The A-Z of Curious Northern Ireland E-Book

Doreen McBride

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 269

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Northern Ireland is a fascinating, stunningly beautiful province with a recorded history dating back to the ancient Celts. It may be the smallest country in the UK, but it has three Nobel Prizes for English Literature connected to it as well as many world-class musicians, artists and scientists. It is a land where the craic is mighty, where every tree, every flower, every rock tells a story. The A-Z of Curious Northern Ireland explores the quirks and peculiarities of the country's talented people and the interesting places they call home. Recorded in a reliable, readable, often humorous style, it is a handy reference guide that can be dipped into and enjoyed over and over again.

Leseprobe

Dedicated to my husband George, who never promised me a rose garden, yet what he gave me was so much better.

First published 2025

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Doreen McBride, 2025

The right of Doreen McBride to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

978 1 80399 315 7

Typesetting and origination by The History Press.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to my late husband, George, who keeps me going and to whom this book is dedicated. I am very grateful to my cousin Vernon Finlay, who read my manuscript and corrected my many typos. His help is invaluable. He is invariably encouraging, honest and wise, and I’m very grateful to him. I am also grateful to the following for supplying me with information: Anne McMaster, Florence Chambers, the late Mrs Harry McCourt, Vicki Herbert, Richard Watson, Michell Shannon, Dr Barbara Erwin, the late Dr David Erwin, Dr Robert Logan, Jayne Adair, Maebh O’Regan, the late John Campbell, Noelle and the late Graham Millar, Aidan Campbell, Joe McLaren, Liam McElhinney, Renee Therriault, Kevin Woods – the Leprechaun Whisperer, Jack Johnston, Patrick Greer, Maíréad O’Dolan, Rosana Trainor, Dr Willim Rolston and the late Pat Cassidy, who made me laugh so hard I nearly split my sides.

I am also indebted to Jamie Clarke, Larne Museum, Marble Arch Caves, Belfast Zoo, Holywood Arches Library, Banbridge Library, Newry Library and the Linen Hall Library as well as my wonderful editors, Nicola Guy and Ele Palmer.

Introduction

I once had an American guest who said, ‘Northern Ireland is a very endearing place.’ I agree with her. I was born here and love it. It’s full of curious things. Every rock, every stick, every stone, every hill and every mountain tell a story forming the basis of a strong storytelling tradition. The four great cycles of traditional folk tales, the Ulster Cycle, the Mythological Cycle, the Fenian Cycle and the Historical Cycle, originated in Ulster. (Northern Ireland contains six of the nine counties of Ulster and some parts of the cycles stretch across the border.) St Patrick himself spent most of his time in Northern Ireland, which contains his two major churches – Down Cathedral in Downpatrick, where the saint is buried, and Armagh Cathedral, which is the ecclesiastical centre of Ireland.

The scenery is stunning, the people friendly, humorous and helpful. I am very grateful to those who took time to craic with me. I couldn’t have written this without them.

A

AMANDA MCKITTRICK ROS

The world’s worst novelist, Amanda McKittrick Ros, was convinced she was a literary genius! She was born on 8 December 1860 in a house called Riverside, at Drumaness, near Ballynahinch, County Down. She was christened Anna Margaret at Third Ballynahinch Presbyterian Church on 27 January 1861, the fourth daughter of Eliza Black and Edward Amlave McKittrick, principal of Drumaness School.

She trained as a teacher in Marlborough Training College, Dublin. Her first job as was in Millbrook School, Larne, County Antrim. There she met her first husband, Andy Ross, Larne Railway Station’s station master, a highly regarded position. She determined to marry him and did so on 30 August 1887. His job was well paid, which must have added to his attraction because she wrote:

Love is pleasing – more so money,

Powerful factor – life’s best honey,

Super for the gift of God

To a world of sin and fraud.

Amanda’s parents christened her Anna Margaret. She didn’t like her given name and changed it to Amanda Malvina Fitzalan Anna Margaret McClelland McKitterick Ros, which, she said, was a much more suitable handle for a genius, a poetess with novels published and royal blood flowing in her veins. She considered ‘Ros’, with one ‘s’, much more elegant than her husband’s surname, ‘Ross’.

