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

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 ...

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

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!