Georgian Renaissance 

 

1790 Lord Charles Fitzgerald redevelops a section of the 'New Works'  the castle for his home. This is now the Ardglass Golf Club. After a series of unfortunate events, Lord Charles forced to sell the Manor of Ardglass to William Ogilvie, husband of his mother, the Duchess of Leinster. It is because of this connection that the main thoroughfare of the village is known as Kildare Street.

1791 During the reconstruction of Ardglass Castle, the smaller castle called Horn was incorporated into the main building.

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1791 Penal laws start to thaw with Dunsford Catholic Church built by the Reverend Edward Mullholland in Ballyedock. Before the erection of this church, Mass was celebrated along various hedges in the vicinity of the site of the present church. The selection of the precise spot for each occasion depended on the direction the wind was blowing. It is on the site of an earlier Catholic church which was recorded as early as 1194.

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1795 A new United Irish Constitution ratified enabling the organisation to become more confidential and subversive. Branches are formed in Lecale, Upper and Lower Iveagh, Dufferin, Kinelarty, Upper Castlereagh and Ards. The lack of Scots Presbyterian planters in Lecale means the United Men are mostly organised from Mid Down upwards and Ards.

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1796 Martial law declared in Lecale, many local revolutionary leaders captured. United Irishman Wolfe Tone secures the dispatch of the Expédition d'Irlande, and he arrives a force of 14,000 French veteran troops under General Hoche which arrived off the coast of Ireland at Bantry Bay in December 1796 after eluding the Royal Navy; however, unremitting storms, indecisiveness of leaders and poor seamanship all combined to prevent a landing.

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1797 The French ship L'Amitie was shipwrecked on the coast at Sheepland while carrying guns and ammunition for the United Irishmen. Out of a crew of 104 men, only the helmsman survived. This was a huge blow to the revolutionaries in Down. Local residents sheltered the survivor for an extended period nursing him back to health. The path from Sheepland North along Lecale way is still known as ‘Steersman’s Pad’.

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1797/8  The Orange order is officially encouraged to spread to Down. Most early Down lodges were formed in Lecale as there had been little Scots Presbyterian settlement in the area and planters mostly of Anglican English background. Lodges formed included Strangford (358), Downpatrick (359 and 432), Rathmullan (360), Inch (430) and Clough (313).

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1797/8 Local Anglican gentry like Ward, Forde and Pottinger resisted Dublin’s attempts to arm the Orange Order in Lecale as a local sectarian militia realizing that Lecale would blow up in their faces if they did so – they try to copy Portaferry and raise a ‘mixed’ militia from their tenants. Local Orangemen were channelled into the militia at Ballynahinch, Seaforde and Castlewellan.

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1798 Rev Moses Neilson arrested for preaching to Presbyterian parishioners in Gaelic at Rademon near Crossgar (It was their usual language at the time).

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1798 The Rev. William Steele Dickson commander of the rebels in Down arrested in Ards two days before rising with several other leaders due to the treachery of informers Mageen and Hughes damaging the rising.

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1798 Kings Castle Ardglass occupied by pro-government yeomany. They use it as a barrack for 30 years until about 1834. In 1830 a great part of the Castle fell down when workmen undermined it to make improvements. Today it is a nursing home. This ‘Yeomanry’ were part of the ‘South Down Militia’ who ultimately became the Royal Irish Rifles by 1890 and, after Lord Hill evicted many tenants around Ballykinlar in 1892, they took up residence in the Ballykinar base on 1,200 acres.

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1801 Act of Union Irish Parliament is abolished in response to the 1798 rebellion, but also in recognition of the brutish miss-rule of the Ascendency Landlords in Ireland. The Act damages Ireland economically, but creates opportunities to reverse sectarian discrimination as UK Parliament not as strongly controlled by Ascendency landowners. Catholic Church strongly in support of UK government following French revolution and establishment of Seminary at Maynooth in 1795. Penal laws relaxed and most modern-day Catholic Churches in Lecale built after this date. 

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1803 Thomas Russell United Irishman leader executed at Downpatrick jail after attempting further rising.

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1806 William Ogilvie buys Ardglass. Ogilvie and rebuilds the town as a progressive and innovative landlord.

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1810 Saint Nicholas' Church of Ireland opens for worship in Ardglass. This was built on the site of the Abbey of Saint Mary which was left roofless after the Reformation.

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1811 Daniel O'Connell established the Catholic Board, which campaigned for Catholic emancipation, that is, the opportunity for Irish Catholics to become members of parliament. The Dublin Colonial regime under William Saurin, the Attorney General for Ireland tried repeatedly to suppress it, prosecuting its members. .

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1813 Ogilvie and Sir John Rennie secure Act of Parliament to provide Ardglass with a new pier and lighthouse greatly improving the port.

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1815 Dublin Castle Authorities hugely disappointed by failure of Daniel O’Connell to be killed in a duel.

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1816 John Hughes is born, he discovers one of the biggest gold nuggets in the American Gold Rush and returns to Ardglass in 1850 after many adventures.

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1820 Gaelic is still the dominant language in Lecale. The area described as Irish-speaking by Hume was ‘from Ballynahinch to near Newry and Newcastle and Lower Lecale.’

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1820 A small harbour was operating in Ballyhornan.

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1822 Preventative Water Guard formed during the Napoleonic wars changes its name to ‘Coast Guard’

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May 1823, Daniel O'Connell launched the Catholic Association which was hugely influential in Lecale and which and campaigned for more Catholics to have the vote, to be allowed to take up public offices including being an MP, and to repeal the Penal Laws. With the membership subscription set at a relatively cheap price, the peasant and working classes could join. Affordability ensured large numbers. In effect, it became a universal Catholic organisation, transparent and populist with good governance. Members of the association were in essence the owners; their subscription fees going directly into the maintenance and running of the association. This was the first mass exercise in real democratic organisation in Britain or Ireland, creating thousands of people with good organisational and political skills that went on to form other organisations in Ireland the USA and Britain.

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1824 Lifeboat Service started as ‘National Institute for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck’

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1825 ‘National Institute for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck’ establishes boat station at Rossglass which closed in 1845 after lighthouse was built.

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1828 The first stone of Saint Nicholas' Catholic Church is laid in May with land donated by landlord William Ogilvie. The church opened later in the same year and was dedicated by Bishop William Crolly. It was the second church to open in the village. The bulding fund received many donations from members of other faiths.

