The Road from Boneybefore

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.

An uncanny gathering at Bellahill farm, near Dalway's Bawn, in 1953

This is the second time the East of Eden Chronicles have taken a strange twist with the discovery of another old photograph taken about 1953 (see the 'year of the crowning' post). The event was a birthday party for Raymond Cowan - the boy in shorts pointing a toy gun across my face at the sheep. It was held on the Cowan farm at Bellahill beside Dalway's Bawn, and behind Raymond is my mum. Mrs Cowan is beside my mum on the left of the picture. In front of Mrs Cowan is Eric Glynn (of Davy Crockett hat fame in previous posts) . Mrs Glynn (with the round glasses second from the right) came from the area between Dalway's Bawn and Ballycarry before she was married.

But on this occasion I want to introduce another classmate from Eden Primary School - Alexander (Victor) Hart on the extreme left. His brother Ian is feeding the lamb on the extreme right, and my younger brother is in the middle at the front. Mrs Hart is the tall lady in the center.

This uncanny gathering is relevant to the Dalway story not just because it places us on a farm at Dalway's Bawn, but because the Harts play an important part in that story.

Jumping forward from 1597 when Lieutenant Harte was with John Dalway at the Battle of Pin Well at Ballycarry, to the mid-1800s, we find an Alexander Hart (sometimes spelled Harte) as the principal tenant farmer on the Dalway home farm at the Bawn in Bellahill townland.

Victor Hart (who I have just renewed contact with after 55 years) tells me that he is the 5th Alexander Hart from his home farm at Newseat, near Boneybefore. His brother Ian is still 'feeding the sheep', as he is now a Presbyterian minister of a large Belfast congregation.

But back in 1860, Alexander Hart was Dalway's main tenant farmer at Bellahill, and he had a network of other farms in the nearby townland of Crossmary and in the 'County of Carrickfergus' (which was divided into Alderman's Shares between 1576 - 1601). These Hart farms were mostly in the North-East Division of Carrickfergus, although one holding was a 'Burgers' plot in the center of the medieval town. The Aldermans Shares in North-East Division ran in parallel strips up to the Commons, and they brought with them rights of access to and grazing on the Commons. Up alongside each strip was a lane or 'loanen', and Hart's loanen ran up beside Victor's farm at Newseat and gave us Boneybefore boys a gateway - a straight walk - up to what was the magical world of Lough Mourne and the upland moors and bogs of the Commons.

Like Eric Glynn, Victor Hart was in my class at school and the three of us walked the mile or so from Boneybefore to Eden twice a day. On the way home (so Victor reminds me) I often went past my own house and walked with him back to his farm up Hart's Loanen until dark. The memories of this and of another parallel laneway on the next Aldermans strip (Davy Jack's Loanen) to Davy Jack's farm are legion, but I must stick to the story after one digression. Davy Jack's farm had a waterwheel, open-hearth cooking and he only used horses in the fields. His only road transport was a horse and farm-cart, and many times I rode in it even as far as Carrickfergus. On the side of the cart was 'Hugh Jack, Bluefield' painted in small white letters. I now know that Davy's grandfather was a Hugh Hart Jack, that his great-grandmother was an Alexandrina Hart who married a Hugh Jack, and that her father was the Hugh Hart of Bluefield farm that is marked on the map 0f 1860.

The fields on all these farms were always stocked with cattle when I was young, with a multitude of small thorn-hedged fields climbing up like ladders towards the foothills that marked the beginning of the Commons. The lanes were literally cart-tracks, but straight and not regarded as private.

When I re-trace my steps up Hart's Loanen (in my minds eye, for the fields are all housing developments now), I force myself not to divert into Victor's farm at Newseat. A bit further and the 'ruins' appear (the earlier Hart farm of Alexander Hart Senior in 1860). Then over a hump-back bridge, past Smiley's farm (John Smiley had joined the Star of Eden Pipe Band), straight across the Middle Road and on up a steep rise until the blue, wild waters of Lough Mourne were reached. Carrickfergus Castle used to house some prehistoric dug-out wooden boats found here, and the surrounding 'mosses' had wild plants and birds we never saw down in the lower fields.

