dalway of Dalway's Bawn and John Dobbs of Castle Dobbs.

This crossing point of the Cattle trail with Beltoy Road and the Copeland Water was the first significant "service station" for the drovers after the trek across the Commons from Ballynure, and the Moore farm here had paddocks, a circular "by-pass" lane to act as a passing place, and a frontage on the Copeland Water to water the beasts. It seems like this was an ideal stopping point for the drovers, and, just across the Beltoy Road on the Cassie, was a blacksmith's forge - 2. Blacksmith (William Greer, 1860) on map.

This photo shows the circular "by-pass" lane on the former Moore farm, looking back towards the site of the ruined stone house and outbuildings. The beech trees were planted on the Moore farm, but the belt of conifers that now covers the entire glen of the Copeland Water was planted by the Belfast Water Commissioners some time after 1870 when they bought out the entire Copeland Water river-course. This was done to 'sanitise' the land from farming 'pollution' along the water feed into the Copeland Reservoir that the Water Commissioners were about to construct at Marshallstown. And so the Moore farm was abandoned at that date.

This next view from the top of Carnmanus, looking down over the Beltoy 'glen' towards the fields on the Cowan farm in Bellahill, gives a good impression of how steep the slope was down to the Moore farm from that part of the Commons cattle trail.

Back to the start of the Cassie walk
So, back to where we started at the beginning of this post!

The Cassie is a wonderful country-lane walk, although a bit overgrown on this first stretch, with no sign of the old blacksmith's forge that once sat on the left-hand side.

The lane gets narrower as we go, so it is down to single-file!

I should say that it's not the lane that gets narrower, but that it has only been used as a single line 'pad' and the side hedges have encroached. Ray correctly predicts where there will be raspberry bushes among they blackberries - something he remembered from his childhood!

After a while we reach the first 'feature' of the walk: a sort of lane 'crossroads' - or rather a widening of the Cassie at a bend where two old redundant lane-ways join the Cassie.

Looking back from this point back down the path we had just come up, the line of conifers can be seen back on the far side of the Beltoy Road, where the Moore farm was. The new gate in the front right of the above photo blocks off another overgrown lane that leads to the farm that was the 'original' Cowan farm (marked as "3. John Cowan, 1860" on the map at the start of this post). It is another story for another time, but tracing this lane on older maps, it does seem to continue across the Beltoy Road further north, and on towards the north end of the Commons. This may have been an alternative route for the cattle trail that came round the north end of Lough Mourne rather than the south end.

And on the other side of the Cassie, facing south, is another gate closing off the back lane to Ray's 'home' farm (marked as "3. Cowan Farm, (John Davison, 1860) on map). This is the farm mentioned in previous posts where I attended Ray's 7th birthday party. It was owned by John Davison in 1860, but was bought by Ray Cowan's father in the 1930s and is where Ray was raised.

[To connect the families on the 3 farms highlighted on the map, John Cowan's son (also John Cowan and who was therefore Ray's great grandfather) married Mary Moore (daughter of David Moore of Carnmanus) in Ballycarry Presbyterian church in 1859. One of the witnesses was William Davison (son of John Davison).]

Pressing on, then, towards the 'Resting Slap', the track is still quite overgrown - but that only adds to my own sense of anticipation and exploration.

Then, another opening appears ahead where the Cassie has a well-worn surface, and we get to the Resting Slap.

Looking back from here (below right), the path we have come seems a long way from the trees on the skyline where we started.

The Resting Slap is an appropriate name for the feature that marks the end of this first stage of our journey. As you can see, there are a number of openings into adjoining fields at this point. The term 'slap' is defined in James Fenton's Ulster-Scots dictionary The Hamely Tongue as meaning "a gap in a hedge allowing the passage of cattle, machines, etc. (normally closed with a gate, strands of barbed wire, etc.)"
It is marked on our map "4. Resting Slap" and the name tells of the days when this was a passing and a resting place for livestock being driven along the Cassie place in both directions. It is likely that the main traffic from the coast up to this point consisted of imported Scottish horses destined for the horse fairs at Ballyclare and Ballynure, along with cattle and other livestock heading for summer grazing on the Commons. The other direction, of course, was mainly cattle heading for the major drove roads in south-west Scotland from Ballynure and further west in mid Antrim.

Through one of the 'slaps' here, Ray pointed out where there was a legend of buried treasure. So, with the whiff of other pieces of folklore including a 'witch thorn' round the corner, we had to take a break at this stopping point ourselves.

The fields beside the Resting Slap mark a change of gradient for the Cassie. From here on, it is a decidedly downslope journey towards Dalway's Bawn and the coast at Whitehead and Portmuck. Glimpses of the distant Scottish coast are a feature along this cattle trail from time to time ahead and to the left. But here on the right hand side of the Resting Slap, Belfast Lough and the County Down coast are visible for the first time.
This somewhat hazy detail from the last photo shows that the Resting Slap even overlooks Carrickfergus. The keep of Carrick castle (built in the 12th century), is silhouetted against the lough in the center of the shot. On many a clear day centuries ago, drovers must have paused to enjoy this sight.

The next stage of the walk takes in even more surprises, and I still can't believe how fortunate I was to meet up again with the one person (Ray) who knows first-hand the history of the fields, farms and families along the Cassie.

Next, on our journey comes the Witchthorn and the site of the 'Witchthorn National School' right in the middle of the Cassie ... (coming soon!)

An uncanny reunion at Bellahill - to walk the 'Cassie' cattle trail to Dalway's Bawn.

2011-09-25T02:10:00.000-07:00

Saturday 17 September 2011 was a big day for these 'East of Eden' chronicles (and for me), as I met up with Ray Cowan after almost 60 years at his childhood home farm in Bellahill - for my long-awaited exploration of the last unaltered stretch of the old cattle drove road from the Commons to Dalway's Bawn.

Ray now lives near Dublin with his wife Helen (uncanny again, as my own wife is called Helen too). We recently re-established contact after our early years at Eden Primary School in the 1950s, when he stumbled on this blog and an old photo taken at his 7th birthday party at his farm in Bellahill.

The detail shows Ray and myself in the middle - Ray sporting his birthday present of a toy gun.

I had posted this old photo in July 2010 in 'An uncanny gathering at Bellahill farm, near Dalway's Bawn, in 1953' and since then we have been in frequent email and telephone contact.

But our reunion had, of course, to be back at his scene of this 'uncanny gathering' - now his brother's farm, and a walk together down the 'Cassie' (the local name given to the old cattle drove track from Beltoy to Dalway's Bawn).

Both these farm photographs show something I didn't know in 1953 - that the trees behind the farm house mark the line of the old cattle drove road from Beltoy to Dalway's Bawn.

The following map shows the line of the 'Cassie' (Ulster-Scots for 'causeway') in blue, and the present Cowan farm is marked on this map as belonging to John Davison in 1860. As followers of this blog may recall, John Davison bought Dalway's Bawn at the end of the 19th century when Marriott Dalway emigrated to Australia, and the Cowans moved to this farm about the same time - from the one immediately to the north, marked 'John Cowan, 1860'.

The walk with Ray down the Cassie was a walk 'down memory lane' in more ways than one, and as there is too much to report in one posting, the next few will be photo-journeys and commentary on this 2-mile dander. It started where the Cassie crosses the Beltoy Road, behind the Cowan farm (to the right in this photo). Another previous post (29 September 2010) had covered the journey I made with my wife from Lough Mourne to the Beltoy Road: 'Along the Cattle Trail - In sight of Scotland'.

Well, just to prove we did finish it, here is Ray at the bottom end of the Cassie, where it comes onto the Dalway's Bawn. It was a great and memorable day - full of nostalgia and new information gleaned from Ray's encyclopaedic knowledge of every farm and field along the way.

To be continued ....

What happened when the Dalways of Dalway's Bawn went "Down Under".

2011-06-12T09:39:00.000-07:00

Marriott Robert Dalway was the last of the Dalways to live at Dalway’s Bawn. He left Ireland for Australia at the end of 1886, shortly after Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill for Ireland was defeated in the Commons.

Marriott Robert Dalway had been a Liberal M.P. for Carrickfergus until he lost his seat by 37 votes in 1880 to Thomas Greer, a local Conservative. Almost immediately, Marriott Robert Dalway sought to unseat Thomas Greer on the grounds of "bribery, treating, personation, and undue influence, used either by Mr. Greer or those employed on his behalf". When the petition was finally heard and rejected in 1883 at a court in Carrickfergus, Mr. Greer was "drawn in triumph through the principal streets of the town, in an open carriage, by his enthusiastic supporters, and afterwards drawn to his residence at Seapark, where he addressed a large crowd assembled on the lawn in front of his house".

What a contrast this had been to the evening in 1868 when Marriott Dalway had been first elected as M.P. for Carrickfergus. Then "tar barrels and bonfires were lighted on all the surrounding hills". Interestingly, back then in 1868 the defeated candidate had also unsuccessfully petitioned against Dalway's election on the grounds of "corrupt practices, namely, treating, bribery, and intimidation". When Marriott Robert Dalway was again elected in 1874, he then stood as a Conservative, and "the Conservative working men manifested their delight that the Protestant cause had been successful at the election of M. R. Dalway, M.P., and that the Conservative Government had entered into office, by burning tar barrels. There was a display of fireworks from the Scotch Quarter Quay".

But the rise of Irish Catholic Nationalism in the 1880s was viewed with alarm in the mostly Protestant constituency of Carrickfergus. Marriott R. Dalway's support for the Gladstone Liberal government - in particular its proposals for Home Rule in Ireland - inevitably led to his unseating as the local population feverishly opposed the Home Rule movement (calling it "Rome Rule"). In 1886, the anti-Home-Rule Conservatives came to power in London, and the Unionist movement took off in Ireland.

So that was the context for Marriott Dalway to take his wife Elizabeth and their three sons (Andrew, Robert and John) on board the Australasian and set sail for Melbourne to begin a new life in Australia. They arrived in Melbourne in February 1887, and set up their new home 150 km south west of Melbourne at the coastal settlement of Lorne, in Victoria.

In a previous post "Whatever happened to the Dalways of Bellahill (Dalways Bawn)?"(19 January, 2011), I gave an account of some other dimensions of Marriott Robert Dalway's career, and I had then blamed his departure for Australia on the collapse of a salt mining enterprise on his lands at Eden. But it looks as if it may have been a combination of factors that led to his departure. Of course, the demise of the Dalway cattle empire and its cattle trail across the Commons had been an inevitable casualty of steam railways and steam cattle ships operating from the bigger ports. Although Marriott Robert Dalway was at the forefront of many "diversification" schemes, his family's days at Bellahill were numbered, even as he headed the Municipal Commissioners as they distributed the lands of the "Great Commons" into small holdings.

In those final years, however, there were few signs that Marriott Robert Dalway was a spent force at home. In April 1885, the future King Edward and Queen Alexandra, as the Prince and Princess of Wales, visited Carrickfergus.

"The Royal Party arrived by special train and were received at the station by Mr. Marriott R. Dalway, who wore the uniform of a Deputy-Lieutenant. On their arrival a Royal Salute of twenty-one guns was fired from the cannons at the Castle. The distinguished visitors then proceeded in carriages through Railway Street, Albert Road, West Street, Market Place, and Castle Street, to the Harbour, where Mr. M. R. Dalway, D.L., presented a most loyal address from the Municipal Commissioners and Harbour Commissioners".

A keen yachtsman, Marriott Dalway must have been attracted to Lorne at least partly by its location (In 1865, the first regatta was held at Carrickfergus, "under the direction and supervision of Marriott R. Dalway, Esq., J.P., Commodore"). The following details of his later life and that of his family in Lorne have been sent to me by Barry Wilson, who is himself connected to this Australian 'branch'. I am very grateful to Barry for also sending me photos of the Dalway graves in Lorne cemetery and allowing me to post these.

The first Dalway burial in Lorne Cemetery off Dalway Street (where else?) was that of Marriott Dalway's wife Elizabeth who died in 1899 at the age of 65.

In November of the same year (1899), Marriott married his second wife, Fanny Anna Langdon who was then 57. Fanny had been living in Lorne with her uncle Nicholas Sydenham Sabine until he died and left her a house in Lorne that was to remain the Dalway family home until Fanny died at the age of 101 in 1943.