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1829 Roman Catholic Relief Act allows O’Connell and his supporters start to take their seats in Parliament and many remaining anti-Catholic penal laws repealed. They form the ‘Repeal Party’ aimed at repealing the Union.  This Act broke the Tory anti-reform movement controlled by the Aristocracy in the UK and was the trigger for reform throughout the 1800’s.

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30 March 1829 A meeting of the Catholics of the parish of Down, under the chairmanship of the Rev. Cornelius Denvir, voted an address of gratitude to O'Connell on having achieved Emancipation. Catholic middle class greatly benefits but many local people in Lecale live in dire poverty, essentially slaves to rack-rent and usually absentee Anglican landlords. Presbyterians in mid and North Down not much better off.

 

2 April 1829 O'Connell was present at a public dinner at Denvir's Hotel in Downpatrick in his honour attended by 'upwards of eighty gentlemen, of different religious persuasions.' He delivered a speech to an assembled crowd below from an upstairs window. O’Connell founded the ‘Repeal Party’ in the area. O’Connell’s block of MPs campaign for electoral and economic reform, the abolition of slavery and anti-Jewish legislation and the repeal of the Act of Union to create a new Irish Parliament under Queen Victoria. This and successor Irish Parties were allied to the Liberal Party until 1910 pushing reform after reform past the resistance of the Tory or Conservative party who are supported by the local landlord class.

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1830 Down-based Orangemen resolve to assassinate O’Connell and resolve to ambush and kill him in Hilltown on the road from Dublin to Downpatrick where he is acting as a barrister in the case of Blackwood v Blackwood but he is warned by friends, armed himself and made his way via another route to Downpatrick. This was one of several attempts to murder O’Connell. Murder and mayhem by the Orange Order was tolerated by the authorities with little or no real police force locally with the local Ascendency landlords appointing their own baronial police. Although an 1822 Act established a force under chief constables and inspectors in each province, County Down was the last County in Ireland to have a police force. Daniel O’Connell campaigned for the establishment of the Irish Constabulary in County Down against vested interests. By 1841 this force numbered over 8,600 men across Ireland. The original force had been reorganised under The Act of 1836, and the first constabulary code of regulations was published in 1837. The discipline was strict and the pay low. The police faced civil unrest among the Irish rural poor, and was involved in bloody confrontations during the period of the Tithe War.

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1830 Ulster Gaelic Society founded to preserve Irish Gaelic as a spoken language. Between this date and the foundation of Conradh na Gaeilge in 1893 by Douglas Hyde, the Gaelic language in Down moved from being the language of the rural poor to being a language of the educated living in towns.

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1830 Tithe Wars start as newly enfranchised Catholics start to refuse to pay Tithes to the Church of Ireland. One of Daniel O’Connell’s ‘Repeal Party’ MPs, Patrick Lalor, a farmer, proposed a campaign of passive resistance saying "I never again pay tithes; I will violate no law; the tithe men may take my property, and offer it for sale; but my countrymen respect me and none of them would buy or bid for it if exposed for sale”. Lalor held true to his word and did not resist the confiscation of 20 sheep from his farm, but was able to ensure no buyers appeared at subsequent auctions.

 

1831 Catholic Association ensures co-operation with the Government’s census. Previously Irish people were suspicious because they thought the Government used the census to impose more taxes or grab land. The result greatly encouraged the Association because it showed the huge extent to which Catholics outnumbered Protestants and the degree of discrimination against Catholics. Whole parishes were discovered “where it was not possible to meet a single Protestant but with rich rectorships without a single parishioner” or “Teachers paid out of lavish parliamentary grants who had not a single scholar”. Mass corruption was exposed amongst the Ascendency class comparable comparable in scale the corruption in the Sind province of Pakistan today.

 

1830 Daniel O’Connell sets up the Repeal Association. A mass membership political movement to campaign for a repeal of the Act of Union of 1800 between Great Britain and Ireland. The Association's aim was to revert Ireland to the constitutional position briefly achieved by Henry Grattan and his patriots in the 1780s, but this time with a full Catholic involvement that was now possible following the Act of Emancipation in 1829, supported by the electorate approved under the Reform Act of 1832.

 

1831 Thomas Hunter is born in Ardglass and becomes the founder of the Hunter Colleges of New York, one of the largest educational establishments in America.

 

1831 National school system introduced by British Government with strict rules about not being dominated by any one faith. Rules opposed by both Presbyterian and Catholic Churches. Both churches were emerging from suppression under the penal laws. They wanted schools of their own tradition. Both the Government and the Churches had different but similar motivations for controlling the curriculum in National Schools; “that will aid us in a work of great difficulty, to wit, that of suppressing hedge schools” (Bishop Doyle). Hedge schools are seen as unholy incubators of republicanism. Schooling in English only is rigorously enforced by church authorities in exchange for church control of schools.

 

1831 Tithe war escalates. Authorities recorded 242 murders, 1,179 robberies, 401 burglaries, 568 burnings, 280 cases of cattle-maiming, 161 assaults, 203 riots and 723 attacks on property directly attributed to seizure order enforcement. On 14 December 1831, resisters used such warnings to ambush a detachment of 40 Constabulary at Carrickshock in County Kilkenny. Eighteen constables, including the Chief Constable, were killed and more wounded.

 

1832 Missionaries from the "Methodist New Connection" came to Ardglass and formed a Society in 1832. A very small plain building was erected in 1843 at a cost of £150 it had 28 seats which could hold 8 people each. The minister in 1910 was Rev. Thomas Orr from Downpatrick. The church was demolished in 1960s.

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August 1932 Cholera devastates the community in Ardglass. A Board of Health is established and a field hospital is built on the grounds of Ardglass Castle. The Rev. George Crane contracts the disease while visiting the sick and dies. His grave is the only known grave marked in Ardglass.

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November 1832 William Ogilvie dies at the age of 92. His remains were interred within the Church of Ireland and his loss was greatly lamented by the village. His grandson Major Aubrey William Beauclerk inherits the Ardglass estate having shadowed William for a few years.

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1834 Gaelic starts to go into decline as the language of ordinary people in Lecale with it being used mostly by rural middle-aged and older people.

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1836 Commission on the State of Irish Fisheries reported that Scottish dealers and curers no longer used the herring port of Ardglass.