I allow myself this apparently meaningless nostalgic ramble for three very good reasons:

a) I didn't know before now that there was a Hart family connection with John Dalway, or with Dalway's Bawn;

b) I didn't know before now that Hart's lane had originally been a secondary cattle drove route to and from the Commons; and,

c) I didn't know before now that a James Esler was a tenant of Alexander Hart at Dalway's Bawn in 1860 - sharing a double cottage with another 'byresman' called William Close. A 'byre' is, of course, a cattle-house and it appears these men were actually 'cow-boys' in Dalways Bawn itself. But my maternal grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather were all cattle farmers along the cattle drove routes of mid-Antrim, and had the same name: James Esler.

Now if it turns out that I am related to this James Esler, I will be just as excited as Victor Hart was to learn that he was descended from Dalway's comrade, Lieutenant Hart of Carrickfergus in 1597.

The year of the crowning in Eden

The 'East of Eden' chronicles took an uncanny twist this week. I had just posted the last blog about Eric Glynn and myself exploring the cowboy territory around Dalway's Bawn in our Davy Crockett hats. Next stop, I thought, had to be Dobbs's Plantin - that wooded glen in the demesne of Castle Dobbs that was our Sherwood forest (with Robin Hood the role model rather than Davy Crockett). Or maybe the next port of call should be Kilroot Orange Hall (home of Kilroot True Blues LOL 1544, the Star of Eden Pipe Band and our 'juvenile' lodge). The Orange Hall was built in 1898 at the eastern end of Eden village on a plot donated by The Dobbs family of Castle Dobbs, and it sits immediately across the Copeland Water in Kilroot Parish.

So in the hunt for a suitable photo of Eden Pipe band, I stumbled on a picture - previously unknown to me - and I could hardly believe my eyes.

In 1953, on a summer Saturday at the coronation of Elizabeth II, two pipers from the Star of Eden Pipe band were preparing to lead a school parade from the front of Eden Primary School across to the Eden playing fields behind the Mission Hall. There we were, preparing to go to the celebrations Noah-style, two-by-two. First I spotted the McAllister twin girls in the front. They were in my class, and in later years became a formidable challenge to date as they were inseparable and identical. Then, beside our teacher Miss Kernoghan, there we were - Eric with the sandy hair and white shirt, and me in my Sunday shirt and jacket, heading up the boys. The memories this brought flooding back included us all getting a Coronation Mug in the 'field' and Eric winning a prize of a model 'golden' Coronation coach complete with footmen and six horses. That coach sat on display in the Glynn's house for years until they flitted to Ballyclare, and then I lost touch after they moved to Bangor, county Down.

I did bump into Eric at a big football match in Belfast when we were both in our 20s. He was wearing the scarf of the other team to mine, so I wasn't completely surprised when he turned down my offer of meeting up afterwards for a drink. "Why not?" I asked. "Well, I got saved", was his reply.

Last year I got news that Eric had died after 'a short illness'. Well, I'm glad I had that meeting in Belfast, for it was a different story back in those early days when we went to the 'Tuesday Night' meeting in the Wilson Memorial Hall in Eden and been spell-bound by the stories of the bravery of the African Missionaries. On the walk home after to Boneybefore I said to Eric, "If you got saved, would you go out thonder to die for Jesus?" He laughed and said, "Na".

I think that night was the first time I got saved myself, having backslid and gone forward again many times since. It has always bugged me a bit that I never had the flashing lights, but more a climbing, step-by-step process.

It might all be coincidence, but only a few months ago now I was talking with a friend who was in the terminal stages of cancer about this very issue. "Surely you can only get saved once", he insisted. "But if you can't give a time and a date like other folk?" I prodded, for I couldn't remember any time before those early primary-school and Mission Hall days in Eden. "It disnae matter if you can't," he said, "God minds the date".

When I look at that photo taken in 1953, I can't help thinking the Queen wasn't the only one to get a crown that year.

Eden re-visited

Sometimes going back to the the green, green grass of home is disturbing - especially if the grass has been covered in tarmac and concrete since. But unexpected reminders here and there can help you understand how much those lost ingredients shaped you way back then.