Amanda’s the quare geg.

Amanda’s marriage appears to have been happy. As a tenth wedding anniversary present, her husband paid for the publication of the first of her ‘great’ novels, Irene Iddlesleigh. She wrote two books of poetry, Fumes of Formation and Poems of Puncture, as well as her novels. They all began as private publications because she didn’t approve of traditional publishers. She said, ‘They want to butter the bannock on both sides and wouldn’t even let you smell the treacle!’ And as for other authors, she was firmly of the opinion that their work was rubbish! The only one she admired was Marie Corelli, who some consider to be a contender for the position of the world’s worst novelist! Regarding Lewis Carroll, she wrote:

I read Alice in Wonderland. It’s the work of a drunken bluff without one redeeming feature in its idiotic pages, written by some old clergy man in his dotage.

I hear some gulled American paid over £15,000 for the original manuscript. Why has no one offered to buy my original manuscripts?

Amanda’s novels are so awful they are hilariously funny, with passages such as the following:

Sympathise with me indeed! Ah, no! Cast your sympathy on the chill waves of troubled waters, fling it on the oases of futility: dash it against the rock of gossip: or, better still, allow it to remain within the faithless bosom of buried scorn.

Leave me now deceptive demon of deluded mockery, lurk no more around the vale of vanity, like a vindictive viper: strike the lyre of living deception to the strains of dull deadness, despair and doubt.

Her book caused a sensation around Ballynahinch. Miss Louie Bennet had such fun reading passages aloud to her friends that she sent a copy to Barry Pain, a popular humourist, who wrote a weekly article in a widely read magazine called Black and White. His review included the following comments:

The book has not amused me. It began by doing that. Then, as its enormities went on getting more and more enormous with every line, the book seemed something Titanic, gigantic, awe-inspiring, the world is full of Irene Iddlesleigh, by Mrs Amanda McKittrick Ros, and I shrank from it in tears and terror.

The most stupendous and monumental characteristic of it is perhaps its absence of any sense of humour.

It was great tragedy at the price of half a crown.

Amanda was enraged and developed a lasting hatred of critics. She wrote:

What puzzles me is why Barry Pain, that hell-deserving rodent, dared consider it his business to offer criticism without an invitation to do so? I neither sought for, nor needed his opinion. How dare he write that the monumental characteristic of my first book is its absence of any sense of humour. Humour is not a required attribute of great literature.

He had no reason to shrink. Only a great writer could produce such refined words.

This so-called Barry Pain, has taken upon him to criticise a work the depth of which fails to reach the solving power of his borrowed, and he’d have you to believe, varied talent. I care not for what Barry calls the book I have written. I care not for the opinion of half-starved upstarts who don the garb of shabby genteel and would feign feed the minds of the people with worthless scraps of stolen fancies.

Amanda could be very kindly, but as can be seen from the above comments, when annoyed she became vitriolic! There is a theory that Andy Ros was impotent and the spleen expressed in some of her writing is the result of sexual frustration, something no Victorian lady could ever admit to! Was that what she was confessing when she wrote:

Within my breast I feel a flame

That would dishonour well maintain.

It pains me to the very heart

Yet pleases with its deadly dart.

Amanda’s book, and her reaction to criticism, caused hilarity. Undergraduate clubs were formed throughout the country, including Oxford and Cambridge. They gave prizes to the person who could read her prose without laughing for the longest period of time. Famous writers, such as Aldous Huxley and Charles Dickens, belonged to Amanda Ros clubs. Her books attracted the attention of the rich and famous. She regularly received letters from enthusiastic readers throughout the English-speaking world, who found her replies as funny as her books. Lord Beveridge, Lord Ponsonby, Lord Oxford, Sir Edward Grey and E.V. Lucas formed an Amanda Ros club in London. Robert Lynd, Sir John Squire and Sir Desmond McCarthy visited her in Larne. She was proud of the interest shown by her aristocratic admirers, without realising they were having fun at her expense!