 

1837 Ardglass described as being one of the most fashionable watering places in the north of Ireland. It had hot & cold vapour baths, lodgings and an elegant hotel. There were 41 two-storey houses, 4 three-storey houses and 75 one-storey. Ogilvie's most important contribution was the new harbour, pier and lighthouse because Ardglass then became a centre of the east coast fishing industry (mainly herring). Frequently there were 300-400 vessels in the harbour from several places in Ireland but mainly Penzance in Cornwall.

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1838 The Parliament in London realising they were beaten on Tithes passed a Tithe Commutation Act for Ireland. This reduced the amount payable directly to the ‘Established’ Anglican Church of Ireland by about a quarter and made the remainder payable in rent to landlords. Tithes were thus effectively added to a tenant's rent payment. This partial relief and elimination of the confrontational collections ended the violent aspect of the Tithe War, it also brought the local Landlords into fresh focus for the next big political campaign.

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1845 - 1852 An Gort Mór - more than 10% of the population in County Down died in the Great Famine. But this was well below the average across Ireland where the population of Ireland fell eventually by half. Lack of Irish Parliament prevents legislation to halt food exports to deal with famine as in the 1700’s.

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1846 Impact of the Great Famine was marginally delayed in Lecale until October of 1846 when the Workhouse in Downpatrick serving the local ‘Poor Law Union’ starts to fill to record levels. In Ardglass a soup kitchen was opened through public subscription.

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1846/47 The landed gentry used their power in the House of Lords to delay or water down relief legislation, but Acts of Parliament were passed in 1846 and 1847 to pressurized landlords into organizing paid relief work schemes. But County Down had one of the lowest rates in the country for the implementation of such schemes.

1847 Daniel O’Connell arrested on trumped up charges of conspiracy and sentenced to a year's imprisonment and a fine of £2,000. Released after three months by the House of Lords which quashed the conviction and severely criticised the unfairness of the trial. O'Connell died on a pilgrimage to Rome at the age of 71 after his term in prison had seriously weakened him. O'Connell's philosophy inspired leaders all over the world, including Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) and Martin Luther King (1929–1968). William Gladstone (1809–1898) described him as "the greatest popular leader the world has ever seen”.

1847 Daniel O’Connell’s Repeal Association collapsed with the arrival of famine. Younger members broke away and shocked by the scenes of starvation and greatly influenced by the revolutions then sweeping Europe, these ‘Young Irelanders’ re-adopt the Republican philosophy of the United Irishmen and move from peaceful agitation to armed rebellion in 1848/9. The attempted rebellion failed abysmally and those not deported and imprisoned in Australia fled to France and the USA.

1846/47/48/49 Local famine relief committees were set up in Ardglass, Bright, Ballyculter, Ballee, Saul, Hollymount, Ballyhornan, Ballybeg, Tullumgrange, Seaforde and two in Downpatrick. Families tried to avoid the workhouses which had become deathtraps with smallpox, whooping cough, dysentery, influenza and other diseases rampant.  

1846 The Down Recorder of October documented the record levels of ‘paupers’ being admitted to the workhouse focusing attention on able-bodied men admitted by the local Poor Union Guardians and noted that that even weavers were being drawn into the workhouse owing to the slump in that trade in County Down. The Recorder’s reporting reflected elements of the ‘undeserving poor’ in National press coverage which ignored the utter desperation of families in applying for what they knew to be deathtraps. This type of press coverage gave Westminster the cover to allow the famine to build to epic proportions without being held to account. There was a strong element of racism and sectarianism in the National press which made the situation worse.

1850 Resulting from the famine the Gaelic language in rural areas of Lecale went into precipitous collapse as Gaelic speakers were most likely to be in the socio-economic class affected by famine in Lecale and Ireland generally.

1854 ‘National Institute for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck’ changes its name to Royal National Lifeboat Service with 5 boats stationed in County Down at Bangor, Donaghadee, Portaferry, Newcastle and Kileel.

1857 ‘Will's Billy’ Curran, The Sage of Sheepland Mór born. A Gaelic speaker and traditional 'Shanachie' or story teller, his smallholding was a venue for local Céilí. The 'ceilidh' is a literary entertainment where stories and tales, poems and ballads, are rehearsed and recited, songs are sung, conundrums are put, proverbs are quoted, and many other literary matters are related and discussed. On many occasions you could find the great antiquarian Francis Joesph Bigger sitting along his hearthside along with the famous revolutionary Irishmen like Sir Roger Casement and Eskine Childers, father of a future Irish president. Billy was also a great nature lover and spent much of his life studying birds and wildlife, and fishing at Sheepland harbour for his dinner - he would have made his own flies out of bird feathers and threads from old shirts. Billy died in 1933.

1858  ‘Young Irelanders’ return and found the Irish Republican Brotherhood network across Ireland who would later organise the rising in 1916. They also found the ‘Fenian Brotherhood’ in the USA with support from millions of Irish post-famine immigrants. Fenians would later raise and army and invade Canada several times between 1866 and 1871. Trying to capture it and use it as a ‘hostage’ for a free Ireland. They even raided Australia to free prisoners. Fenians would morph into Clann na Gael in the USA and raise funds for the 1916 rebellion and the War of Independence. Both based around a republican democratic non-sectarian vision and oppose the Hibernians. They are resisted by both the British and Catholic establishment.

1860’s and 1870’s Fishing and in particular herring industry in Ardglass rapidly expands because of demand nationally in Ireland.

1860 Landlords lose many MP seats in Elections around Ireland to the new ‘Home Rule’ movement but continue to hold on in Down. The Home Rulers continue O’Connells work for reform.

1863 Ardglass town and surrounding townland was mainly owned by Aubrey de Vere Beauclerk.

1866 Ardglass boats sell summer herring in Howth, Scotland and England, with two steamers from England and one from Scotland conveying fish to Liverpool, Holyhead, Workington and Glasgow.

1871 The new Land Act makes it more difficult for landlords to evict without good reason

1872 The Ballot Act replaced open elections with a secret ballot system and Landlords can no longer easily check how their tenants have voted.

1872 Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) or Home Rule Party formed and proceeds to dominate politics in Lecale. Third biggest party at Westminster seeking home rule under the Crown by peaceful means. By the 1880s, the nationalist Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) was returning 80 MPs to the House of Commons; it had developed by then into the first modern political party in Westminster’s history, repeatedly attempting to get ‘Irish Home Rule’ and ‘land reform’ bills passed by the UK Parliament.