This house was a prefabricated timber house delivered into Lorne by sea, in a ship captained by Fanny's father Capt. Frederick William Langdon.
When Fanny married Marriott Robert Dalway they both lived in it, on its original site down adjacent to the beach, near the pier. This is more than likely where Marriott Died in 1914. After Fanny's death, the house was sold and moved again to a new location where it remains as a holiday new site just outside the town and available as a holiday house called "The Gables" in the hills above Lorne.

Fanny Dalway died in 1943, and is also buried in the Lorne Cemetery.

Marriott Robert Dalway died in 1914, and he too is buried in the Lorne Cemetery, somewhat ignominiously, with his name mis-spelled.

Barry Wilson, who as I say supplied me with these details, has tracked the families of the three sons of Marriott Dalway in Australia. He is a descendant of the Sabine family of Dorset, and his great, great grandfather, Rev. Thomas Sabine married a Caroline Langdon, and whose sister Jane married Capt. Frederick William Langdon - the parents of Fanny Anna DALWAY nee LANGDON, Marriott Robert Dalway's second wife.
It is a small world indeed, made all the wee-er by the wonders of the world-wide web!

The O'Haughan Brothers: Outlaws on the Commons Cattle Trail

2011-03-08T02:36:00.001-08:00

There is a cave called "O'Haughan's Cave" at the foot of the Knockagh cliffs above Greenisland, just west of the town of Carrickfergus. This was one of the hideaways of a band of outlaws led by the O'Haughan Brothers who had terrorised the lowland farms around the Commons of Carrickfergus in the early 18th century.

They operated from caves and hideaways in the mountains until, one-by-one, they were captured by soldiers and hanged at Gallows Green near where the above photo was taken at the Troopers Lane end of Carrickfergus. Miskimmon's "History of Carrickfergus" describes three caves in the southern brow of Knockagh as,

"cut out of the rock, which, from the difficulty of ascent to them, appear to have been intended as places of refuge ... The most western of these caves is locally known as O'Haughan's Cave. Eneas O'Haughan was one of four brothers, robbers, who were long a terror to the neighbourhood. They ascended and descended by the Deer's Lane to the house of a Mrs. Jacques".

The Knockagh escarpment is a clear boundary between the the highest and poorest land of the Commons of Carrickfergus to the north-west, and the West Division of the County of Carrickfergus with it's coastal plain sweeping down to the shores of Belfast Lough at Lower Greenisland to the south-east. Above the Knockagh, the Commons were unenclosed in the 1700s when the O'Haughan Brothers were operating. At one end of the Knockagh cliffs is a narrow gap which is the only access up onto the commons from this western section of Carrickfergus County.

The O'Haughans were frequently chased by troops from the Garrison at Carrick up "Trooper's Lane" onto the Commons though the Stoney Glen, but then they would seem to mysteriously disappear when they backtracked in a circle down the Deer's Lane to hide in the caves underneath the Knockagh - from where they could watch for the troops returning to the town.

The map of this part of the Commons boundary shows how O'Haughan's Cave was accessed from the Commons, remembering that it was in the early 1700s when these events were unfolding, and the Commons wasn't divided into fields until after 1870.

THE O'HAUGHAN BROTHERS

About 1710, John O'Haughan, a hill farmer was living near Braetown at the head of the Glenwhirry valley north of Ballynure, close to the Carnalbanagh Hills where the Portglenone to Larne cattle trail approached Kilwaughter and Larne. This was the home territory of the O'Haughans as far back as 1669 when we find a Donel Oge O'Haughian and a Neese O'Haughian living there in the Hearth Money Rolls of that date. By 1900 almost all of that family were living in the Ballycarry and Eden area of east Antrim, and using the spelling "Hawkins". (Interestingly enough, the 1901 census reveals a number of Catholics with the name "Haughan" living in Belfast - but in east Antrim the more numerous Hawkins were all Presbyterian).

Back about 1710, John O'Haughan was being evicted by his landlord for non-payment of rent when the bailiff was killed by one of his four sons. These four brothers - Roger, Eneas, Shane Oge and Neese O'Haughan went on the run, along with a foster brother Phelimy, and they joined an outlaw band of "freebooters" led by a "Captain" McAllister, himself from near Ballynure.

Not long after the O'Haughan brothers joined the outlaw band, Captain McAllister was captured by troops from Carrickfergus and executed. Neese O'Haughan was unanimously chosen leader in his stead, and they raided - almost always at night - farms and houses not only around the Commons and the mid-Antrim valleys of the Braid and Glenwhirry, but occasionally ventured as far as Ligoniel on the northern outskirts of Belfast, hiding out when necessary on Divis, the Black Mountain or the back of Cave Hill .

Of course, the gang only resorted to caves when being pursued, and after a successful night they frequented shibeens in clachans (farm villages) like Raloo north of the Commons where they would divide their spoils, keeping their hosts sweet with 'gifts' of rustled livestock. The exploits of the gang soon became the stuff of 'Robin Hood' - type legend, and their number included (according to one ballad): "The Boul Neese O'Haughin, and Shane Og the tory, Little Owen Murphy, and his young brother Rory. Randal John Agnew, M'Ginty, and M'Ginnis, tho' half the Braid pursue, made good the upper Teenies ". In a previous post I made mention of the Steel Boys raids from the Commons in the 1770s: "Among those convicted in 1770 was a Paddy McKenty of Raloo, who almost certainly was from the same family as the ancestors of the modern crime writer Adrian McKinty mentioned in my last posting". Adrian, who now lives in Australia, commented on that post to ask if I was saying that his great-great ... great grandfather was a cattle rustler. Hmm! No, but it is worth noting that a McKinty/McGinty was a member of the infamous O'Haughan band of outlaws in the 1710s!

When Neese O'Haughan was captured and executed, his brother Shane Oge became leader of the outlaw gang. In 1843, a folk poet from Ballynure (Samuel Turner) published a detailed account of the exploits of this gang along with a lengthy poem about "The betrayal of Shane Oge" which inevitably ends with the capture of Shane Oge. He describes elsewhere in his book how Shane Oge had, on becoming leader of the gang, "stood at the entrance of a cave at the Knockagh, and witnessed the procession that accompanied his brother to the fatal gallows at Carrickfergus".

Stories of the O'Haughans "robbing the rich to help the poor" became almost as numerous as their and legendary as their cleverness in outwitting their military and bounty-hunting pursuers. Numerous escapades are detailed in Samuel Turner's book: Gleanings from Ballyboley Braes: Career of The Freebooters Ohaughin, and Poems, (Ballymena Observer, 1843). One example of a chase of Shane Oge O'Haughan by dragoons from Carrick up to the Knockagh Cave is given in this book as follows:

On another occasion the “fogies” – as the old pensioners then doing garrison duty in the Castle of Carrickfergus were called – were ordered out to beat up his haunts about the Knockagh, and if possible to secure him. They accordingly sallied out one fine morning, and advanced cautiously and steadily till they had reached a place called Archy’s Bushes, at that time a favourite retreat for Shane Oge and his companions. Here they distinctly observed the object of their search apparently fast asleep on a ledge of rock which overhung the precipice, and looking on him now as good as taken, they dismounted from their horses, and stole forward on tip-toe to make him their prisoner. But the wily Shane Oge was not thus to be caught napping, for coolly waiting till they came within a few yards, he started up, emptied the contents of a pistol into the body of the nearest horse, slid down the precipice, and was out of sight in an instant. The fogies were thunder struck at his sudden disappearance, but thinking it impossible he could escape them, and that he must be hidden somewhere near, they commenced a strict and active search among the tangled masses of brambles, stunted bushes, and underwood with which the spot abounded, in hopes to make out his whereabouts, till convinced he was not there, they took a wider range and had at last the pleasure of lighting upon his trail. By this time, however, Shane Oge was far a-head in the direction of Glenwherry, and, owing to his having taken the precaution of choosing the worst and most impracticable paths for horsemen, it was not till they had come in sight of Ballynure that they once more caught a glimpse of the object of their pursuit. He was yet a long way off, however, and breathless and worn out by the length of the run, was straining every nerve to reach the crest of the hill at a little distance before him, when a shrill peculiarly modulated whistle struck upon his ear. The meaning of this friendly recognition he well knew, for on reaching the top of the eminence he at once threw himself flat on his face among the tall and luxuriant heather, and awaited the result with the greatest composure. It is here necessary to say that his brother Philemy, being prowling about in that direction, had witnessed the chase from the time the horsemen emerged from the Commons above Straid, and divining the cause, had awaited patiently till Shane Oge came within ear-shot and then intimating to him by the whistle to hide himself, and diverging considerably to one side so as to draw the soldiers off the direct line of pursuit, lest they might stumble on his brother in his hiding-place, he folded his arms and stood ready to shew himself to the fogies as soon as they topped the eminence, fully determined on having a new run with them over the mountains and mosses on his own account. In this he was fully gratified, for they no sooner observed him standing, as if merely drawing his breath for a moment before attempting the ascent of a somewhat steep acclivity in front, than they gave chase, little thinking they had started a fresh man, and one too that was no less swift of foot than his brother. Onward and onward they went over rock and scaur, through long heather and bog hole and quagmire – the crafty Philemy all the while never seeking to damp the ardour of the pursuit, by getting too far ahead – till he reached the old Deerpark at Glenarm, when, thinking he had done enough, he vaulted lightly over the boundary wall of the enclosure, leaving the tired and out-manouvred fogies to retrace their footsteps as they best might to Carrickfergus, crest-fallen and dispirited at the ill success of their hard day’s run.

Another story worth quoting is how Shane Oge spared a farmer in Bryantang at the Ballynure end of the Dalway Cattle Trail when he came across him at prayer:

Having heard of an old man in the neighbourhood of Ballynure named Scott, who lived almost alone and was reputed to be very rich, Shane Oge and his associates resolved on paying him a visit. Meeting therefore by appointment one evening at his residence, and reconnoitering the premises they soon found it would be no difficulty to effect an entrance; and once inside there was only a grey-haired old man and a helpless old woman to oppose their ransacking the house. Directing his companions therefore, to keep out of the way till they got the signal to advance, Shane Oge stepped up cautiously to the door, to listen if all were quiet, just as the voices of the inmates were raised aloft in prayer and praise to their Creator, before retiring to rest. He stood riveted to the spot while the good old man implored the Divine protection through the dark and silent watches of the night – heard him praying fervently for his enemies – the widow and the fatherless, the poor, the sick, the aged and the infirm, the household outcast and the wanderer, who had none on earth to help them, and knew not where to lay their head – till at length touched with compunction at what he was about to do on the unsuspecting and pious old man, he withdrew from his position at the door, as silently as he had advanced, and, beckoning on his companions, told them what he had heard, and that he had come to the determination of retiring from the place immediately and leaving him unmolested. This the others strenuously opposed, but on Shane Oge telling them flatly and plainly that the good old man was in the service of his Maker while they were in the service of the devil, and threatening them with his severest and unabated displeasure should they ever at any time from that night forth dare to molest, even to the value of a single cabbage stalk, about the premises, they at length, slowly and gloomily withdrew, muttering curses, not loud, but deep, on the sudden and unaccountable tender-heartedness of their once fierce and unscrupulous leader.

If these tales of outlaws on the Commons cattle trail don't resonate with an American connection, then I don't know what would - not even the Andrew Jackson homestead beside Dalway's Bawn.

Whatever happened to the Dalways of Bellahill (Dalways Bawn)?

2011-01-19T09:07:00.000-08:00

This 1911 photo of Bellahill House shows where the Dalways lived after they moved out of the 17th century bawn and into their fine new home (Bellahill House) which they built alongside the old bawn in 1794.

The last Dalway to live here was Marriott Robert Dalway who left for Australia in the 1880s, and the house was derelict in 1901 after the whole farm, bawn and house had been bought by one of Dalway's former tenants, a Bellahill farmer called John Davison.

What had become of the Dalway family since the 16th and 17th centuries? Back then, as we have seen in earlier posts, they developed and controlled a massive cattle empire (and owned much of the land) from Ballynure to Whitehead, not to mention their property and interests within the county and town of Carrickfergus.