Critics continued to annoy her by mocking her ‘great literature’. She decided they did not have sufficient intelligence to appreciate it and called them names such as, ‘foul critics living off the work of those of undoubted talent’, ‘critic cur’, ‘monkey-faced morons,’ ‘hell-deserving rodent’, ‘scurrilous scribes’, ‘vicious vandals’, ‘character-clipping combination’ and so on. On one occasion she wrote, ‘I am the notorious boil on the tip of critics’ tongues.’ However, there was one critic she liked, Aldous Huxley. In 1930 she wrote to a friend saying he ‘is the only critic who appears to understand my work’, probably because in 1923 he began an essay, ‘Euphues Redivivus’, as follows:

I have recently been fortunate in securing a copy of that very rare and precious novel, ‘Delina Delaney’, by Mrs Amanda McKittrick Ros, authoress of ‘Irene Iddlesleigh’ and ‘Poems of Puncture’. Mrs Ros is a name only known to a small select band of readers. But by these few she is highly prized: one of her readers actually was at pains to make a complete manuscript of ‘Delina Delaney’, so great was his admiration and so hopelessly out of print the book. Let me recommend Mrs Ros’s masterpiece to the attention of enterprising publishers.

Extract from Delina Delaney:

A panic swept over the entire court, whilst Delina fell heavily against the front of the dock. Ladies became hysterical, some fainting, others weeping copiously, and nothing was heard save sobbing and wailing. One young girl named Fanny Fowler, who had been a companion of Delina’s at school, died of shock. The sight was one never, never to be forgotten. Mothers wringing their hands in deep and groaning agony, ladies supported in the arms of their husbands: and girls screaming because their parents could not be quieted.

Unfortunately Amanda’s husband dropped dead in 1917. He’d just finished eating a hearty meal that she’d cooked. She was devastated and comforted herself by saying, ‘At least he died on a full stomach.’ She treasured a pod taken from the peas she’d shelled for his last meal.

Andy Ross was respected and well liked, so the world and his wife turned up for his funeral. Amanda wanted to be alone with what she described as her ‘great grief’. She wanted everyone to go home. She didn’t appreciate all the floral tributes sent to her. If she didn’t like the sender, she had the flowers returned in a wheel barrel! She was particularly nasty to the railway company as she felt they’d overworked Andy for years. Their funeral wreath was sent back with a note saying, ‘Keep it for your own director.’ He was very ill!

It was traditional for male mourners to walk solemnly after the hearse. She didn’t want that so ordered the funeral director to make his horses take off at a trot the minute Andy’s body was placed in the hearse. The mourners had a choice. They could either run after the hearse with their top hats and coat tails flapping, or go home! Most of them went home!

‘I’m embarrassed! Amanda makes a monkey of me.’

She, like most Victorians, was obsessed with death. When Barry Pain (who she described as ‘Pain by name and pain by nature’) died, she took great delight in writing the following epitaph for him:

Epitaph Suitable for a Critic’s Tomb

My! What a bubbly, vapoury box of vanity!

A litter of worms, a relic of humanity,

Once a plaster cast of mud, a puff of breath as well.

Before you chance to wonder – remember there’s a hell!

So here lies an honest critic and I tell thee what,

’Tis a thing for all the world to wonder at!

Amanda expressed her obsession with death as follows: ‘We all end up as dust. DUST! I do not relish the thought. If there was any justice those possessing a superior intellect, such as mine, should return at least to pebbles, not dust!’ and expressed her thoughts in what she felt was poetry!

My death robe be to me a wrap

Nothing but worms and damp can snap.

All things appear to me as nought

When in the grave we lie and rot.

A visit to Westminster Abbey inspired her to what she considered to be great poetical heights and she wrote:

Westminster Abbey

Holy Moses! Have a look!

Flesh decayed in every nook!

Some rare bits of brain lie here

Mortal loads of beef and beer,

Some of whom are turned to dust.

She ended her ‘poem’ with the following verse.