1873 Home Rule Party win majority of seats in Ireland, but Landlords win all seats in Down and hang on until 1885with support of Orange Order who organise the votes of newly enfranchised poor and landless Protestants. From this point on Landlord power wanes in County Down with the growth of the Home Rule Party who win the right of tenants to buy out Landlords. The Orange Order is absorbed into Unionist Associations by the gentry.

1879 The Irish National Land League founded at the Imperial Hotel in Castlebar, County Mayo, to “first, to bring out a reduction of rack-rents; second, to facilitate the obtaining of the ownership of the soil by the occupiers”.  Branches were set up in Scotland and the Crofters Party imitated the League, securing a Reform Act in 1886. This campaign was of great importance to the rural community of Lecale around Ardglass. Some have suggested that peculiarities of the Ulster leasing system had given tenants better protection in Ulster, however it did not feel that way to the largely Presbyterian and Catholic tenants in Down. 

1879 – 1882. The ‘Land War’ broke out. Though the League discouraged violence, agrarian crimes increased widely. Typically a rent strike would be followed by evictions by the police, or those tenants paying rent would be subject to a local boycott by League members. Where cases went to court, witnesses would change their stories, resulting in an unworkable legal system The League organised resistance to evictions, reductions in rents and aided the work of relief agencies. Landlords' attempts to evict tenants led to violence. Originally, the movement cut across sectarian boundaries, with many meetings being held in Orange Halls. But this ended as landlords and gentry extended their influence within the Orange Order. The government suppressed the Land League and the cause was advanced in Westminster by the Irish Parliamentary Party and its leader Parnell, himself a liberal Anglican Landlord.

1881 The arrest of the Irish Parliamentary Party leader MP Chares Stuart Parnell led to the Land League initiating a country-wide rent strike on 1881, after which the government suppressed the Land League but the cause continued to be advanced in Westminster by the Irish Parliamentary Party who used their block of votes in Westminster to effectively to win reform. The ‘Ulster Customs’ on renting land mean that many rural poor marginally better off in County Down compared to rest of Ireland, but there is a clear wish of Irish people of every hue to own their own land cuts across all sections of society.

1881 On the 6th January in Downpatrick, 10,000 people attended a Land League meeting addressed by Michael Davitt and Presbyterian and Catholic clergy. Government delivers second Land Act in response to this pressure which gave tenants legal rights to fair rents, free sale or their leases and fixity of tenure. The campaign continues for the right to buy out landlords.

1883 The Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act ends Landlords ability to buy votes

1884 The Representation of the People Act 1884+5 extend the vote to 56% of the population and Landlords in Down begin to lose control once 1885 election is over.

1884 1st November Foundation of the Gaelic Athletic Association for the Preservation and Cultivation of our National Pastimes. Maurice Davin was elected President, Michael Cusack, John Wyse Power and John McKay elected Secretaries and Archbishop Thomas William Croke, Charles Stewart Parnell and Michael Davitt were asked to become patrons. It would be difficult to overstate the influence of the GAA in Lecale – if anyone can provide a local history please email us. I am aware that Kilclief GAC was founded in 1906 – but am looking for dates on the other clubs.

1885 Elections and in the new East Down constituency created locally and Richard William Blackwood Ker as local landlord was elected MP without a contest. He had been appointed Sheriff of County Down for 1880-81 and was the Member of Parliament for County Down, 1884–1885 and for East Down, 1885–1890.

1885 Nationally the Irish Parliamentary Party wins 85 seats out of 101 and hold the balance of power in Westminister and up the pressure for land reform, voting reform, progressive politics and Home Rule. They are opposed by the Torys supported by landlord MP’s like Richard Ker above.

1886 Ardglass grows as a fishing port with about 500 vessels regularly moored there.

1889 Ardglass continues to grow with petty court sessions and a police station with John Harvey in charge.

1885 – 1902 Political change from General Election with Irish Parliamentary Party dominating local politics with MacArtan, Small and McVeigh elected for South Down with Unionists holding onto East Down. Landlords and gentry use power in the House of Lords to block Home Rule Bills passed by Westminster in 1886 and 1993, but IIP succeed with land reform bills and most families in rural areas around Ardglass benefit.

1890 24 January. Meeting to discuss the proposed railway extension from Downpatrick.

1890  ‘South Down Militia’ became the Royal Irish Rifles by 1890 and, after Lord Hill evicted many tenants around Ballykinlar in 1892, they took up residence in the Ballykinar base on 1,200 acres.

25 March 1890. By-election. The vacancy arose because of the resignation of the sitting member, Richard William Blackwood Ker of the Conservative party. Local landlords ensured that only one candidate was nominated, James Alexander Rentoul, a Conservative member of London County Council, who was elected unopposed

1890’s A fall in quayside demand and prices for fresh fish to England results in Ardglass losing some of its share of Irish landings. This situation lead to the reestablishment of curing locally in the 1900’s

 

1892 Ardglass Railway Station opens.

 

1892 Landlord candidate James Alexander Rentoul elected unopposed again as MP

1893 Conradh na Gaeilge (Gaelic League) founded by Douglas Hyde as part of the Gaelic cultural revival of from the 1890’s onwards. The effects of Gaelic League activity is seen in the censuses of 1901 and 1911 with growth of language within many local families.

1895 Landlord candidate James Alexander Rentoul again returned unopposed as MP

 

1896 Ardglass Golf Club is formed. The club was the idea of Rev. Thomas McAfee who seen the origins of the game in Scotland while recruiting a Scotch Gaelic speaking minister for Presbyterian fish processors working on the harbour. 

 

1898 Huge fresh fish market in England overtakes local fresh fish demand in record year for landings at Ardglass. Special steamers are employed to despatch fresh fish as soon as it is landed.

1900 Landlord candidate James Alexander Rentoul was elected unopposed once more as MP

1902 Appointment of MP James Alexander Rentoul as a judge triggers a by-election. Mr Rentoul was a disaster as a Judge and the only good thing the ‘who’s-who’ of the day could say about him was that he was a good after-dinner speaker.

1902 By-election shock locally when anti-Russellite Liberal Unionist James Wood becomes the first person to take the local MP’s seat off the Conservative-Party supporting local landlord class. Supports the Liberal Government and the Irish Parliamentary Party in introducing land reform – this is the beginning of the end of the power of the landlord class in East Down.

1902 First official records show that Ardglass exports 80% of its catches fresh to distant markets with the rest sold locally except for only 500 barrels of cured herring.