The history of the Dalways of Bellahill would be a very lengthy project, even just for the later years, but a few nuggets along the way between the original John Dalway of the 1570s and the last Bellahill resident, Marriott R Dalway, are worth chronicling:

In 1625, the estates had been divided between the Dalways (of Dalways Bawn) and the Dobbs (of Castle Dobbs), after intermarriage between these two Elizabethan Plantation families that had settled side by side in east Antrim in the 1590s. When John Dalway, the elder, died in 1665, his widow married Col. James Wallace who commanded the Covenanters at the Battle of Pentland in Scotland 1666.

In 1661, the parliament of Ireland followed that of England in restoring the former government and worship, and in passing an act for burning the Solemn League and Covenant, the magistrates in every place being directors and witnesses. The only magistrate in the Kingdom who hesitated to burn the Covenant was Captain John Dalway, Mayor of Carrickfergus. On the 18th July, 1661, he was brought on his knees to the Bar of the House of Lords and fined £100 for not causing the Covenant to be burned

This was Captain John Dalway, the younger, who was High Sheriff of Antrim in 1636, and his son, Alexander Dalway served in the same office in 1662. One of Alexander's daughters, Eleanor Dalway, married Edward Clements of Straid (the supposed ancestor of 'Mark Twain'). Captain John Dalway died in 1687, leaving the estate to his cousin, Col. Robert Dalway.

In 1695, Col. Robert Dalway was a member of the Irish Parliament for Antrim. When he died in 1718, the next Robert Dalway to succeed to the family estate married Mary Marriott - a daughter of the wealthy Dublin brewer Joseph Marriott - in the same year, and by 1740 Robert was High Sherriff for Dublin County. His son Alexander was killed in Scotland in the rebellion of 1745, and Robert himself died in 1761.

The following corps of militia had assembled at Bellahill, under the care and direction of Robert Dalway, esq. by whom both officers and men were treated with great hospitality : Island Magee, Raloo, Glynn, Templecoran, Kilroot, Bellahill, and liberties of Carrickfergus, amounting to 200 men. These assembled on Friday ; they were mostly armed, and commanded as follows : captain, Mariott Dalway, esq.; lieutenants, Rev. James Dunbar, Messrs. Patrick Allan and Edward Hudson. Larne, 115 men, of lord Antrim's regiment; captain, Adam Johnston, esq. ; lieutenants, Messrs. James Agnew and James Blair:arrived on Friday. Glenarm, 120 men, of lord Antrim's regiment; captain, James Myres, esq.; lieutenants, Messrs. John Mitchell and William Higginson; ensign, Rev. Thomas Reid: arrived on Sunday, armed, and in uniform. Belfast News-Letter, 1760.

In 1761, Marriott Dalway was a member of the Irish Parliament for Carrickfergus, and his nephew Noah Dalway (who had inherited the family estate) was also a member for Carrickfergus in 1799. Noah Dalway opposed the Act of Union in 1800, but in 1801 was elected MP for Carrickfergus at Westminster.

Marriott Robert Dalway was born in 1832. He was High Sherriff of Antrim in 1859 and was MP for Carrickfergus from 1868-1880.

April 30, 1865, on Saturday, at one o'clock, Marriott R. Dalway, Esq., High Sheriff, arrived at the station, accompanied by his accomplished bride, where he was met by his numerous tenantry, who unyoked the horses from the carriage, and drew it through the town to Ballyhill, amidst the rejoicings of the people. An additional number of the tenantry and others of the surrounding neighbourhood were assembled to give a hearty welcome to the newly-married couple.

1865, September 21st. The first regatta came off in the Bay [of Carrickfergus]. The racing commenced at one o'clock, under the direction and supervision of Marriott R. Dalway, Esq., J.P., Commodore.

1868 November 21st. The election of Marriott Robert Dalway, Esq., as a member of Parliament for the borough [of Carrickfergus] was celebrated at Mounthill. Tar barrels and bonfires were lighted on all the surrounding hills.

1874, March 5th. The Conservative working men manifested their delight that the Protestant cause had been successful at the election of M. R. Dalway, M.P., and that the Conservative Government had entered into office, by burning tar barrels. There was a display of fireworks from the Scotch Quarter Quay.

At the height of Marriott R. Dalway's career about 1870, he invested heavily in a salt-mining venture on his lands near Eden in the old county of Carrickfergus. The remains of these mines and salt-works are still there, and I remember exploring the shafts and disused concrete salt-pans as a boy. They were close to Boneybefore - up Trailcock Lane, just behind Eden, - and the stagnant water in the ponds was alive with newts and frog-spawn. But financially, these salt-works proved to be the downfall of Marriott Dalway, and he 'fled his creditors' to live in Lome, Victoria, Australia in the 1880s. Of course, by the 1880s, the cattle trail across the Commons had been broken up by enclosure - and the new railway line from Belfast to Carrickfergus and Larne along with the introduction of steam cattle ships sailing from Larne and Carrickfergus, had effectively brought about the end of the Dalway cattle empire anyway.

Shortly after Marriott R Dalway left for Australia, his home farm of 212 acres along with Dalways Bawn and Bellahill House, was sold off to John Davison, who in 1860 had been a tenant farmer of Dalway's in Bellahill townland. John Davison's old farm of 80 acres had straddled the cattle trail as it entered Bellahill from the Commons.

In 1917 the Dalway Bawn farm and Bellahill House were in turn bought from John Davison by another farming family from Bellahill, the Caldwells. In 1860 John Caldwell had a farm of 21 acres and Abraham Caldwell one of 18 acres in the townland. It was the Caldwells who remodelled Bellahill House in the 1930s, taking off the top storey, re-roofing and modernising it into a bungalow.

Believe it or not, 'Bellahill House' is still standing, but its modern appearance is deceptive. It takes a close comparison of the front door and ground floor bay windows to show that they are the same. In fact, I was in this house in the 1950s when I was at Eden Primary School with one of the Caldwell children, and Mrs Caldwell had told me that the basement of the old Bellahill House was still underneath.

I had forgotten all this about the bungalow at Dalway's Bawn until last week when contacted by a cousin of these Caldwells - Ray Cowan. Ray was also in my Primary School class at Eden and his father's family (the Cowans) still farm at Bellahill (and were there in 1860 too). His mother was a Caldwell, and so his grandfather had lived at, and owned Dalway's Bawn. Well, this has opened a whole Pandora's box with incredible connections back to the photo I posted on 7 July, 2010: "An uncanny gathering at Bellahill Farm, near Dalway's Bawn, in 1953". Here the connections, uncanny enough when I wrote that post, have gone off the 'uncannyness' scale! So, more of that soon.

Portmuck and Bryan O'Neill in 1572

2011-01-15T03:34:00.000-08:00

In this detail of a map prepared for Sir Thomas Smith's Plantation of the Ards in 1572, "Belfurst" (Belfast) is shown at the head of the "baye of Knokfergus" (Carrickfergus Bay, as Belfast Lough was once known). But just north of Knokfergus (west is at the top of this map), on the barely distinguishable peninsula of Islandmagee, is marked "Portmuk" (Portmuck).

Mark Thompson has just posted this illustration on his "Bloggin fae the Burn" blog site (as a follow-up to his recent publication Sir Thomas Smith's Forgotten English Colony of the Ards and North Down in 1572). In earlier postings of my own I talked about the cattle raids of Bryan McPhelim O'Neill on the Commons of Carrickfergus and the Smith colonists in county Down as a prelude to the arrival of John Dalway with the Earl of Essex in 1573.

Of course, John Dalway eventually married into the Clandeboy O'Neill dynasty and obtained massive estates from the O'Neills between Whitehead and Ballynure in east Antrim. This land grant was confirmed by Queen Elizabeth and James I before Dalway's Bawn was built in the early 1600s.

But this map (of 1572) shows "Bryan Ferty" between Belfast and "Glanyboy" (Clandeboy) in the back country between Ballynure and Antrim town. Trouble is, Bryan Fertagh O'Neill, who had been Lord of Clandeboy before Sir Bryan McPhelim O'Neill, was killed in 1548, nearly a generation earlier than the Smith plantation.

Bryan Fachartach (also Ferty, or Fertagh) O'Neill, was great, great grandson of Aodh Buidhe (Hugh Boy) O'Neill, the progenitor of the whole Clandeboy (Clann Aodh Buidhe) O'Neill dynasty in east Ulster in the late 14th century.

However, this is ground I have covered before, so what is new? Well, we know that before John Dalway "established" the cattle trail from the lands behind Carrick to Scotland via Portmuck and Whitehead, it was the O'Neill's who were in control of the cattle-based economy in the hinterland of the medieval English colony of Carrickfergus. The trade from Carrick was with England although in the 1590s Elizabethan tower-houses or castles were also built at Whitehead and Portmuck to defend these "new" trading ports. But this map suggests that Portmuck was operating as a port (and a strategic one at that) at a time when the O'Neills controlled Islandmagee and east Antrim. Was there a cattle trade with Scotland in Bryan O'Neill's day? I think it is possible, and it could mean that our cattle trail is of even greater antiquity than from the days of Dalway's Bawn.

Postscript: I had just finished this post when Mark Thompson e-mailed me the short message: "Here's another"! This map is what was attached - it must be about the same date as the 1572 one as it has "Smites" castle marked on the Ards peninsula. But here again is "Karregfergus" and "Port Muk" (and perhaps Muck Isle marked as "The Kowe").

Another postscript: I mentioned before that Adrian McKinty's three fantasy novels (The Lighthouse Trilogy) set on Muck Isle at Portmuck involved a fictional American boy, Jamie O'Neill, who inherited the island and a "Laird of Muck" title from the ancient Ui Neill owners of the area. Well for those with local knowledge that think such a connection with the O'Neills is impossible - well, think again!

Cattle men from Scotland? The Eslers at Dalways Bawn

2011-01-06T08:46:00.000-08:00

In 1860, two James Eslers (father and son) were living beside each other a few fields away from Dalways Bawn. James Esler, senior, was in the home-townland of the Dalways at Bellahill as a byresman. He held his small thatched cottage from one of Marriott Dalway's main tenants - Alexander Hart. James Esler, junior, was similarly stationed nearby, but as he was in the townland of Dobbsland, and a Dobbs' tenant, he may have been a cattle hand at Castle Dobbs.

These Eslers were part of an extended family group (all spelled Essler in the 1860 Land Valuation) that were involved as cattle drovers, dealers and steaders at the Whitehead and Islandmagee end of the Commons cattle trail between Ballynure and Scotland. My earlier post "The Big Picture: Eslers and the 'Scotch' Cattle Drove Roads of mid Antrim", August, 2010, has the details of these Eslers and the more numerous group in mid Antrim that handled the Portglenone to Scotland cattle trail via Ahoghill and the port of Larne.

But where did these Eslers come from? They were all lowland Scots, arriving in east Antrim in the 17th century as horse and cattle drovers, and small hill farmers 'servicing' the cattle trails, according to family tradition. (My own great-grandfather was another James Esler from a hill-farm in Ballybeg, near Ahoghill).

In 1666 we get our first glimpse of the Antrim Eslers in the Hearth Money Rolls, prepared as a tax on all householders with a fixed chimney in their house. They then spelled their name Assler, Asslar or Ashler, but appear to be absent from the small Parish of Kilroot, which includes the townlands of Dobbsland and Bellahill. In practice, the names on this list don't include the landless, labouring classes, only farmers and landowners, and so although we do have a Mr Richard Dobb, a Mrs Dalway, a Mr Alex Dallway and a David Hart (an ancestor of Alexander Hart in 1860, and a descendant of the Capt. Hart who first settled here with John Dalway in the reign of Elizabeth I) the absence of an Assler/Esler from the 1666 Hearth money roles is not significant. But in the adjacent Parish of Templecorran, we find a James Asslar in 1666. This Parish covers the land between Ballycarry, Dalway's Bawn and Whitehead (where the 100 acre farm of William and David Essler controlled the land behind the port of Whitehead in 1860). There were no other Asslers in east Antrim in 1666, not even in Islandmagee where the farms of Patrick and Andrew Essler were in 1860.