Famous some were – yet they died;

Statesmen – Rogues beside,

Kings – Queens, all of them do rot,

What about them? Now – they’re not!

Amanda had a highly litigious nature, which resulted in her taking to the law and ending up in court. That was, and is, a very expensive course of action, so she eventually became penniless. Once, when the judge asked her a question and when she tried to answer it, she recorded:

The poisonous ape of a barrister, that hog-washing hooligan, said such a stupid embarrassing thing I told him not to interrupt a lady when she was speaking and lifted my stick pretending I was going to hit him to teach him a lesson. If I did use filthy language ten years ago, what of it? I am not the only person to have done so and will not be the last! What about the world’s so called genius Robbie Burns? Have any of the learned dignitaries at Belfast Assizes read any of his filthy productions?

I quote,

‘My name is Bobby Burns,

I’m the pier of Leith.’

‘The pier of Leith’ How shocking! I quote, ‘the pier of Leith’. How dare he be so coarse as to mention bodily functions?

And what about Lord Bryon in Lalla Rookh? Filth! Sheer filth!

I don’t think I’m committing an act of sacrilege by saying these world-famed figures are not only guilty of using foul language in camera, as I did, but they did not hesitate to put such language in print to be handed down and pervert as yet unborn generations to behave and I, I was asked to leave the witness box.

Oh, the injustice of it all! The law’s an ass.

Amanda’s experience with the law left her with a deep and abiding hatred of solicitors alongside her hatred of critics. She called them, among other things, ‘those worms’, ‘those evil-minded snapshots of spleen’, ‘those public character tearers’, ‘that mushroom class of idiotics’.

Name calling didn’t satisfy her spite, so before she lost her money and couldn’t afford her pony and trap, she used to be driven into Larne to Cross Street on market day. There she glared into the windows of the solicitors she referred to as ‘Mickey Monkey McBlear and Jamie Jarr’ in their ‘penurious premises’, shouted insults, blew raspberries through their windows and played a toy trumpet in a threatening fashion! People used to come over from Scotland on market day. The streets were crowded and her actions caused traffic jams that had to be cleared by the police. While waiting in the traffic jam she’d caused, she took the opportunity to tell the assembled crowd how badly she felt she’d been treated. She became a tourist attraction, with people coming from Scotland to see her shenanigans.

Once, when I was giving a talk in the Larne Museum, I met the daughter of one of the solicitors, who told me her father said Amanda was an intimidating sight. Another woman said her grandfather had been taught by Amanda. He said all her pupils loved her, and that she was very beautiful and a brilliant teacher.

Her court appearances caused Amanda to become impoverished. She had to let all her servants go and rent part of her house out as a shop. That really annoyed her because her tenant refused to shut the shop on the Sabbath. She had a hand bell, which she rang demanding he close the shop, but the tenant took no notice. He also took no notice when she wrote to a letter of complaint to the Larne Times. He said there was nothing in his lease stipulating the hours or days on which he could open or close his shop, so there was nothing she could do. Nothing! She became so tired, so world weary, so exhausted she decided to take the waters of the spa near Ballynahinch and her old childhood home in County Down. There she met a wealthy farmer called Thomas Rogers (1857/58–1933), married him in 1922, settled down and stopped writing!

AMERICAN PRESIDENTS WITH NORTHERN IRELAND ANCESTRY

At least seventeen American Presidents claim to have Ulster/Scots ancestry. I haven’t included them all because some connections appear very tenuous.

Andrew Jackson, seventh President (1829–37), said, ‘I was born somewhere between Carrickfergus and the United States.’ His father, also called Andrew, farmed for some time around the Castlereigh area of County Down before moving to Boneybefore, near Carrickfergus in County Antrim. He became dissatisfied with his life because no matter how hard he worked, he made a poor living. He decided to emigrate to North Carolina in search of a new life. He was accompanied by his wife, Elizabeth, their two sons, Robert and Hugh, and his father, who was also called Hugh. He died less than two years later, five days after the birth of his third son, Andrew, the future President.