1903 The major herring fishing stations on the 4 coasts of Ireland are linked by a ‘telegraphic intelligence system’ modelled on the system deployed across Ireland for the mackerel fishery the year before. In the first year 20,000 telegrams were sent on landings, prices, the location of sea shoals etc. This attracted boats from other areas to Ardglass to take advantage of prices from the curing firms,

1903 Effective parliamentary action by IIP leader Parnell and his successors produces the Land (Purchase) Act 1903. This freed Irish farmers from slave-like extractive rents from a largely absent English landlord class. It allowed Irish tenant farmers buy out their freeholds with UK government loans over 68 years. The legal ownership of land by Irish people had been one of the main causes of war and mayhem in Lecale and Ireland in general since 1170. The impact of this change could not be underestimated and the local sense of social justice was undeniable.

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1904 John Gordon's forge is opened at Chapeltown.

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1905 Joe Hamill, green keeper for the Golf Club is tasked with moving some steps in the front lawn of Ardglass Castle. In the middle of the day he uncovers a carved stone. Telling nobody of his find he returns under the cover of darkness with his son John. They move the stone to the family home at Castle Place and put it under John's bed. John is terrified that someone will come looking for the stone and also because it has a carved hand on it. Six weeks later it is decided the stone needs to be given to the priest. They move the stone under cover of darkness to Chapeltown on a wheelbarrow. To deaden the noise on the 2 mile walk they wrapped sacking around the iron wheel.

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1906 Unionist Captain James Craig elected for East Down – a local man who grew up around Tyrella and was Master of the Lecale lodge of the Orange Order

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1907 Curing on a significant scale starts again in Ardglass after an 80 year absence

 

1908 Francis Joseph Bigger finding the stone placed at Chapeltown by Joe Hamill in 1905 recovers the feet of the statue of Our Lady of Dunsford from the water beneath the first tee of the golf course. New heads are added and the restored statue is placed in the niche under the steeple. It is unveiled on 25th March 1908. 

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1909 Nearly 9000 barrels and 3000 half-barrels leave Ardglass harbour produced in six weeks by Scottish firms with labour from Peterhead and Donegal.

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1911 Census showed the Ardglass parish population was 784 with 501 people in the town.

 

1910 Irish Parliamentary Party and other Nationalist parties win a massive victory at General Election. Unionists win East Down. House of Lords powers are finally reduced in 1911 so they can no longer block legislation longer than 2 years and this allows the Irish Home Rule bill introduced in 1912, with the expectation that it will be passed and implemented in 1914.It was the third such bill introduced by a Liberal government in a 28-year period in response to the Irish Home Rule movement.

November 1910 the Ulster Unionist Council formed a secret committee to oversee the creation of an army in Ulster to fight against the imposition of Home Rule, which was proposed to give Ireland self-government within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The Council approached Major Frederick H. Crawford to act as its agent to purchase the guns needed to equip such an army.

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1911 The benefactors of the estate foreclose on Aubrey de Vere Beauclerk. The entire village is put up for auction in hundreds of lots. Jordan's Castle was saved by Francis Joseph Bigger from the hands of a developer who planned to turn the site into a hotel. This played a key part in the Gaelic revival at the start of the 20th Century. The Belfast solicitor and antiquary, who had already restored the ancient churches of Raholp and Ardtole. He restored the vanished floors and ceilings, adorned the walls with pictures of Ulster chieftains and put on display a collection of native furniture and antiquities. He changes its name to Castle Shane.

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1911 The ‘Crown Brand’ introduced for local fish, improving prices.

 

1912 Nearly 30,000 barrels of fish and 5,600 tons of fresh fish were exported from County Down. The quantity of herring landed almost breaks the 1898 record.

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1912 3rd Home Rule Bill introduced in Parliament and Tory-led aristocratic landlords in the House of Lords use their remaining powers to block it for 2 years.

1912. Unionists founded the Ulster Volunteers, a paramilitary group aided by a number of senior retired Army officers, to fight if necessary against the British government and/or against a future Irish Home Rule government proposed by the Bill. The Ulster Unionists enjoyed the wholehearted support of the British Conservative Party, even when threatening armed rebellion against the British government.

28th Sept 1912 Sir Edward Carson signs the Covenant at the Belfast City Hall with a silver pen followed by  Lord Londonderry (the former viceroy of Ireland), the local East Down MP James Craig and representatives of the Protestant churches supported in all by 237,368 men “in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland”.

On the same day after a service of dedication at Down Cathedral, 1,189 men signed the covenant locally.

1912 Ulster Volunteer rallies in Finnebrouge estate near Downpatrick. Ardglass members cycled to the rally.

January 1913, the Ulster Unionist Council transformed the Ulster Volunteers into the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), consisting of men who had signed the Ulster Covenant aiming for a membership of 100,000. The UUC wanted to co-ordinate the paramilitary activities of Ulster’s unionists, as well as to give military backing to the threats of the Ulster Covenant to resist implementation of the Third Home Rule Bill, which had been introduced on 11 April 1912 by Prime Minister H. H. Asquith. This was regarded as a bluff by Westminster and Home Rule party leader John Redmond as well as most Liberal MPs, including Winston Churchill. But UVF membership grew to around 90,000 members, led by retired officers of the British Army, with the organisation under the charge of Lieutenant-General Sir George Richardson KCB, a veteran of the Afghan Wars. The UVF quickly had over £1 million pledged to it, and £70,000 invested in attempts to import arms.

1912  Tory leader Bonar Law in House of Commons backs armed rebellion against Parliament to prevent home rule bill.

26 August 1913 to 18 January 1914 The Dublin Lock-out was a major industrial dispute between approximately 20,000 workers and 300 employers which took place in Ireland's capital city of Dublin. The dispute lasted from, and is often viewed as the most severe and significant industrial dispute in Irish history. Central to the dispute was the workers' right to unionise.

23 November 1913 Irish Citizen Army ‘Arm Cathartha na hÉireann’ founded. A small group of trained trade union volunteers from the Irish Transport Workers Union (ITWU) established in Dublin for the defence of worker's demonstrations from the police. It was formed by James Larkin, James Connolly and Jack White to defend workers from big employers in Dublin resisting trade unions led by William Martin Murphy who was an Irish journalist, businessman and politician. Murphy had lost his MP’s seat to Home Rulers led by Parnell and had been dubbed "William Murder Murphy" among Dublin workers and the press due to the Dublin Lockout. He was Ireland's first "press baron", founding todays Sunday Independent in 1906, which company has gone on to have a near monopoly level of press ownership in Ireland.