The 'bowl I was baked in' was the small village of Boneybefore in east Antrim. It had been by-passed by the new main road from Carrick to Larne, and so the world largely passed us by too. But just a short dander to the east loomed the next, slightly larger, village of Eden. Until we came into our teens, we 'Boney-boys' held Eden in awe - it had a pub, and everything else that was taboo. But it had better things too: a wide street and two-story houses (none of which were thatched), and a Post Office (with the only telephone box in the country outside).

There was a large house beside Eden Primary School with an orchard in its garden. Naturally, this was a big temptation and it became the crime scene of many a raid for apples, when lessons were done.

I went past the site recently and smiled to see that it has been re-developed for modern housing and re-named the 'Garden of Eden'.


Not only did I go to Eden Primary School on weekdays, but to the sweetie shops there on Saturdays - and even to a terrace house on the street there for my seasonal hair-cut. There was no barber's pole or sign, and the only way of knowing you were at the right house was a set of buffalo horns hanging in the porch inside the front door.

Eden Mission Hall was opposite the school, and when I was about 9 or 10 years old (in the 1950s) it was also used by the school as an overflow classroom. But from as early as I have memory of, Eden Mission Hall was also where I was taken twice on Sundays. Sunday-School was in the afternoon, and the church 'meeting' at 7 o'clock at night. I can still picture every nook and cranny, board and crack in that hall.

None of this involved any choices on my part - it's what I thought the entire human race's life experience was, and it was what everybody did as part of family life. I can't remember having any awareness that there were any other types of schooling or of churching.

But the 'Boney-boys' began to explore that outside world. I could get out of the Sunday night 'meeting' by going with five or six other escapees to a big church on Sunday morning. The 'big' church in question was a Presbyterian Church in the Scotch Quarter of Carrickfergus. It was a bit like going to a big football match when you had no real interest in, or understanding of, the sport. Six of us would squeeze into a pew in the gallery built for four. I remember little more, other than the occasional clutch of good-looking girls sitting opposite with straw hats on, and the walking there and home - about three miles round trip. In every sense (from a Boneybefore perspective), Carrick was way out west and on the other side of the world to Eden.

There were no 'big' churches in Eden, but another mission hall. It was called the 'Wilson Memorial Gospel Hall', and was a bit of a mystery. These Gospel Halls ran 'children's meetings' on a Tuesday night, and they were different. We Boney boys went there spasmodically of our own free will. Much foot-stamping choruses and sweeties thrown into whichever section of the crowd could find a bible passage first. I remember one evening there was a projector showing slides of a mission in Africa. One of the white missionaries had enormous swelling of the legs which the man said was 'ellyphantitus'. To me, then, I thought I could look across Belfast Lough from the shore at Boneybefore and see Africa on the other side. Now that I live across there in county Down, I can testify that there are no elephants spreading disease today on either side of Belfast Lough.

Running down alongside the Wilson Hall was a river at the far, eastern end of the village. This was the Copeland Water, which marked the boundary of the old medieval county of Carrickfergus. Parallel to the Copeland Water and just about 500 yards to the east, is the Kilroot River which runs from near Ballycarry, past Dalway's Bawn and Castle Dobbs (where it is known as the 'Muttonburn Stream') and out to the sea near the old house Dean Swift (author of Gulliver's Travels) is supposed to have lived.

East of Eden was a different country, as the folk song 'The Muttonburn Stream' hints.

CLIMBING DOWN FROM THE OLD ORANGE TREE

So the Old Orange Tree was published last year by the Ullans Press - with a change to the cover design as previously posted. This consisted of giving Eve a new tress of hair to satisfy the publisher's sensitivities! A bit daft methinks, as the original folk-art is from the banner of my brother's 'Black' preceptory in Carrickfergus - and it gets an annual public airing in the streets of respectable east Antrim towns without having had a single word of complaint in the past 200 years.

See USLS website for details: www.ulsterscotslanguage.com (that is for details of the book - not the 'Black' parades).

Well, what now? And apologies for the long silence! A 'wee scare' as we like to refer to cancer, followed by a 'wee procedure' (or rather two of them), are the reasons for my intervening silence. But now, with that and the subsequent treatment behind me for the time being, it is time to climb down from the Old Orange Tree and move on.

But to where?