Andrew Jackson’s ancestral home in Boneybefore was about a mile north of Carrickfergus’s thirteenth-century Norman castle. Unfortunately, it was demolished in 1860 to clear the way for the old LMS railway line to be laid between Belfast and Larne. Stones from the old cottage were used to reconstruct a new one beside the railway line, which is open to visitors. It’s been renovated and furnished to show the lifestyle of the ancestral Jacksons.

President Andrew Jackson’s homestead.

James Knox Polk, eleventh President (1845–49), has ancestry that can be traced back to the north of Ireland. The exact location of his homestead has not been established but there are family links with Bloomfield Castle, near Londonderry. The surname changed to Pollock, then Polk sometime between 1672 and 1687. Captain Robert Bruce Polk emigrated from Northern Ireland along with his wife, six daughters and two sons, and settled in Somerset County, Maryland. He became the great-great-great-grandfather of the eleventh President.

Andrew Johnson, seventeenth President (1857-69). It is believed that President Andrew Johnson’s family were small farmers from the Mounthill district near Larne in County Antrim. His grandfather was very young when he married and moved to Ballyeaston, near Ballyclare, County Antrim. It was from here that he emigrated around 1750. He settled in Lancaster Country, Pennsylvania, before moving to Raleigh, North Carolina, and it was here that his grandson, Andrew Johnson, the seventeenth President, was born in 1808.

Ulysses Simpson Grant, eighteenth President (1869–77), has an ancestral homestead at Dergina, near Ballygawley, County Tyrone, which can be visited. When I first visited years ago it was occupied by Nurse Isobel Simpson. She was directly descended from the President’s mother, Hannah Simpson. She was a retired nurse, a delightful woman who appeared amused that she had such an illustrious ancestor! Hannah Simpson was the daughter of John and Rebecca Weir Simpson and granddaughter of John Simpson. He was born at Dergina in 1738 and emigrated to America sometime between 1760 and 1763. He settled at Horsham township, Montgomery Country, Pennsylvania, and died in 1804.

Chester Alan Arthur, twenty-first President (1881–85), came from the Dreen (or Draen), Gourley’s Hill, Cullybackey, near Ballymena in County Antrim. It is a restored single-storey cottage that has been furnished in the style of the period and first opened to the public in 1968. It’s a short walk from Cullybackey in a breathtaking situation overlooking the River Maines valley and it’s open to the public. The President’s grandfather, Alan Arthur, emigrated from here in 1816 along with his wife and son, William. Unlike some of the other Presidents’ families, the Arthurs were comparatively wealthy because William, who became the President’s father, was able to attend Belfast College before he emigrated at the age of 18.

Stephen Grover Cleveland, twenty-second President (1885-89) and twenty-fourth President (1893-97). (According to a State Department ruling he can be counted twice because his terms of office were not consecutive.) President Cleveland’s mother was Ann Neal, the daughter of Aber Neal, a merchant. They lived in County Antrim, where his daughter Ann was born. The exact location has not been established. Aber Neal emigrated late in the eighteenth century because his politics could have had repercussions such as him being sent for trial and, if found guilty, severely fined, jailed, sold as a slave, hanged or burnt at the stake!

Aber Neal set up a publishing company in America. He was very successful, publishing and selling law books. His daughter Ann married a clergyman, Richard Falley Cleveland. Their fifth child and future President was born on 18 March 1837.

Benjamin Harrison, twenty-third President (1889–93). The exact location of his ancestral home in County Antrim hasn’t been established. His great-grandfather, Benjamin Harrison, after whom he was christened, was one of the signatories of the Declaration of American Independence.

William McKinley, twenty-fifth President (1897-1901). The old McKinley homestead is on the family farm at Conagher, Dervock, close to the River Bush. The earliest member of the family to emigrate was James McKinley in 1743. He was the President’s great-great-grandfather. Francis McKinley was the last member of the family to live there. He emigrated to the United States in about 1836. The McKinleys must have made a strong impression on the local population as the old homestead is still called ‘McKinley’s Farm’. The original dwelling is now used as a barn, a new home having been built beside it. Ireland has a tradition of not knocking old homesteads down because of a belief that the old people, that is, ancestors who once lived in the house, come at night when everyone is asleep and sit round the fire. If the house wasn’t there they wouldn’t know where to go and could haunt the family. That belief is dying, although there are still many ruined farmsteads present in the countryside.