Apart from this 'Whitehead' James Asslar, there are only 4 other Eslers recorded in the Hearth Money rolls for 1666 for Antrim. Three of these were living near the port of Larne: In the Parish of Kilwaughter we have John Ashler in Ballyhampton townland on the Agnew estate close to the port, and William Ashler on the nearby Agnew demesne. These names were both spelled 'Asler' on a repeat listing of 1669. A Thomas Ashler was living somewhere south of Larne, in either Inver or Glynn Parish in 1666. Family tradition has it that three Esler brothers came from Scotland in the 1600s and settled in three different parts of mid and east Antrim, giving rise to all the Antrim Eslers. If this is correct, then the main original settlement seems to have been at Kilwaughter near Larne, on the estate of the Agnews of Kilwaughter Castle and Lochnaw Castle near Stranraer in Scotland. The only other Esler in the 1666 Hearth Money Rolls is John Ashler at Rathkeen in the Parish of Rathcavan. This is on the upland between where the Braid and Glenwhirry river valleys run down to Ballymena, and where 'Eslertown' and the main concentration of Eslers survive along the Portglenone to Larne cattle trail.

So, if the '3 brothers' story is true, it seems that the first and main settlement of Eslers was at Larne, and the secondary settlements were at Rathkeen near Broughshane in mid-Antrim, and Whitehead/Ballycarry in east Antrim.

This gives us a real clue to the Scottish roots of our Eslers, for the Agnews of Kilwaughter Castle were from immediately across the North Channel at Lochnaw - between Portpatrick and Stranraer. And Portpatrick was the port of entry for the enormous cattle trade from Donaghadee in county Down, and the beginning of the major Galloway Cattle Drove road to Carlisle. In A.R.B. Haldane's book, "The Drove Roads of Scotland", he states that between 1786 and 1790, over 55,000 head of Irish cattle were imported into Portpatrick, and in 1812 as many as 20,000 were landed. His map of the drove roads of Scotland shows the sea link for this trade between Donaghadee in county Down and Portpatrick.

Here then is a short abstract about the Agnews of Lochnaw and Larne (Kilwaughter):

Lochnaw Castle
In 1375 "The Agnew", Lord of Larne, went to Ireland with Edward Bruce, younger brother of King Robert the Bruce where he had been invited by the Irish Lords to help rid them of the English and rule in their place. Agnew stayed with Edward in Ulster for three years while he attempted to establish his power.

Andrew Agnew of Lochnaw was granted the lands and constableship of Lochnaw Castle in 1426. In 1451 he was appointed Sheriff of Wigtown, an honour still held by direct descendants today.
During the 15th century the Clan Agnew rose to power however this was under the powerful Clan Douglas. When the Douglases fell from the Kings favour the Agnews in Galloway in fact benefited. However this then brought them into many conflicts with the Clan MacKie and the Clan MacLellan.
16th century
In the 16th century during the Anglo-Scottish Wars Andrew Agnew of Lochnaw, was killed at the Battle of Pinkie in 1547 in fighting against the English.

Sir Patrick was MP for Wigtownshire from 1628 to 1633, and again from 1643 to 1647. He was created a Baronet of Nova Scotia on 28 July 1629. He died in 1661 and was succeeded by his eldest son, Andrew, who had been knighted in his father’s lifetime and who was also returned as MP for Wigtownshire. He was created Sheriff of Kirkcudbright as well as Wigtown in the 1650s, when Scotland was part of the Protectorate with England. He married Anne Stewart, daughter of the first Earl of Galloway.
The fifth Baronet, another Andrew, married a kinswoman, Eleanor Agnew of Lochryan, the union producing no fewer than twenty one children.

So the Agnews were known as "Lords of Larne" from the 14th century when they first visited east Antrim with Edward the Bruce! Their Kilwaughter estate was granted in the 17th century as part of the Ulster Plantation of lowland Scots, and by 1659 Kilwaughter Parish had the highest proportion of "Scotch" inhabitants of any Parish in Ireland (over 90%). It may well be that the first Eslers came with the Agnews from their Lochnaw estate near Portpatrick - or maybe they were continually moving west, "sourcing" cattle back along the drove routes from Dumfries and pioneering the western extension of this deep into county Antrim. This is well worth somebody chasing up on the ground in Scotland! But certainly our Eslers at Dalway's Bawn were part of something bigger as far as the cattle trade with Scotland is concerned. One thing is sure - the Esler story is the classic Ulster-Scot story.

Booley huts and booleying on the Commons

2010-12-02T11:07:00.000-08:00

The ghostly footprints of ancient sod walls still mark the sites where families once moved with their cattle up to uplands in county Antrim during the summer months (from May to October). They built temporary "booley" huts to live in, usually beside a water burn or spring.
"Booleying" - what the text-books call transhumance in other parts of the world - comes from the Irish "booley" or "boley" that is used to describe either the upland summer grazing place for cattle or the summer hill dwelling used by the herdsmen. These huts were made of sod and timber branches covered with rushes for thatch. Some 400-year-old drawings of these huts give an idea of how they were put together.

In the 1570 picture-map of Carrickfergus, it almost looks as if they had descended on the town after the summer for a harvest Feast of Tabernacles!

The old custom was for the young folk (sometimes the entire family), to leave the "clachan" (a cluster of farms with solid buildings) in the lowlands as soon as the crops were sown and migrate to summer pastures in the hills. When the lands between Carrickfergus town and the Commons were parceled out in the 1500s into Aldermans Shares (strips of single, dispersed farms within their own fields), the Commons was still intended for summer grazing by these farmers. But it was the farms on the far (northern) side of the Commons that were still "booleying" on the Commons when the practice had died out in the 1800s elsewhere.

When the Commons itself was finally divided up into farms and fields there was serious unrest, with bands of men pulling down the new fences in 1880 and attacking anybody who tried to build permanent houses. There had always been a slight sense of lawlessness connected with cattle on the Commons. In the early days, Bryan O'Neill was cattle raiding on a grand scale here in the 1500s, and cattle stealing remained a problem down to the Steelboys revolts in the 1770 when men from this early secret society of anti-establishment Presbyterian peasants burned down farmhouses and stole cattle belonging to the wealthy farmers (including some of Mr. Dalway's tenants) near Carrickfergus. Ransoms were demanded and the money was to be left at the Priest's Rock (Craignabraher) on the Commons, which is where the Covenanters held their open air meetings. It was soon discovered that the culprits were from the clachan of Raloo just to the north. Among those convicted in 1770 was a Paddy McKenty of Raloo, who almost certainly was from the same family as the ancestors of the modern crime writer Adrian McKinty mentioned in my last posting.

The families that took their cattle to booley places on the Commons like Ardboley (High Booley), Carnbilly (Booley Cairn) or Milky Knowes had their home farms down on lower ground in clusters or villages called "clachans". The arable land around each clachan was shared out between the group in a jigsaw of tiny plots and strips each year, and when the cattle returned before the 1st November, the field markers were torn down and the land around the clachans returned to common winter grazing. The homecoming to the clachan at harvest time (at the latest 1st November) was another great time of celebration and seasonal customs, closely tied up with Halloween bonfires and gatherings on 31st October.

When I was a young student, 40 years ago, I made a study of some of these clachans that had survived in the 1830 landscape north of the Commons in south-east Antrim - Glenoe, Raloo, Mackeystown, Ballylagan, Drummondstown, Lylestown, Uppertown and Browndod. In Scotland, such clachans are also called "farm-towns" (or if they have a church or mill: "kirk-towns" or "mill-towns"). Glenoe was properly a mill-town as it was clustered around a water-powered corn mill near Glenoe waterfall, and Raloo - still a really impressive clachan if you can find it - is a kirk-town with a (Non-Subscribing) Presbyterian Meeting House hidden among the cluster of surviving farms down a country lane.

When the family groups moved from these clachans in May along with their cattle to the summer booley pastures, their tracks up onto the high ground of the Commons cut across the established Dalway cattle trail, as shown on the map. This must have involved strange encounters, if not a clash of cattle herding cultures. And the booleying one was always the "poor cousin": often stigmatised with the idea that their encroachment was trespass. Another perception was that these "booley boys" were involved in cattle stealing, or worse. Not only did the Steelboys from Raloo conspire at the Priest's Rock near Ardboley on the Commons in 1770, but this was also the Commons rallying point for the local United Irishmen in 1798 before joining the Ballycarry Corps on their way to the Battle of Antrim. Of course, as the Commons had no permanent buildings or occupants in the 18th century, these "rebels" were from the radical Presbyterians that had lived in and around these clachans. These were the men who saw the establishment - be it landlords, government or established (Episcopal) church - as the same enemy as had been successfully overthrown in America by their first and second generation Scotch-Irish cousins in the American War of Independence. But the price of failure in Antrim was a dissenting tradition that has been submerged and forgotten for hundreds of years. The landscape north of the Commons is one of a rich, hidden heritage that has to be searched carefully for, off the beaten pad, and certainly off the tourist trail.

So, if you pass through Glenoe (the only clachan which has a surfaced, drivable road through it), try and see beyond the picturesque waterfall to that hidden history of clachans, booleying and a "dissenting" independent spirit that typifies the local folk. I visited Glenoe waterfall again last month and as Helen and I walked up through the village it reminded me of a similar walk we had near Boone, North Carolina some 30 years ago - and then walking through Glenoe 20 years ago with friends from Kentucky. When you add the shared history and heritage together, the "mountain men" of this part of Antrim and the "hill-billys" of the Apalachians have more than genes in common.

Whitehead and Islandmagee: The Eslers in control of the end of the cattle trail

2010-11-01T12:40:00.000-07:00

Whitehead is a quiet sea-side town, just a short hop on the train from Carrickfergus towards Larne. The road 'East of Eden' to Larne goes past the back of the town too, but it is a bit of a push on the bike as the road climbs over the high headland of "Whitehead" at a place called the "Blaa Hole", then down a very steep side road into the town.
The Blaa Hole (blow-hole) was, as the name suggests, a bit of a wind tunnel. I remember my dad wakening me up to show me his first car that he had brought home the night before. He took me a run to Whitehead and back before school, and, coming through the Blaa Hole, the bonnet flew up and covered the view out the windscreen. So I had good reason to remember the reason behind the name - for the sea was a terrifying 200 feet below when we finally stopped against the stone wall!

The view looking down on the town from the Blaa Hole shows the promenade, an open-air swimming pool and the small quay at the far end of the bay. This residential town I remember being full of "oldies" (retired senior citizens), and as a place where our parents took us for walks along the shore to Blackhead lighthouse on the far headland.

But as boys we sometimes walked to Whitehead along the railway track, past Jonathan Swift's "Round House" at Kilroot, and along the coast to the White Harbour, underneath the Blaa Hole. This was a hidden world with a limestone quarry on the landward side of the railway track, and the derelict White Harbour (it was silted up then)on the other. It was built of massive cut white limestone blocks, and was once used to export the limestone. It was such a marvel to us that our walks to Whitehead often never got past this point.

The railway tracks separated here, with a single track hugging the coast, and the Whitehead-bound track cutting through the headland into a short tunnel which still emerges immediately into the town. The two tracks converge before reaching the period railway station in Whitehead, surviving much as it was when it was built in 1877.

Whitehead is the gateway to the peninsula of Islandmagee. It is a Victorian sea-side "railway town", and when the station was opened, it became a tourist haven for day-trippers from Belfast, especially those wanting to visit the Gobbins Cliff Path in Islandmagee by connecting jaunting car, or the nearby Blackhead lighthouse with its similar but less daunting cliff walks.
This earlier view of Whitehead from the Blaa Hole about 1900 is deceptive. It gives the impression of a long-established settlement, but in fact the oldest buildings visible are the Customs Houses in the middle foreground with the square Watch-tower at the far end. This Customs Station was built just before the railway about 1850. The map of the townland of Whitehead in 1860 tells a very different story as far as the age of the town is concerned.

Here, in 1860, we see the railway line completed but no station built as yet, and there is no town whatsoever. The entire area of the present town, from the coast to the main Larne road, was a 100-acre farm in the hands of William and David Esler (spelled Essler in the 1860 land valuation). This included the Coastguard Buildings which were leased from this farm and the significance of these Eslers to the running of the Antrim cattle drove trails to Scotland has already been described in an earlier post ("The Big Picture: Eslers and the 'Scotch' Cattle Drove Roads of mid Antrim", August 2010). The fact that they were landlords for the Whitehead Customs buildings at this port at the end of the Dalway's Bawn Cattle Trail is quite staggering! But, as we shall see, the Esler control was even more decisive in Islandmagee proper.