25th November 1913  Irish Volunteers formed in 1913 explicitly to safeguard the granting of Home Rule, impressed by the impact of the Ulster Volunteer Force in overturning laws passed by the government and frustrated by the delay in Britain granting Ireland self-government. By Mid-1914, the Irish Volunteer Force had recruited 180,000 men with very large numbers throughout Mid-Down and South Down including Lecale. Recruitment was very heavy after the Larne gun-running by the UVF the following year.

1914  Rural peace in Ireland for the first time in centuries years with 75% of farmers buying out their landlords. Over 316,000 tenants purchased their holdings amounting to 15 million acres (61,000 km2) out of a total of 20 million acres (81,000 km2) in the country.

March 1914 British Army in Ireland mutinies against Westminster Government over 3rd Home Rule Bill, warning that they will not move against Unionists and the UVF.

25th April 1914. In the dead of night the Ulster Unionist Council and UVF landalmost 25,000 rifles and 5 million rounds of ammunition from the German Empire at Larne. Other landings in Donaghadee, and Bangor. Some 216 tons of guns and ammunition purchased in Hamburg. Included in this cache was; 11,000 Mannlicher rifles brought from the Steyr works in Austria; 9,000 ex-German army Mausers; and 4,600 Italian Vetterli-Vitali rifles. The Larne gun-running may have been the first time in history that motor-vehicles were used "on a large scale for a military-purpose”. The Belfast Telegraph was delighted and gave the whole affair favourable publicity and praising the organisation in Larne noting; “ It was an amazing sight to see this huge procession of cars nearly three miles in length descending upon the town with all their headlights ablaze”. Clearly the Belfast Telegraph had a weak grasp of democratic parliamentary politics when it was effectively supporting armed rebellion against Westminster. Many much smaller weapons purchases had resulted in the UVF as having just over 37,000 rifles by June 1914. The Larne gun-running returned the gun to the centre of Irish politics. The success at Larne heightened nationalist suspicions that the authorities were acquiescent towards unionist militants in Ulster. After the events in Larne, the nationalist Irish Volunteers, formed in late 1913, attracted many new members and started to look for guns.

30th April 1914 Following the Larne gun-running, Sir Rodger Casement stays in the Ardglass Arms and meets with Francis Bigger at Shanes Castle with a view to recruiting crew to smuggle arms for the Irish Volunteers. They they feel the British Army cannot be trusted to enforce the law if the Home Rule bill is introduced. Biggar advised against recruiting Ardglass men, but introduced Casement to two Gaelic-speaking Donegal men based in Ardglass who he could personally vouch for. Less than £4000 is available for the operation.

July 26th 1914 Transport from Germany to Ireland was carried out by Erskine Childers, Molly Childers, Sir Roger Casement, Alice Green, Connor O’Brien and Mary Spring Rice with the two two Gola Island, County Donegal sailors, Patrick McGinley and Charles Dugen sailing the Asgard and O'Brien's yacht Kelpie to the Ruytingen buoy near the Belgian coast. Sir Thomas Myles, a surgeon; barrister and politician Tom Kettle; and barrister James Meredith also sailed the Chotah. There they met the tugboat that had carried the rifles from Hamburg. The arms filled the Asguard’s cabin entirely, leaving little space to sleep or prepare food, all of which was done on top of the arms. On the return journey, they met with bad storms. Next they encountered an entire fleet of the British navy, out in anticipation of the outbreak of the world war. They landed the Asguard at Howth in a blaze of publicity in daylight. The Chotah simultaneously landed at Kilcoole in County Wicklow.

Their financial resources were much less that the Unionist/UVF and amounted to 1500 guns, dating from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 but were still functioning. They were later used in the attack on the GPO in the Easter Rising of 1916. However the major purpose of the operation was propaganda and publicity.

They were met with by members of Fianna Eireann ready with hand carts and wheelbarrows. Present were Bulmer Hobson, Douglas Hyde, Darrell Figgis, Peadar Kearney and Thomas MacDonagh. Ardglass connected Assistant Metropolitan Commissioner Harrell appealed for military assistance. The two groups met at Clontarf and A riot ensued between Volunteers armed with batons and the police. Many policemen refused to obey orders to disarm the Volunteers and those that followed orders were unable to seize the weapons. There followed another confrontation with the military detachment in which there was more hand-to-hand fighting involving bayonets and rifle butts. In the confusion Thomas MacDonagh and Bulmer Hobson succeeded in ordering the back ranks of Fianna Eireann Volunteers to quietly relay the guns away. By this stage a crowd had gathered, and on seeing the soldiers frustrated they began to heckle and jeer. Shots were fired and three people were killed instantly with thirty-eigh injured. One  man died later of bayonet wounds.

9th of June 1914  The Irish Volunteers has been secretly influenced by the Fenian IRB which had been instrumental in their establishment. But the IRB were never able to gain complete control of the organisation. This was compounded after John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, took an active interest. Though some well known Redmond supporters had joined the Volunteers, the attitude of Redmond and the Party was largely one of opposition, though by the Summer of 1914, it was clear the IPP needed to control the Volunteers if they were not to be a threat to their authority, and on 9th of June moved to take over the Volunteers. This led to a split at the start of World War I, 90% followed Irish Parliamentary leader John Redmond and joined the National Volunteers, enlisting in the 10th and 16th (Irish) Divisions of the British Army. 14,000 refusing to join; many of whom would later go on to join the IRA and participate in the War of Independence under the influence of the IRB.

28 July 1914 First World War commences and lasts until 11 November 1918. More than 9 million combatants and 7 million civilians died as a result of the war, a casualty rate exacerbated by the belligerents' technological and industrial sophistication, and tactical stalemate. It was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, paving the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved . Many smaller European nations were able to set up their own countries and escape the clutches of the giant colonial Empires.

1914 Although many UVF officers left to join the British Army during the war, the unionist leadership wanted to preserve the UVF as a viable force, aware that the issue of Home Rule and partition would be revisited when the war ended. They played on fears of a German naval raid on Ulster and so the UVF was recast as a home defence force. Ballykinlar became one of the main training bases for what was to become the 36th Ulster Division as UVF mostly fell into the Royal Irish Rifles area of recruitment.