President McKinley was one of four American Presidents to be assassinated. He was shot twice in the stomach by an anarchist, Leon Czolgosz, on 9 June 1901. He developed gangrene in his wounds and died on 14 September. The President was six months into his second term of office at the time and was visiting the Pan-American Exposition in the Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York State. He liked meeting members of the public, ignored security advice and was shaking hands with a member of the public when he was shot.

Theodore Roosevelt, twenty-sixth President (1901–04). The exact location of President Roosevelt’s ancestral home has not been located, although it is thought to be in Gleno, near Larne.

Woodrow Wilson, twenty-eighth President (1913-21). His ancestral home is in Dergalt, 3 miles from Strabane in County Tyrone. He is considered to be one of the most outstanding Presidents the United States has ever had. He was the grandson of James Wilson, who emigrated from County Tyrone to America in 1807. On the emigrant voyage he met Annie Adams from Sion Mills, also in County Tyrone, and the young couple married shortly after they landed in America. Their son, Revd Joseph Ruggles Wilson, was his father. Woodrow Wilson was born in Virginia. His father was one of the founders of America’s Presbyterian Church in 1861. He was very proud of his Ulster-Scots (Scots-Irish) ancestry and visited his ancestral home, near Strabane, during the summer of 1899 to carry out family research. In an address at an annual banquet to a New England Society in Brooklyn on 21 December 1896, he said:

I am not of your blood. I am not a Virginian Cavalier. But I come from blood as good as yours – in some respects better, because the Scots-Irish, although they are as much in earnest as you, have a little bit more gaiety and elasticity than you have. We believe as sincerely as you do that we really made this country.

Woodrow Wilson had a brilliant academic career before he was elected President in 1913. He is the only President to have been awarded a doctorate (a PhD in political science), so he was well able to oversee legislation, including the women’s right to vote. He guided America throughout the First World War and was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 1919. His ancestral home is in the care of the Ulster American Folk Park. It isn’t always open, but tourists can peer in the windows, read the interesting noticeboards describing its significance and history and admire the magnificent scenery. I visited it shortly after it opened and met his relatives, an elderly brother and sister. The place was delightful, with chickens walking around the yard, a turf fire and a cosy atmosphere. I was invited to have a seat by the fire and I asked what they felt about discovering they had an illustrious ancestor. They told me it was a shock! They had lived quietly, travelling no further than Plumbridge (about 9 miles away), and now they were inundated with strangers. Most visitors were very nice, some were condescending about their lifestyle and some people were downright rude. The money they earned made life a lot easier because they no longer had to worry about making the farm economic, but in some ways they would have liked to go back to their old, quiet, contented life when the height of excitement was to cycle up to the Plum (Plumbridge).

Bill Clinton, forty-second President (1993-2001). There is no proof of Bill Clinton’s ancestry. He claims to be descended from Northern Irish stock. The local oral tradition records President Clinton’s ancestral home as being in Roscrea, County Fermanagh, so what he says connects with the local tradition. His mother’s maiden name was ‘Cassidy’, a common surname in County Fermanagh, so I’ve included him. He was the first serving president to visit Northern Ireland and has done so on several occasions. He was instrumental in drawing up the Peace Process, known as the Good Friday Agreement. He’s very popular in Northern Ireland. Locals were delighted when he went shopping on Belfast’s Shankill Road and insisted on paying for what he bought. He visited Omagh and talked to survivors and victims of the Omagh Bombing (1998). Twenty-nine people were killed and 300 were injured. He was visibly moved by the stories he heard.

Bill Clinton’s wife, Hillary, became Chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast in 2020. She is the first woman to hold that post and will do so for five years. At the time she said, ‘It’s my great privilege to become Queen’s first female chancellor. It’s a place I have great fondness for and have grown a strong relationship with over the years, and I’m proud to be an ambassador for its excellence.’ Locally, the vast majority of people are delighted she accepted the post, which was reported as a coup for Queen’s.