The two tiny ports of Whitehead and Portmuck that link the end of the east Antrim Cattle Trail with the main Scottish Drove Roads were effectively "twinned" from the 16th century down to the 1850s. Each had an Elizabethan "castle" maintained and garrisoned from Carrickfergus - not for defence, but to control the customs duties due from trade with Scotland. These subsidiary "creeks" as they were called in the 17th century were a constant headache for the main port of Carrickfergus, and so the Customs stations at Portmuck and Whitehead were their direct descendants.
Castle Chichester in Whitehead is the only pre-Victorian building in the town (its shared history with Portmuck Castle is also described in previous posts).

Whitehead was one of two tiny ports marking the end of the east Antrim Cattle trail. The trail splits behind Muldersleigh Hill north of Whitehead, the hill whose coastal headland is the location of Blackhead lighthouse. I have added to a contextual map of Islandmagee and Whitehead not only the route of the end of the Cattle Trail, but also the location of the Islandmagee farms of Patrick and Andrew Esler in 1860 siuated side by side between the Gobbins Road to Portmuck and a small break in the Gobbins cliffs called "Heddle's Port".

The Eslers' farms in Islandmagee were mostly in the townland of Balloo, about midway along the Gobbins coast, and a few hours cattle drove from Portmuck. Unlike the Eslers at Whitehead, they had no interest in the port itself, and maybe had good reason to be just out of immediate sight of the Customs Station there. Smuggling was of course, illegal, but when it involved simply the occasional avoidance of duty payments for horses being landed or cattle being shipped out to Scotland, it was not as rigorously pursued as the illicit trade in spirits and tobacco. A row of thatched cottages at the end of Sally Kane's Loanen on Patrick Esler's farm in Balloo was called "Caleery-town". According to the local historian Dixon Donaldson writing in the 1920s, this name was given because it was a popular rendezvous for the "young bloods" of the neighbourhood. Dixon Donaldson also wrote that there were smugglers caves along the Gobbins. One near Portmuck "... is called the Horse Cave where it is said stolen horses were hidden until transferred to smuggling vessels for transportation." Another cave, long forgotten, was discovered by two boys on the farm of Mr. Esler's "... on the face of the heughs above Heddle's Port. A rope and candles were procured ..." and the boys discovered the remains of barrels and other contraband. (Every time I read this, I think of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn!)
If, as seems likely, the "Esslers" of Islandmagee, Whitehead and Dalway's Bawn were all related, it is the Islandmagee farm which seems to be the earliest settlement. A local graveyard near Balloo has all the known Esler graves, some going back to the early 1800s and apparently including an "Uncle David" Esler of Whitehead.

These 'East of Eden' Chronicles have stumbled on many connections with famous writers such as Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain. And there are others still to be met with. But just now, for reasons which will soon become obvious, I must bring the modern crime writer Adrian McKinty into the story. He was born and raised in Carrickfergus, only a stone's throw away from Boneybefore, although he has lived for most of his writing career in America and Australia. Adrian McKinty is best known as a writer of crime and mystery novels such as the award-winning "Fifty Grand", or the one I first discovered, "Hidden River".
I was outside a shop in the south of England, impatiently waiting for my wife and browsing through some books for sale. American crime novels are not usually my scene, but the author's name (McKinty) caught my attention: a Les McKinty lived nearby to Boneybefore when I was a boy, and he cycled to work every day to Castle Dobbs where he worked on the Dobbs' estate. His sons were in the Star of Eden Pipe Band, so imagine my surprise when I flicked open the first page and found that the American detective in the story was originally from Carrickfergus! Eagerly reading whatever else of McKinty's books I could get hold of, I found that I actually liked these crime novels anyway. But the bonus was that several of his books have really strong local associations: "Orange Rhymes with Everything" is set in Carrickfergus, and "The Lighthouse Land" in Islandmagee.
In fact, the main setting of "The Lighthouse Land" is Portmuck, or to be precise Muck Isle. The book is the first of three in the Lighthouse Trilogy of "young adult sci-fantasy novels" - different from the decidedly adult crime novels. A young American boy, Jamie O'Neill, inherits the small isle of Muck through a previously unknown descent from the Elizabethan Clandeboy O'Neills - and travels to take up his new life across the causeway on the island:

"But the island has a secret, locked in the top of its ancient lighthouse ... Discovering the secret will send him on an interstellar mission that could change the course of his life, and the universe, forever."

The story is well worth reading, even as an adult, but I can't resist being parochial in my enthusiasm. The area around Portmuck is described vividly as Jamie makes local friends and travels daily to school in Carrickfergus. So too is Muck Isle, apart from the obvious fact that the real Muck Isle doesn't have a lighthouse.
That is where Blackhead Lighthouse at Whitehead comes in. Adrian McKinty has cleverly brought the two together in a way that almost makes me expext to see Blackhead lighthouse on Muck Isle when I go down the steep road to Portmuck. He still has family connections in Whitehead and Carrickfergus, but the McKinty roots are firmly grounded in the Islandmagee - Magheramorne area. I almost expect to find some of them along with the Eslers as I explore and re-trace the historical path of the old Dalway cattle trail from Ballynure to Portmuck and Whitehead.

Mark Twain - descended from the Dalways of Dalway's Bawn?

2010-10-16T09:19:00.000-07:00

When I first read 'Tom Sawyer' by Mark Twain as a boy it gripped me like no other book I had ever read. The stories in my other books were very 'English public school' in their setting and dialogue, but Tom Sawyer's world (actually much further away - in Missouri), seemed just like my own. I can still remember the story when Tom couldn't go out to play with his friends on a Saturday because Aunt Polly had told him to whitewash the garden fence first. When his chums called for him, Tom pretended that he would rather paint the fence as he just loved doing it. So his puzzled friends asked to watch. Then, they asked to have a try with the paintbrush, but Tom said he wanted to do it himself. I think his friends ended up paying Tom to let them paint the fence while he sat and watched. This was a rouse I tried out on my own friends one Saturday, and it almost worked, but not quite!

'Mark Twain' was the pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), a name he took from the leadsman’s call on the Mississippi river. In 1876 he published "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" followed in 1882 by his story of Tudor England "The Prince and the Pauper". However the popularity of Tom Sawyer had readers demanding more, and in 1885 he wrote "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and "Life on the Mississippi". Huckleberry Finn has been hailed the first ‘Great American Novel’, a concept meaning a novel which most perfectly represents the spirit of life in the United States at the time of its writing. He wrote more than 30 books and hundreds of short stories and essays.

Apparently, Samuel Langhorne Clemens was of Scotch-Irish descent on both his father's and his mother's side of the family. His mother was Jane Lampton who
married John Marshall Clemens in 1823. Jane Lampton's grandfather was Col. William Casey, an early Kentucky pioneer who, in 1789, established the Casey/Butler Fort. This was the first permanent settlement in what is now Adair County and he settled there with his wife (Jane Montgomery) and about 30 other families. The Casey family had migrated to America from Ulster earlier in the century.

On his father's side of the family, the Clemens (originally Clements) were also of 'Scotch-Irish' descent, but this time they came from a more aristocratic Ulster background in east Antrim that had an association with an English army tradition before the American Revolution. Samuel Langhorne Clemens' grandfather was a Samuel B. Clemens, the first of Mark Twain's father's family to make an appearance in the historical record in America. The occasion was in October 1797, with his marriage to Pamela Goggin in Virginia.

Here I jump to the Clements (or 'Clemence') family of 'Clements Hill' between Straid and Ballynure. This district is right at the start of the Dalway's Bawn cattle trail, and in an earlier post ("The Rise of John Dalway's Cattle Empire in East Antrim", 10 July 2010) I described how this area around Ballynure - although quite distant from Dalway's Bawn - was a key part of the Dalway land grants from the early 1600s.

I have re-posted the map here, adding in the location of Clements Hill, south-west of Ballynure (click on the map to enlarge).

Every local history book and tourist guide for Ballynure in east Antrim claims Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) as a 'famous son' of the district. Here is a typical entry:

Mark Twain, as he was known to his worldwide readers was christened Samuel Langhorne Clemens. His family roots were on the edge of Ballyclare and the oldest gravetone in the nearby churchyard in Ballynure is his ancestor Elenor Clemens - 1628. A favourite walk in this part of County Antrim is from the Green Road to the Ballynure Road. It is known as the Back Walks and crosses an area called Clements Hill from whose height there were splendid views across the valley of the Six Mile Water. This was the Clemens family home for many years - the 't' being added at a later date. They were an important family and there are records of their contribution to the town of Carrickfergus where some served on the governing bodies. Samuel himself refers to the family living in this County Antrim valley.

These Clements were not ordinary tenant farmers, but they belonged to the same old-established, English landlord class as the Dalways - and indeed they married into the Dalways in the 1600s.
In the old graveyard of Ballynure Parish Church are two large family vaults belonging to the Dobbs family of Castle Dobbs (who by also marrying into the Dalway family, came to be in possession of much of the former Dalway estate at Ballynure). But the oldest gravestone in the burying ground is that of Ellinor Clements, dated 1698. Here is the full inscription (with the Dalway connection highlighted):

Clements
Here lyeth the body of Ellinor,
the wife of Edward Clements of Mvlligan-Hill gent.
and eldest daughter of Alexander Dallvay of Bally Hill Esqr.,
who departed this life
03 Mar 1698 aged 35 years.

The historical connections between Ballynure and Dalway's Bawn at Ballycarry - although they were at opposite ends of east Antrim and separated by the County of Carrickfergus - were extremely close because of the Dalway cattle trail. It is a bit like the close connections between two trading ports at opposite sides of a sea. This came home to me when I visited the graveyard at Ballynure Parish Church last week. On a ruined stone wall near the Dobbs' family vault, is a blue plaque erected by the Ulster History Circle to "JONATHAN SWIFT author of Gulliver's Travels, Prebendary here 1695-97".

Jonathan Swift's period as Church of Ireland Prebend of Kilroot is described in another earlier post ("The original Yahoos at Kilroot", 28 May 2010), but I was unaware then that his ecclesiastical duties extended beyond the 'East of Eden' parishes of Templecorran and Kilroot, to include this distant parish of Ballynure. Swift's literary importance is enormous as he has been described as the greatest satirist of English literature. So it is interesting to speculate about the possible closeness of Swift's friendship, not only with the Dalways and Dobbs at Kilroot (as they were the leading Episcopalian families in a district which was otherwise almost wholly Presbyterian), but also in Ballynure with Alexander Dalway's daughter Ellinor and her husband Edward Clements of Clements Hill (from whom 'Mark Twain' is believed to be descended).

THE CLEMENTS OF CLEMENTS HILL
King John in 1210 granted a charter to Henry Clemens and Roger de Preston to lands near the present town of Larne in County Antrim. By the 1600s, the family (sometimes spelled 'Clemence' and sometimes 'Clements') were living in the Ballynure area of the Six-Mile-Water valley.
In 1609, Edward and John Clements settled at Straid, which was then called Thomastown because it had been possessed under Elizabeth I by Thomas Stevenson of Carrickfergus. Edward Clements had just obtained a deed from John Dalway of the townlands of Ballythomas, Straidballythomas, and Ballymenagh. At the same time his brother John Clements is noticed as also holding lands near Straid.

About 1640, Henry Clements of Straid, who is believed to have been son of the above Edward, was deputy recorder of Carrickfergus. In 1648, we find him a captain in Sir John Clotworthy's regiment of foot, and in the following year in garrison at Carrickfergus, of which town he had been chosen an alderman. He died soon after.

Henry Clements (Junior) and his brother Edward, were among those who signed the Antrim Association in 1688. In 1692, Henry was one of the representatives in parliament for Carrickfergus. On the death of Henry, his brother Edward succeeded to the family estates. In 1707, he resided at Clements-hill, in which year he served the office of high sheriff of the county of Antrim, and in 1715 he was appointed major of a regiment of militia dragoons belonging to the same county, commanded by the Hon. John I. Chichester.

Edward Clements married Ellinor, daughter of Alexander Dalway, Ballyhill who died March, 1696, and by her had seven sons, and two daughters: Edward, Henry, Hercules, Francis, John, Dalway, Anne and Millicent. In 1716, Edward Clements was high sheriff of the county of Antrim. He died 1733.