18 September 1914 Parliament suspends the 3rd Home Rule Bill. This, when combined with the military preparations to resist the Home Rule Bill, pushes many towards radical action.

1915 Unionists like Edward Carson previously involved in gun-running and threatened rebellion against Parliament are invited to join the Cabinet, John Redmond of the Irish Parliamentary Party does not – likely a significant error – giving him responsibility without auithority. Massive casualties at Gallipoli triggers decline in IIP’s popularity.

Easter 1916 Irish Republican Brotherhood secretly organise rebellion which goes ahead in Dublin, but countermanding orders prevent the rebellion occurring in most of the rest of the country. Troops land from Britain and Dublin is recaptured after a week of street fighting and shelling.

1916 Ardglass man Deputy Commissioner Harrell of the Dublin Metropolitan Police is the one to give the order to troops to file on rebels and on civilian looters.

1916 Peace activist and key figure in the Irish Women's Suffrage and Local Government Association Thomas Sheehy-Skeffington was murdered by a soldier with local connections called Captain JC Bowen-Colthurst . Skeffington was the only son of Joseph Skeffington and Rose Magorian, of County Down. His parents were married at the Roman Catholic Chapel at Ballykinlar in 1869. Captain Bowen-Colthurst  having arrested Sheehy-Skeffington for no good reason, then used him as a ‘human shield’ with hands tied behind his back to allay attacks while his troops in raids on Rathmines. Arriving at the home and shop of  Alderman James Kelly (who was a British Conservative) Colthurst mistook him for Alderman Tom Kelly an Irish politician. The soldiers destroyed the shop with hand grenades. Bowen-Colthurst took captive a young boy, and two pro-British journalists who were in the shop – Thomas Dickson and Patrick MacIntyre – and a Sinn Féin politician, Richard O'Carroll. He shot O'Carroll in the lungs, and shot the boy as he knelt to pray. Skeffington witnessed and protested at the murders of the boy and O'Carroll on the way through Rathmines – Bowen-Colthurst told him: "You'll be next". The two journalists and Sheehy Skeffington were taken out to a yard in the barracks and shot dead by an ad hoc firing squad on Bowen-Colthurst's orders.

A major in the Royal Munster Fusiliers, Sir Francis Fletcher Vane, was in overall charge of defence at Portobello Barracks and arrived shortly afterwards, and was horrified at what had unfolded. His attempts to have Colthurst arraigned for murder were stopped and he was ordered to do a cover-up. He went to London where he met Lord Kitchener in Downing Street on 3 May 1916. A telegram was sent to Sir John Maxwell, commander-in-chief of British forces in Ireland, ordering the arrest of Bowen-Colthurst, but Maxwell refused to arrest him. Vane was dishonourably discharged from the British Army in the summer of 1916 owing to his actions in the Skeffington murder case. However Vane and Mrs Hanna Skeffington continued to campaign.

23 August 1916 Down Recorder outraged over enquiry into upstanding local soldier at the Four Courts. Conclusion was that the proclamation of martial law does not confer on officers or soldiers any new powers. The measures taken can be justified only by the practical circumstances of the case. The shooting of unarmed and unresisting civilians without trial constituted murder, whether martial law has been proclaimed or not.  Many other civilian killings investigated at enquiry. At his trial Bowen-Colthurst successfully pleaded insanity. Colthurst deemed 'cured' 20 months later on 26 April 1921 and was released with a full pension at the age of 40 in 1920.

After the 1916 Easter Rising William Murphy bought ruined buildings in Abbey Street as sites for his newspaper offices, however it was his viewpoints (expressed through his Irish Independent) that made him even more unpopular, by calling for the executions of Sean MacDiarmada and James Connolly at a point when the Irish public began to feel sympathy for their cause.

1917 Surviving leaders of 1916 rising take over Sinn Fein, a small Home Rule party. They turn it into a Republican party, organising defections from other parties. Irish Parliamentary Party remains strong in Down and Sinn Fein do not initially become politically dominant in Lecale as elsewhere in Ireland.

1917 Revolution in Russia means the end of herring exports to that country from Ardglass

Irish Convention June 1917 William Murphy the press baron invited along by the UK Government in an attempt to hammer out an agreement on the suspended 1914 Home Rule between all parties as to how it would be implemented. However he discovered that John Redmond was negotiating agreeable terms with Unionists under the Midleton Plan to avoid the partition of Ireland but at the partial loss of full Irish fiscal autonomy. This infuriated Murphy who criticised this intention in The Irish Independent thus severely damaged the Irish Parliamentary Party. This triggered the demise of the Irish party resulted in the rise of Sinn Féin, with whose separatist policies Murphy also did not agree with either.

March 1918 Convention's final report agreed but was dealt a fatal blow. With the urgent need for military manpower on the Western Front, the government decided in April 1918 to simultaneously introduce Home Rule and apply conscription to Ireland. This "dual policy" of conscription and devolution heralded the end of a political era and triggered an anti-conscription campaign, the rise of Sinn Féin and full-scale guerrilla warfare against British rule.

1918 Sinn Féin won 73 of Ireland's 105 seats in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland parliament at the general election. In the Downpatrick, Lecale and Ardglass area of East Down the Irish Parliamentary Party (Home Rule Party or IPP) and Sinn Fein failed to deliver and electoral pact as elsewhere. With a split Nationalist vote, David Reid a Unionist barrister from Belfast was elected locally with 42% of the vote. In Ulster overall, Unionists won 22 seats, Sinn Féin 26 and the Irish Parliamentary Party won 6.

1918/19 Troops returning from the Great War find Ireland transformed. War of Independence in progress and the mass of Irish MP’s refusing to recognise the UK Government.

1919 The end of the first World War allows the Ardglass herring trade to resume with Germany

21 January 1919 those Sinn Féin MPs who were not in jail or on the run assembled in Dublin's Mansion House and proclaimed themselves the parliament of Ireland, the First Dáil Éireann.

1 May 1919, UVF was 'demobilised' when its General Officer Commanding stood down.

1919 In September Sinn Fein banned and Government tries to suppress the Dáil. Alternative legal system springs up around the country called ‘Sinn Fein Courts’.