ARMADA

Girona, one of the ships in the Spanish Armada, carrying fabulous wealth and 1,300 sailors, sank off the coast of County Antrim in 1588.

Spain was determined to invade England, remove Queen Elizabeth I from the throne and put King Philip II of Spain on it. He claimed to be the rightful ruler because he’d been married to her sister, Queen Mary. He sent out an Armada of ships in May 1588 and was defeated by the English navy for three reasons: its ships were smaller and more manoeuvrable than the ungainly Spanish galleons, the weather was atrocious, and King Philip acted stupidly. He put the Duke of Medina Sidonia, an aristocrat without any naval experience, in charge of the fleet, with instructions to link up with the Duke of Parma in Flanders, with an invasion force to attack England.

King Philip was an ardent Catholic. His wife, Queen Mary, burnt so many Protestants at the stake she became known as ‘Bloody Mary’. Queen Elizabeth was a Protestant, who turned England into a Protestant State. King Philip wanted to reinstate Catholicism as England’s religion and stop British and Dutch privateers plundering his interests in the New World. His invasion force was thought to be invincible. The tall, stately, well-armed galleons looked impressive. However, the small, fast manoeuvrable English ships sailed between them and set them on fire. The big ships were like sitting ducks. They tried to escape by scattering up the east coast of England and around the north of Scotland. There was a howling gale. Many of the galleons perished, blown on to rocks and headlands or sunk by the weather.

Girona survived the storm, but its rudder was damaged. It limped into Killybegs in County Donegal and was patched up before setting sail round the north coast of Ireland. It was carrying survivors from three other Spanish ships as well as its own crew. There were an estimated 1,300 on board a ship designed for 400, as well as all kinds of treasure. It foundered on rocks at Portballintrae in County Antrim, which is near Dunluce Castle. There were only nine survivors. Sorley Boy McDonnell, the owner of Dunluce Castle, looked after them and gave 260 bodies found in the vicinity a decent Christian burial in nearby St Cuthbert’s graveyard. Most of the remaining bodies were not recovered but one washed up on the shore at Ballygally. It was buried in an unmarked grave in the churchyard surrounding St Peter’s Anglican Church, Cairncastle. In his pocket the sailor had a sweet chestnut tree seed, which were supposed to keep their owners from drowning. It germinated and grew into a huge tree that flourished until 2020, when it blew down in a storm. The trunk was removed. Locals have preserved the wood and intend to have it made into some kind of commemoration. The massive root survives and is growing shoots. Sweet chestnut trees are not indigenous to Ireland but over the years seeds from that tree have been grown locally, so the Spanish Armada has had a direct effect on the north of Ireland.

Cairncastle Church.

Over the years many divers set out to find Girona’s treasure. They studied records of winds and tides but failed to locate the ship. Eventually a Belgium crew, led by Robert Stenuit, an experienced diver, found Girona on 27 June 1967 at Port na Spaniagh. Stenuit’s approach differed from other attempts. He asked the locals where Girona was. They pointed at a rocky outcrop on the shore and told him, ‘That’s where it went down.’ When I was a child growing up in Northern Ireland we had family outings to Portballintrae. The rocky outcrop was pointed out to us and we were told it was called Port na Spaniagh because it marked the spot where a Spanish galleon had gone down! Locals said, ‘Nobody believes us when we tell them!’ Stenuit was different. He stated:

When we arrived in Portballintrae, I began my search where all the contemporary historical documents advised me to go and dive. That is just next to the Giant’s Causeway. The Portballintrae locals were much interested by our activities and we soon developed very friendly ties with local amateur divers.

Girona wasn’t found on the first few dives, then on 27 June 1967, approximately a year after he’d located the wreck, Stenuit reported, ‘The first artefact from the Girona which I found was a large lead ingot, it was boat-shaped and covered with marks in Roman numerals.’