The children of Edward Clements and Ellinor Dalway included several that had distinguished military careers. Francis was appointed major of dragoons on the decease of his father, and in 1721, served the office of high sheriff of the county of Antrim. Both John and Dalway Clements were officers in Colonel Skeffington's regiment when it served during the 1689 Siege of Derry. This tradition continued into the 18th century with several of the next generation of the family serving with their regiments in North America.

I have to admit that, swamped under a tide of genealogical information about the early migration of these Clements to America in the wake of Arthur Dobbs' first contingent from this area in 1751, I have not even attempted to trace the direct line of descent to Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain). But it is well worth somebody researching it - if only to justify another blue plaque in Ballynure graveyard. And, of course, also a similar one on Dalway's Bawn!

Portmuck - the end of the Cattle Trail

2010-10-12T05:28:00.001-07:00

Sailing into Portmuck harbour from Scotland takes you past the small Isle of Muck - seen here with the north end of the Gobbins Cliffs in Islandmagee behind.

The only landing place on the island is on the landward side, and it was here that smuggled horses from Scotland were landed out of sight of any patrolling customs and excise boats. On the Gobbins coast almost opposite is a cave known as 'horse cave' where the smuggled horses were also hidden. The inward horse trade was the counterbalance to the outgoing cattle boats destined for the great drove roads of Scotland.

Looking down on the island from the high ground in the middle of the peninsula, the small harbour of Portmuck can be seen to the left, hidden from the isle by a small headland with farm buildings on top.

This scene has hardly changed in 100 years since the old photograph below was taken.

The ruins of Portmuck Castle are only the base walls of a stone tower built in the 1590s (see earlier posts "The Big Picture: Eslers and the 'Scotch' Cattle Drove Roads of mid Antrim", and "Dalways Bawn: The Earl of Essex's Plantation in east Antrim). It sits among and behind the farm buildings on the headland, so that it could overlook both the harbour and the 'sound' of water between the headland and Muck Isle. The large building down at the harbour was the Coastguards Building, which in the 1800s replaced the castle as the customs control center for the control of livestock imports and exports.

This was the end of the cattle trail as far as the old drove road from Ballynure, across the Commons of Carrickfergus and past Dalway's Bawn, but it was the beginning of the horse trail in the opposite direction, for Ballynure's horse fair was one of the biggest in the county.
When I was a boy, the shore opposite Muck Isle could only be accessed by climbing over the limestone rocks at the headland (there is a footpath now).

From this headland, where the castle ruins are, the shore is a limestone platform of white rocks which contrast completely with the black basalt rocks of the Gobbins cliffs. The castle wall rises straight from this headland on the Isle of Muck side, so that it had a clear view of the 'sound' and the causeway that linked the island. This natural causeway can be waded across at low tide, and of course, livestock could be driven across at this point too.

There is a very interesting account of how (because of the smuggling trade) the locals were unwilling to admit, even to Scots 'plantation' landlords, that there were any horses 'to be had' in the district in the early 1600s. The source is a letter of 1631 from J. Montgomery of Newton (Lord Montgomery of the Ards in County Down) to Archibald Edmonston of Red Hall, Ballycarry. Of course there were plenty of horses about, but the fact that they were all busy working sounds like a typical Ulster-Scots bargaining tool to effect a sale at an extortionate price.

"J. Montgomerie to Archibald Edmonstone of Duntreath. Requesting the loan of some horses.

1631, April 21st, Knockfergus [Carrickfergus]. - 'Worshipfull and loving coosen, It hathe so falne out that in my passage from Dunstey I have been forced to land far doun in Iyeland McGhie [Portmuck, Islandmagee] so as I ame forced to employ my freinds for supplie of horses, and in regarde the countrey is upoun the heate of there labour, I must intreate yow for the laine of some three or four garreins [small work horses] for the transporting of myself and company to the Newtoun [Newtownards] ... Signed, Montgomerie

[Reply on same page] Right honourable my, I sent your Lordship thrie garreins and for this present I have non els exept my gray hors that rane ane cours yeisterday, and I dar nott ventur him so schoune efter the race. My Lord, I tak very unkindly that ye suld have gone by this cottage, always I hop your Lordship vill mak ane amends. Thus in quhat I am able I remain ... Signed, Ar. Edmonstoun. "

Of course, I should have repeated in this post that the names of Portmuck and of Muck Isle are both derived from the Irish Gaelic word for 'pig' (muc) and the names have nothing to do with the state of cleanliness of the place! But it also shows that the so-called 'cattle trail' was frequented by other livestock as well - particularly horses and swine.

The Gobbins Cliffs

2010-10-04T11:47:00.000-07:00

The Gobbins cliffs in Islandmagee run almost continuously between the sea-ports of Whitehead and Portmuck, so that these two tiny harbours were the only places the cattle trade from Dalway's Bawn to Scotland could operate from. This 100-year old romantic painting of the Gobbins does not capture the terror which these cliffs held for me as a young boy. There were sea caves that could only be explored by boat, and I remember being taken in a local fishing boat from Boneybefore - the only time I ever saw those caves up close.

In the 1960s we could still walk along parts of a cliff path from the Whitehead end, but the footbridges had collapsed before the stretch where the caves were.

The Gobbins path was built as a tourist attraction for visitors traveling from Belfast to Whitehead on the newly constructed railway in the late 1800s. It was a marvel of engineering with iron suspension bridges giving spectacular access.

As a boy, we could actually 'tight-rope' walk across some of the remaining girders, until the whole path was closed off for safety reasons in 1961.

But the real terror for me was when we would walk along the cliff tops. I had - and still have - a fear of heights, but the Boneybefore boys were intent on adding seagulls eggs to our collection. Egg-collecting is of course illegal and regarded as 'bad behaviour' now. But we thought it was only bad if you ignored the 'one-egg-only-per-nest' rule.

It was the other lads who went down the cliff, not me! But that wasn't because of any scruples I might have had about egg-collecting. The last time we tried it my friends got stuck half-way down, and called up above to me to go and get a rope from a farm. So off I went to the nearest farm across a few fields as fast as my trembling legs could take me. The two men in the farmyard just shrugged their shoulders as if a cow had got out of the field again, lifted two ropes hanging ready, and effected a rescue. Hardly a word was spoken, even back at the farmhouse where we were given a cup of tea. "Ye'll stick to the road in future then?" the older man said. "Ay", I said, and meant it.

Along the Cattle Trail - in sight of Scotland

2010-09-29T11:30:00.000-07:00

Last week I explored further along the old cattle drove road where it survives from the Commons to Dalway's Bawn.
This was a new stretch of the countryside for me, as I had only gone as far as the first hill after Lough Mourne before. Imagine my surprise when I ventured beyond the next brae, over the highest point, and suddenly the Irish sea and the coast of Scotland was there - straight ahead. (No history in this post, just a few photos.)
The center hill in the near horizon is Muldersleigh Hill, behind Whitehead - one of the ports where the cattle were exported from, the other being Portmuck in Islandmagee which can be seen on the distant left. The ridge of fields in the middle distance is in the townland of Bellahill (where Dalway's Bawn is), and the valley immediately in front is that of the Copeland Water, which marks the boundary of Carrickfergus County.

Just to explain for the benefit of anybody following this 'virtual' field trip, the figure on the lane is my long-suffering wife Helen, getting ahead of the game picking blackberries.

Going back to the first part of the cattle track which I described in an earlier post (The Commons Cattle Trail Today, June 2010), some more photos from then set the scene just as you leave Lough Mourne and the Commons.

But back at the newly explored trail and the view of Scotland - you might have to click on this to enlarge if you want to see the Galloway coast - but believe me in the flesh it was as clear as anything, and to the left was the Scottish isle of Ailsa Craig looking just like Slemish rising out of the sea.

So, how far did we get? Well according to the map the lane goes all the way to Dalway's Bawn. But we only went on as far as the Copeland Water, at the bottom of the next valley. Here the lane crosses the Beltoy Road, and I was able to make a note of where to park the car when I (or we) come back to explore the next stage through Bellahill townland. (Our car was parked back at Lough Mourne, and as you will see from the next picture, this track is definitely not for ordinary vehicles).
At this point, the lane dives down to the valley bottom in a 1:3 gradient. Nothing like a field trip to understand why this lane survives without being made into a modern road!

So, nothing else for the time being except back to base at Lough Mourne.

Dalway's Bawn Revisited

2010-09-15T09:31:00.000-07:00

Since my first blog postings about Dalway's Bawn in June and July 2010, a lot more information has come to light on this 17th century cattle-fort, and the people associated with it in the 19th century - for in 1860 it was still playing an important role in the cattle trade between east Antrim and Scotland.

A view of the bawn from the air is interesting because it shows a third (unroofed) corner turret at the back left-hand corner of the bawn. Originally there were four turrets, one in each corner of the bawn, but the interior space is now a mass of agricultural buildings. In 1858 the bawn was surveyed, and it was recorded that the front turrets had been converted into living accommodation as early as 1632. It was also noted that "in its original state it was capable of affording shelter for 200 head of cattle".

The bawn is in the townland of Bellahill (or Ballyhill), and was occupied in 1860 by Marriott Dalway. On the map of Bellahill I have marked the location of four tenants of Marriott Dalway on his 'home' townland (click on map to enlarge). These four families each have their own stories that help us understand the bigger picture.

First of these is the original homestead of the parents of Andrew Jackson, 7th President of the United States. This (and not their temporary home in Boneybefore where the Andrew Jackson museum is), was the real 'ancestral homestead', and other members of the Jackson family farmed in this area right up to recent times. The ruins of the original house still stand along an overgrown trackway known as "Bullock's Walk" that accessed directly onto the old cattle drove road near Dalway's Bawn.

The next Bellahill farm is that of Alexander Harte. In 1860 Alexander Hart (as the family now spell the name) also had farms leased from Marriott Dalway in the North East Division of Carrickfergus, and in the nearby townland of Crossmary. These Harts appear to be the same family that came to Ulster with John Dalway in the late 16th Century (see earlier postings). The connection with Boneybefore is their surviving farm at 'Newseat' up Hart's Loanen from Boneybefore. In another earlier posting ('An uncanny gathering at Bellahill farm, near Dalway's Bawn, in 1953') there is a photo and explanation of the Hart family connection that I had when at Primary School in Eden, and of couse, Hart's Loanen from Boneybefore to the Commons was our gateway to that world.

James Esler of Bellahill was a cattle-hand at Dalway's Bawn in 1860, and his small cottage was on Alexander Hart's farm. His son James Esler (junior) lived a few fields away, in the townland of Dobbsland, and was a 'byresman'. This family was distantly related to me on my mother's side of the family, and all of the Eslers in Antrim at that time were involved with the cattle drove trade to Scotland. I still want to tease out a few things relating to these Eslers in future blogs: a) The Eslers of Islandmagee were a critical link in the final stretch of the cattle drove trail from Ballynure, past Dalway's Bawn, to Portmuck and thence to Scotland. b) The younger James Esler's marriage about 1855 to a Mary Drummond resulted in a fascinating legacy. James and Mary are both buried in Carrickfergus's Roman Catholic Graveyard, so I also want to explore this unexpected thread along with other aspects of the 'Old Irish Catholic dimension' of the Commons and Carrickfergus.

Finally, the farm of Alexander Hoey (later also Hay, Hoy and Hoye) in Bellahill in 1860 was right on the cattle drove trail coming down from the Commons, past the 'resting slap' and on down to Dalway's Bawn. (A 'slap' is an Ulster-Scots word for "a gap in a hedge or dyke allowing the passage of cattle"). This family would not have meant anything to me had I not recently received a fascinating family history from a member of this family in Canada with a detailed account of this particular farm - including this fascinating item:

"There is a tradition among the Hoys in County Antrim that their ancestor came from Scotland as groom in charge of John Dalway's horses, sometime between 1578 and 1606. As a groom, most of his duties were at the castle and bawn. But in time he leased from Dalway a farm about a half mile northeast of the castle overlooking the Muttonburn valley. This farm, or part of it, now belongs to his descendant Isaac Hoy, and the present Hoy home here was probably built by the original Scotch settler."

These four families living in Bellahill give us just a glimpse of the depth of history behind the thing that links them all - Dalway's Bawn.

The Road from Boneybefore

2010-09-06T08:56:00.000-07:00

Our history in Boneybefore was folk history - tales told to us by the likes of Tillie Millar from the door of her thatched cottage.