1919 William Murphy died in 1919. His family controlled Independent Newspapers until the early 1970s, when the group was sold to Tony O'Reilly whose use of their near monopoly of the Irish Printed (In my opinion – CE) also played a significant and destructive role in Irish Affairs almost up to the present day – even campaigning against John Hume and the 1998 Peace Agreement. O’Reilly lost control of the Independent Group to ex-Fine Gael tycoon Denis O’Brien from 2009 onwards, and this press empire has continued to mop up the press in Ireland without the sort of normal restrictions on concentration of press ownership found in normal developed countries – most recently the Belfast Telegraph.

1919 onwards Local units of the IRA used guns and explosives to attack police barracks at Ardglass, Clough, Castlewellan, Crossgar and Ballynahinch. Telegraph poles and trees were used in Lecale to block roads disrupt the authorities. In one such incident a senior officer of the Royal Sussex Regiment crashed his car on the way to Ballykinlar resulting in the death of his wife.

1920 In the city council elections, Sinn Féin gained control of ten of the twelve city councils in Ireland. Only Belfast and Derry remained under Unionist and IPP (respectively) control. In the local elections of the same year, Sinn Féin won control of all the county councils except Antrim, Down, Londonderry and Armagh.

1920 The publication of the Government of Ireland Act triggered big protests in ‘republican towns’ like Portaferry and Castlewellan who objected the UK governments proposal to partition Ireland and leave large Nationalist areas in a Unionist mini-state. Troops from Ballykinkar were deployed to try and stop Sinn Fein meetings.

25 June 1920 Ulster Unionist Council officially revived the UVF and appointed lieutenant colonel Wilfrid Spender as the UVF's Officer Commanding. Announcements were printed in unionist newspapers calling on all former UVF members to report for duty. However with limited success. Belfast battalions drew little more than 100 men each and they were left mostly unarmed.

1921 The UK Government and the Sinn Fein Government in Dublin agreed to a ceasefire (or "truce") on 11 July.

1921 Talks led to the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on 6 December. This treaty ended British rule in most of Ireland and, after a ten-month transitional period overseen by a provisional government, the Irish Free State was created as a self-governing state with Dominion status on 6 December 1922. However, Northern Ireland remained within the United Kingdom, triggering increased trouble in Lecale.

Insert boarder commission here - original plan has Lecale/Ardglass in the republic - see map in related artcile

1921 In December the Downpatrick Rural Council, Town Commissioners and the Board of Guardians of the ‘poor law union’ all pledged allegiance to the new Irish Dáil Éireann reflecting the mood of a significant majority around Lecale. This would result in their abolition and the area was ruled by a Unionist appointee until local government was restored in 1926.

1922 Huge increase in violence in the new six-county state, with anti-Catholic pogroms in Belfast and IRA units operating all over South Down. On 18 May 1922, Ardglass Barracks was under fire in battle between IRA and Sussex Regiment. There were attacks on the homes of the gentry with the Strangford Old Court home of the de Ros family destroyed in an IRA attack, with other attacks locally like those on Finnebrouge near Downpatrick and Killyleagh Castle.

Also in 1922  The Ulster Special Constabulary was raised as a local militia to support the hard-pressed police and it was the ‘Specials’ rather than the Army who patrolled Lecale in ‘Crossley Tenders’ arresting Republicans, guarding key installations and protecting the homes of the Unionist gentry. The Down Recorder reported that ‘citizens abed hear almost every night the crackle of rifle fire’.

The petty sessions in Downpatrick heard many cases where local people were seeking compensation for stolen motor vehicles, livestock that had been wounded during local ambushes and damage done to boats moored on the river Quoile that had been riddled with bullets. (The Quoile barrier was built much later and boats could still moor in Downpatrick.)

Ballykinlar Army Camp housed thousands of republican prisoners, but was surrounded by an area that had actually voted to secede from the State and sought to join the republican government in Dublin. Many notables were kept there like Seán Lemass the future Taoiseach / Irish Premier and the author Peadar Kearney who had also penned the Irish National Anthem.

1922 4th Home Rule Bill implemented for Northern Ireland and continued until it was suspended by the British parliament in 1972 as a consequence of the most recent Troubles. Home Rule never took effect in Southern Ireland due to the Irish War of Independence, which resulted instead in the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the establishment in 1922 of the Irish Free State.

4th Home Rule Bill theoretically remained in force in Northern Ireland until it was repealed under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

1922 Following the partition of Ireland in 1922, ‘Poor Law Guardians’ and Work Houses abolished in the South and replaced by County Health Boards, but they continued to exist until 1948 in Northern Ireland.

15th November 1922 General Election. East Down Constituency abolished and is replaced by a two member constituency called ‘Down’ until 1950. Despite Republican or Labour challenges, both seats were held by Unionists until the Lecale area around Ardglass was moved to the new single-member constituency of South Down in 1950.

1923 Fishery Development Commission reports that in Ardglass alone, 20 tons of herrings can be disposed of daily by means of rail to Belfast and by motor lorry throughout Ulster to local markets and hawkers carts.

1923 Post war herring prices much lower going from 28 shillings per hundredweight to 9 shillings and sixpence.

 

1926 Herring Season starts early on 23 June. Cured herring being bought in Ardglass for good prices for the USA and Germany. All the space available in the harbour had been taken by 14 curing firms, almost all from Scotland. 150 women employed in curing/gutting. Half from the Western Isles and half from Donegal. A General Strike in Britain affects availability of coal for ships. Canny Ardglass traders arrange for the ships coming from Hamburg and Baltic ports for cured herring to arrive with coal as ballast, boosting their advantage vis-à-vis other ports.

 

1928 Herring season is late, only starting in the first week in August. over the next few years herring and fish stocks start to collapse, as do prices. This double-blow eventually leads to the Government in 1934 subsidising local fishermen to ‘tide them over’.

 

1929 From the Down Recorder newspaper Saturday 31st August 1929, page 3. New telephone service to New York through the new cable via Ballyhornan and the Isle of Man and then by wireless telephony from Rugby, opened on Monday. A three-minute call costs £9 6 shillings, and every minute extra £3 2 shillings. The time is charged from the moment the persons begin to speak. During the tests the voices in New York were heard with perfect clearness.

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1934 Government subsidising local fishermen to ‘tide them over until things improve’ – they did not for some years. Herring trade in serous difficulty.

 

1941 Bishopscourt Aerodrome opens in November 1941 with the second world war. A future American President Dwight D Eisenhower visits in May 1944.

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1946 The Georgetown Victory runs aground off Killard Bank. The plundering of the wreck for trophies was a concern for local people.