"This was once the main horse and coach road to Larne", she told us. "Along here dandered Andrew Jackson's mother, wi' the future President in her wame (womb); and Jonathan Swift, the man that writ Gulliver's Travels, spittin' on the Presbyterians as he passed; and General Thurot wi' his French soldiers marching on Carrick".
"How did Boney get its name?" we asked.
"This is where the French soldiers landed", Tillie said, "and General Thurot told Napoleon that they were at a bonny wee place before Carrick".

That last story made us laugh, for even in those days we knew the French didn't speak Ulster-Scots. But, a large farm above Boneybefore was given the polite name of 'Fair Prospect' and the older spelling is sometimes "Bonnybefore" as it is on the map below. 'Boney' is simply how we pronounced the Scots word 'bonny' in Ulster, and the best-known version of that is in the local song "The boney wee lass" (which has nothing to do with the pretty young girl's frame!)

We never took such folk history very seriously back then, but as I went on myself to travel the long road from Boneybefore to the bigger world, I discovered not only the truth of most of those tales, but that it was my school-book history which was often untrustworthy. In 1760 a Francois Thurot did land 600 French troops 'near Kilroot' and captured Carrickfergus after the 'Battle of Carrickfergus' in the streets of the town. He held it for 5 days and then fled back to France by sea.

On reflection, the most impressive of all Tillie Millar's gems of Boneybefore history was her insistence that the dust-track running through our village was once a main coach road, (something that seemed unlikely to us as we were sandwiched in a backwater between the railway line along the shore on one side, and the wide, main Larne Road on the other side). But the map evidence tells a different story.

The 'Carrickfergus and Larne Railway Company' opened the line to Larne about 1845, and it cut across the line of the old coach road just before Boneybefore, removing the original Andrew Jackson homestead in the process. From this point a new 'Larne Road' was constructed by-passing Boneybefore and it took a new course through the 'new' village of Eden. But the old line of the original coach road (a dashed red line on map) could still be traced in laneways and footpaths right to the ancient church site of Kilroot when I was a boy.

Kilroot Church was founded in the 5th century, right back at the time of St Patrick. It has the ruins of a bishop's palace and a surrounding bawn wall with two surviving round corner flankers (but nothing like as grand as those at Dalway's Bawn). The old church ruins are just tiny fragments of stone walls, in the middle of an ancient graveyard. Jonathan Swift was appointed Prebend of Kilroot in 1695, and lived nearby.

I have made mention of Jonathan Swift and his Kilroot house in an earlier post, but two other boyhood associations with this ancient site come to mind. There was a large round stone with a cup shaped hollow in it that held stagnant water, and was believed to be a cure for warts. My old school pal Eric Glynn did try it on a wart he had on his thumb, and it did work! I now know this was a "bullaun" stone (check it out on wikipedia) and these are reckoned to be early Christian in date. It has been removed to a local church, I think, as a baptismal font.

The second association I have with Kilroot is the old graveyard. Only once did we ever hear of a burial in our time there. It was a very cold January, and Tommy Donaldson had died. It was his farmhouse in Boneybefore that is now the "Andrew Jackson Museum". The reason the Donaldsons had burial rights in Kilroot must tell a story of its own, but I presume they were an old family with connections hundreds of years before going back to that parish. Anyway, when Tommy died, there was a fierce snowstorm and the Kilroot graveyard was cut off for over 3 weeks. The delay with Tommy lying in 'cold storage' in Boneybefore was the talk of the place for years, and seemed to emphasize the question we all had - why Kilroot?

The other end of the road from Boneybefore was, of course, the road into Carrick town. This was just over a mile, and the line of the original coach road was mostly the same main road as today from Green Street along the Scotch Quarter into the town. .

Right back in 1680, a drawing of the east side of Carrickfergus shows the line of thatched houses in Scotch Quarter (outside the town walls) leading along the shore towards Boneybefore. This is just as Jonathan Swift must have known it when he rode from Kilroot to Carrickfergus and Belfast.

Of course, the Scotch Quarter has only larger, slated houses today, but between there and Boneybefore the road was known as Green Street (from a local linen bleaching works and bleaching green). The houses here were all still thatched as shown in this photo when I used to walk past them into Carrick as a very young boy.

The house on the extreme right had a sweetie shop in the front room that was open on a Sunday - a bit of a scandal in those days. In the rain we could shelter under the overhanging thatch, and on our way to Sunday School at Joymount Presbyterian Church in Scotch Quarter, we could sin twice at the same time by spending part of our collection and going into a shop on the Sabbath. We all were clutching a 3d bit (a three pence coin) for our collection, and could buy 2d's worth of penny chews and have one penny left for the collection. I think that is my first real recollection of having a guilty conscience!

What a different history this old coach road from Boneybefore had compared to the old drove road in the Commons. But for me the road from Boneybefore is different in another way. It takes me back with sadness to happy memories, if that makes sense.

Boneybefore: The American Connection (2)

2010-08-17T07:21:00.000-07:00

My home village of Boneybefore between Carrickfergus and Kilroot is where the President Andrew Jackson Cottage and US Rangers Museum can be found today.

Here is what the official information has to say about this ancestral white-washed cabin:

At least 12 US presidents had family connections to Ulster and part of this museum is dedicated to the seventh president, ‘Old Hickory’ Andrew Jackson who was in office from 1829 until 1837.
The Jackson exhibition is housed in a thatched cottage built in the 1750s, similar to the one left in 1765 by Jackson’s parents when they migrated to South Carolina. The main living space and bedrooms of the cottage are set out in the style of the 18th century, while the parlour is dedicated to the Jackson family and the career of their most famous son.
In the War of 1812 Andrew Jackson served as American military commander. He became a national hero after defeating the British forces at the Battle of New Orleans and earned his nickname when supporters described him as tough as Old Hickory wood. Jackson later served two terms as president during which he was able to shape the new Democratic Party.
In the garden is an exhibition dedicated to the US Rangers, who were formed at Carrickfergus in 1942. Based on the British commandoes, the Rangers were stationed a short distance from the cottage. They were a spearhead of the Allied D-Day landings and of the 500 volunteers who first formed the Rangers at Carrickfergus, only 87 were alive by the end of the war. The exhibition includes letters sent by serving Rangers and the equipment that they would have carried with them.

If you read this carefully, it does not claim that this was the actual house in Boneybefore that Andrew Jackson's parents lived in. Most of the dozen or so US 'Presidential Homesteads' that are on the tourist trail in Ulster are just that - but the 'Andrew Jackson Cottage' is just 50 yards or so away from a monument with a blue plaque that states "Reputed site of the ancestral homestead of Andrew Jackson, President of the U.S.A. 1829-1837 "

As boys, even in those days before plaques and heritage centers, we all knew that the original 'Jackson' house was knocked down to make way for the railway line from Carrickfergus to Larne about 1860. It was more or less behind where the plaque stands, where you can see the railway track along the shore. A different old farm-house behind where this photo has a window in a coach-house that was taken from the original Jackson house.

Boneybefore still had plenty of thatched houses when I was a boy, but only two survive now, and one of these - the one that is now the Andrew Jackson Center - was Tommy Donaldson's farm.

Tommy Donaldson's House was no 'cottage' - for that means a landless labourer's house. It was a proper farmhouse that had been in the Donaldson family for 300 years. As it stands today, you can see the tall concrete chimney of Kilroot power station behind, and modern housing where Tommy's byre and other farm out buildings used to be.

Take a look at me in my teens outside the same house when Tommy was still alive.
The white-washed out-building at the end was the byre, where I often watched spell-bound as Tommy milked his cows by hand into a white enamel bucket. Every so often he would aim a teat at us and squirt us like a jet from a water pistol.

The two doors at the far end of the thatched long-house were into a workshop and a stable, for Tommy still used horses, and traveled into Carrick by horse and cart. The US Rangers museum is now housed round the back in what used to be the old cart-sheds.

But when I was in my teens, things were already changing in Boneybefore. Gone were the days when Tommy churned his own butter with a horse-walk round the back (the horse walked round and round in a circle and drove an axle inside a building with a barrel full of milk inside that turned on a cog driven by the horse). When I was still aged in single figures, I remember my mother sending me down to Tommy's with an empty jug for a pint of buttermilk to bake soda farls with. Tommy just took the jug into his kitchen where he had a large barrel, dipped the jug in to fill it, and handed it back - waving me away without a word when I offered him a coin to pay. He was a kindly soul, a man of few words, and when I look at the stable door now I remember going there at Halloween to ask for the lend of ropes to bring in cut-down hedgerow branches for the bonfire. No other adult that wasn't a relative would have been as accommodating.

This photo goes back to those days, and here we were, messing about in the street. Tommy Donaldson's house (the 'Andrew Jackson Cottage') is the one in the background, and you can see the byre and store beyond.

The gable in the middle was that of another thatched house belonging to 'oul ma Hagan'. It burnt down in about 1959.
To the left lived Nellie Donaldson, and her hen-house can just be seen on the extreme right.

An even earlier shot looking the other way has Nellie Donaldson's hen-house in the center. Tommy Donaldson's (now the museum) is extreme left, casting its shadow. Oul Ma Hagan's thatched house is on the right, and the other thatched house beyond was Tillie Millar's.

Tillie Millar was another kindly soul who used to come out when we were playing to educate us about the history of Boneybefore.

She told us about the Andrew Jackson's parents, where they had lived in Boneybefore, how they had just moved into a 'wee two-room hoose' from up near Dalway's Bawn, just to get ready for the trip to America. The Jackson's were not really 'Boney folk', she said, and the President was born on the boat to America, but Mrs Jackson smuggled him ashore under her dress. We never questioned the logic of this, as he had to be born in America if he was going to be President.

Castle Dobbs: the American Connection (1)

2010-08-11T12:06:00.000-07:00

Arthur Dobbs of Castle Dobbs, Kilroot, is seen in this portrait as holding a map of North Carolina. He was appointed 'Royal' Governor of North Carolina in 1753, one year after he finished rebuilding Castle Dobbs at home in Kilroot.

His American adventure came to an end in 1795 at another 'Castle Dobbs', his new home at Cape Fear, Brunswick, North Carolina. He died just as he was preparing to return home to Carrickfergus at the age of 75.

He had been the most prominent organiser of Scotch-Irish migration to pre-revolutionary America after he purchased a part interest in 400,000 acres of land in North Carolina in 1745 from the McCulloch estate there. Then, along with McCulloch, Arthur Dobbs was granted another 60,000 acres in New Hanover County.

The first tenants that Dobbs brought over from Ireland sailed in 1751. He described them in a letter as, "my tenants and their neighbours and friends", for they were from Kilroot, Ballycarry and Carrickfergus - and many more were to follow. In 1766 yet another batch of Scotch-Irish settlers from the shadow of Castle Dobbs set sail from Belfast. This contingent bound for North and South Carolina from east Antrim included Andrew and Elizabeth Jackson from Bellahill (Dalway's Bawn). They were the parents of Andrew Jackson, 7th President of the United States. These Jacksons had moved from their family farm beside Dalway's Bawn to Boneybefore near Carrickfergus in preparation for their departure. So, both these 'ancestral homesteads' of 'Old Hickory' will be re-visited at a later date.

Arthur Dobbs, before taking up his office in North Carolina, had been High Sheriff for County Antrim, a member of the Irish Parliament for Carrickfergus, and Surveyor-General of Ireland. His "Essay on the trade and improvement of Ireland" demonstrated his reputation as an economist, but from 1730 he took an increasing interest in colonial affairs, as well as engaging himself in the attempt to discover the North-West passage. In 1752 Arthur Dobbs finished building his fine Palladian mansion of Castle Dobbs just yards away from the ruins of the old castle built by his great-grandfather (and only a few hundred yards south of Dalway's Bawn).

But by 1747 he had completed his land purchases in North Carolina, and wrote to Mathew Rowan, the Surveyor-General of North Carolina, to ask his advice about,

"which type of artificers or servants I should take with me as most wanted there, such as carpenters, smiths, masons and coopers - and what number would be proper at first or could be accommodated with provisions and necessaries to form a settlement ... upon what terms I should agree with each family, the number of acres, term rent or produce, that I may know how to conduct myself in any bargains I may make."

The landscaped garden or demesne of Castle Dobbs was laid out by Arthur Dobbs in the early 1700s, and its wooded glen along the Kilroot River was known to the young explorers from Boneybefore as 'Dobbs's Plantin'. It was our Sherwood Forest when we were being Robin Hood, and our woods of Tennessee when we were being Davy Crockett (or Daniel Boone). The townland is 'Dobbsland', which is 'East of Eden' and separated from the old County of Carrickfergus by the Copeland Water.

A short walk up the Tongue Loanen and the road turns sharply to the right towards Dalway's Bawn, in the next townland north called 'Bellahill'. At this turn is where James Esler junior lived. His father, James Esler senior, was in a small house just across the townland boundary, in Bellahill. The Eslers and the Jacksons of Bellahill bring the connection right back to Dalway's Bawn and the old cattle trail from Ballynure.

The Big Picture: Eslers and the 'Scotch' Cattle Drove Roads of mid Antrim

2010-08-09T01:42:00.000-07:00

The old cattle drove routes across county Antrim run east-west (across the grain to the north-south direction of most of the main lines of communication). This is because they were heading to the main ports (especially Larne) connecting them to the Scottish drove roads that have been so well documented already on the other side of the 'sheuch'. One Scottish drove road in south-west Scotland is described as 'starting in Portpatrick' where 20,000 cattle a year were being landed from Donaghadee in county Down in 1800. (The parallel story of the county Down drove roads is one I'll leave for another day!)

For Ulster-Scots, these routes were the main arterial connection between the Scottish mainland and the Ulster-Scots settlers of the 17th century and later. This on-going connection is what shaped the very core of the Ulster-Scots heartland in terms of language, culture and religion. Along these routes are the broadest Ulster-Scots speaking areas, and the most dominantly Presbyterian communities in Ireland.

But my efforts at retracing the main drove road from Portglenone to Larne came about as a spin-off from researching the family history of my mother's grandfather - James Esler - whose family came from the cluster of small Esler hill-farms on the 'Long Mountain' between Portglenone and Ahoghill in the 1860s.

Esler is a lowland Scots name (originally German, I understand, meaning 'donkey dealer', or 'hosteler'), and 95% of all Eslers in Ireland were living in County Antrim in the early 19th century. Family tradition has it that three brothers came over from Scotland in the 1600s and settled in three areas - Kilwaughter (on the mountain slopes behind Larne), Eslertown (at the Cross between the Glenwhirry and Braid valleys, east of Ballymena), and Ballynafie (between Portglenone and Ahoghill on the Long Mountain). The map shows these three clusters, and it seems the Eslers' control of the hill pastures was strategically placed at points on upland pasture between market towns where the drovers and their beasts could stop off for the night.

So, that's where I was with my 'historical exploration' when I discovered that two James Eslers (father and son) were also living in 1860 beside Dalway's Bawn, east of Eden in Carrickfergus.

Two things seemed to confirm that this was connected to a cattle trail from Ballynure to Whitehead and Islandmagee. In the first place, both James Esler and his son from Bellahill were 'Agricultural labourers' rather than full farmers, and James Esler Senior was a 'byresman' for Dalway's Bawn itself! (A 'byre' is a cattleshed). Secondly, there were other Esler farms in the immediate vicinity. A 90-acre farm right on the coast at Whitehead was shared in ownership between two Esler brothers in 1860. These brothers were also joint landlords for the newly-erected Coastguard Station and houses in Whitehead. What an opportunity to keep an eye on the Customs and Excise men! Yet another two Esler farms were located in the townland of Balloo, in Islandmagee. These were on the Gobbins Road from Whitehead to Portmuck, which had a small harbour where pigs were exported to Scotland and horses brought in. The Gobbins cliffs between Whitehead and Portmuck had a few hidden coves and 'smugglers caves' - and one of these was on the Esler farm at Balloo! A 'horse cave' at Portmuck was where horses smuggled in were supposed to have been hidden, and I like to think that the Eslers were not only bringing cattle and pigs from Ballynure to send to Scotland, but were bringing horses in the other direction - to Ballynure Fair Hill which was renowned for its annual horse fair.

Going back to the Elizabethan history of this part of the world, Portmuck Castle and Castle Chichester at Whitehead were important outposts of Chichester at Carrickfergus, but they were also linked in terms of strategic defense to Dalway's Bawn.

Castle Chichester was excluded from the Esler farm land which surrounded it at Whitehead, as it was owned by the Chichester family, but the adjacent port was where regular postal packages from Scotland were landed in the 18th century. Of course, as I observed before, 'muc' in Irish is 'pig' - so 'Portmuck' means 'swine port' (nothing to do with the cleanliness of the harbour!)

THE COMMONS CUP and other antiquities

2010-08-02T07:13:00.000-07:00

The Commons of Carrickfergus appears on the 1832 map (see last post) as a vast, featureless upland moor, devoid of any evidence of human activity apart from the cattle trail across it. But around the edge was a string of stone-built herds' houses which all seemed to look onto the commons just in the same way as a lough-shore fishing community might be strung around a large lough.

It was only when the revelation came that there was a 'necklace' of old houses around the commons did I realise that the only ruined house 'in' the Commons that I remember discovering as a boy was one of these - right on the boundary of the Commons, near Lough Mourne. Back then (50 years ago) it was roofless and overgrown, and when we pushed our way inside through nettles and brambles, I found a glass sitting on a remains of a window sill.

That glass was badly made, with a crooked stem, an air bubble in the base, and an uneven rim. It went with me in later years to student flats and anywhere else I called home as a sort of token of the many local mysteries and childhood wonders that, one day, I would resolve.

I wrote it into a novel, The Man Frae the Ministry, in a different setting altogether (a fictional Ulster-Scots settlement in Canada), where it became the proof of a former visit by Sam and Joel to old Sawney's house:

'His eyes went from the spot where Sawney had been sitting and spitting into the fire, to where the window was above the table - a table that was now a pale anaemic nettle. There was a small glass, half-full of dirt, on the sill of the glass-less window frame. It was the only piece of furniture to be seen. Sam lifted the glass, emptied it, and ran his finger round the inside to clean it out. "Not broken - nice", he said replacing it by its short stem. It had a slight tilt and a bubble flaw in the base.'

I think life is full of little 'coincidences' and events that only have meaning later. As the gospel song says, "Further along, we'll understand why".

Of course there are other antiquities in this 'barren' land of the Commons. Although permanent buildings weren't allowed until about 1870, seasonal huts made of sods and branches called 'booley huts' were numerous and in parts of the commons their circular pattern can still be traced on the ground. 'Booleying' was the summer grazing of cattle on the mountains and often the children and women lived they for the summer months in these temporary shelters, leaving the men to work the arable strips of 'infield' around the lowland hamlets or 'clachans' of stone-built cottages.

During the time when only Freemen of the town of Carrickfergus had grazing rights on the Commons, the booleying may well have been something that was practiced unofficially by remnants of the 'Old Irish' population living to the back of the Commons in places like 'Ardboley' and 'Milky Knowes'. The huts were always near a fresh water supply, and indeed they are found near 'Bryan O'Neill's Well' and down along the sides of the Woodburn river and the Craignabraher Burn. The Craignabraher Burn gets its name from the 'Friar's Rock' in the Commons which was once both a 'Mass Rock' for Irish Catholics and a 'Field Conventicle' site for Scotch Covenanters in the Penal days. In the 1800s, once the Penal Laws and the Test Acts were repealed, a 'Mass House' (Catholic Chapel) was built to the north-west, and a 'Meeting House' for Covenanter Presbyterians was built to the north-east. These Covenanters were known in Ulster as 'Mountain Men', and I often wondered was there a connection with their American kinsmen, the 'Hill-Billys', for 'billie' is the Scots word for 'friend ' or 'comrade'.

Lough Mourne itself was temporarily drained in the 1920s while it was being converted into a reservoir, and pre-historic dug-out boats were found, along with two artificial islands (crannogs) that were used 1000 years ago as defensive Irish homesteads.

A host of Irish place-names in the Commons testify to the survival of the language into more recent times, along with a smattering of Scots and hybrid Irish and Scots place-names as well. But unlike townland names which have often survived because they were written into land-leases, these local names are a real clue to language and culture of the 'commons' folk.

Craignabraher (Irish: Rock of the Friar or Priest)
Slimero (Irish: Red mountain plain)
Toppin (Scots: Cairn or peak of a mountain)
Isle of Glass (Irish and Scots: Green hill in the bog)
Duncrue (Irish: Fort of the cattle payment)
Munney Braddy Moss (Irish and Scots: Stolen peat bog)
Carnwhissock (Irish and Scots: Cairn of the severe blow)
Lignaca (Irish: Hollow of the mist)

For the final antiquity, we must go down the Cattle trail off the Commons to Dalway's Bawn. Here, East of Eden, an old Irish Harp was found in a bog beside the Bawn in the 1700s . This is the famous 'Dalway Harp', so named because it was kept by the Dalway family for years and is now one of the most treasured possessions of the Irish National Museum in Dublin. Dated to 1621, its image is used by the Irish state as its logo, and the name 'Dalway Harp' has become the generic name for this type of classic Irish harp.

The Commons Cattle Trail before the break-up

2010-07-21T08:12:00.000-07:00

Up till now, I've only been able to show glimpses of the Cattle trail across the Commons of Carrickfergus as it survived after the Commons was broken up into farms after 1860.

It has taken me weeks to get hold of it, but at last I have a copy of the 1st Ordnance Survey map of the area in 1832. To my delight, it shows the whole townland of 2,730 acres without any farms, fields, fences or buildings. And right across it is an unfenced trackway which I have highlighted in green. It is exactly where it was anticipated.

Another thing that springs out (click on the map to enlarge it and see for yourself), is that the boundary of the Commons has a multitude of small houses lined right along the boundary. Before the 1860 enclosure, permanent dwellings were prohibited, so these were herds' houses, squatters' cabins, or shelters used by drovers and peat diggers.

The same thing is shown on the 1832 map further west, towards the middle of the Commons - small cabins or houses lined along the boundary, and the trail cutting across north of the source of the Woodburn River which flows down into Belfast Lough on the West side of Carrickfergus.

The source of the Woodburn River is marked on this (and later maps) as "BRYAN O'NEILL'S WELL".

The Commons Cattle Trail Today

2010-07-17T04:23:00.000-07:00

When I went back to the Commons recently to see if any parts of the old cattle trail from Ballynure to Dalway's Bawn could still be traced on the ground, I saw this old haunt in a new light.

The photo shows the old drove road as it leaves the south-east end of the Commons just below Lough Mourne, heading east towards Dalway's Bawn. From here the trail continues as an unsurfaced country lane for 3 miles across the 'North-East Division' of Carrickfergus County, and on through the townland of Bellahill, down past the 'Resting Slap' to 'Bullock's Walk' beside Dalway's Bawn.

The first thing that strikes you when you look at this on a 1950s map of this part is that the Commons trail which once crossed an open upland area has been mostly hidden under a patchwork of small fields and farms that followed the 'Enclosure' and letting of the Commons after 1860. Only eastwards from the south end of Lough Mourne does the original track survive, roughly from the point where Hart's Loanen reaches the Commons from Boneybefore. Hart's Loanen remains a similar 'green' country lane up at its north end, and is the way we Boneybefore lads walked up to Lough Mourne countless times in the 1960s and 1970s.

This Land Valuation map of 1860 shows the Commons about to be enclosed, with the outlines of the new land parcels outlined and numbered in red. This was before the fields were planted out and before any houses had been built there.

But the faint lines of the unfenced track-ways still (in 1860) crossing the Commons from north-west to south-east can be seen underneath. The Cattle trail seems to have wandered about the open hill top grassland at will.

The highlighted boundary of the Commons shows that only this bottom part of Lough Mourne was actually in the Commons.
Lough Mourne itself was turned into a Water Reservoir in the 1930s, and to preserve the immediate water catchment area around it from farm 'pollution' the surrounds were planted out with conifers about the same time.

But the big 'planting' difference in the landscape up here was made with the setting of hawthorn field hedges when the small 'Commons' farms were laid out 150 years ago (wherever the upland was grass rather than bog).

Even the thorn hedges which grow along the dykes on either side of the surviving cattle trail were not an original feature on the Commons.