The meeting due to take place tonight, 1 March, has been cancelled owing to the weather conditions. Our speaker was coming some distance and the area where she lives has had heavy snow. We will try to re-book her for next season.
Meanwhile, the final meeting of the current season will take place on Thursday 5th April when Peter Dawson, formerly of the Ordnance Survey, will talk about mapping in Northern Ireland.
There are changes to the programme for final two meetings of the season at Randalstown Historical Society. Laura Spence’s talk on The Rhyming Weaver Poets, originally scheduled for our April meeting, will now take place on Thursday 1 March. The speaker at the meeting on 5 April will be Peter Dawson on the theme of Mapping in Northern Ireland.
Annual Outing
This year’s outing will take place on Saturday 12 May and we will be visiting St Nicholas’s Church in Carrickfergus, the subject of our February meeting, followed by a visit to the new Railway Museum at Whitehead where we will have lunch and a tour of the collection.
As distances are not too great we will not be hiring a bus but car-pooling will be arranged for those who wish to share.
For full details of the itinerary and costs contact Linda Houston.
The programme for Randalstown Historical Society’s forthcoming season is now winging its way to our members and promises a varied menu of interesting topics.
The season kicks off on Thursday 7 September with a talk from George Busby on The Secret Listeners of Gilnahirk, the story of the wireless station that has been described as Northern Ireland’s best kept secret of World War II and which linked to the work of the Code Breakers at Bletchley Park.
October’s talk, taking place on the 5th, will be presented jointly by The Hon. Fionn O’Neill Morgan, formerly of Shanes Castle, and James Kane from the O’Neill Country Historical Society. They will talk about O’Neill places and personalities, including French John, the wool trader who inherited Shanes Castle.
The November talk will be given by Valerie Adams from the Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland. She will talk about what the Society’s library can offer to family history researchers.
The subjects for other talks for the remainder of the season include Mapping in Northern Ireland, a talk on St Nicholas’s Church in Carrickfergus, Belfast in the nineteenth century and the Ulster Weaver Poets.
All talks take place in Arches Community Hall on the first Thursday of the month at 8.00 pm. New and returning members will be made very welcome.
As part of Randalstown Arches Community Festival, Randalstown Historical Society is offering family history taster sessions in Randalstown Library on Tuesday 20 June. Members of the Historical Society will be on hand to provide some tips on how to get started in tracing your ancestry using the wealth of information freely available via the Internet. Sessions can be pre-booked between 2.00 and 4.30 and from 5.30 to 7.30 or just drop in any time during those hours.
To book in advance contact Linda Houston on 94472874 or lyhouston@gmail.com
A Local History Open Day will also be going on all day in the library and will include old photographs and other materials provided by Randalstown Historical Society.
The Historical Society is coming to the end of what has been a very successful season, with talks on a wide variety of themes including Protestants and the Irish language, the Ballymena Music Festival, and migration in Irish history. Bishop Donal McKeown visited us in February and shared his memories on what made it special to grow up in Randalstown and in March Dr Brian Ford reminisced about a trip he made to the Taj Mahal by car in the 1970s. We also found out about Richard Kane, born in Duneane, who had a distinguished military career and became Governor of Menorca in the early 1700s. He is still honoured as a hero on Menorca on account of the reforms he introduced to improve the life of the islanders. A fine memorial to his life can be seen in Westminster Abbey.
Our last meeting of the season takes place on Thursday 6 April at 8.00 pm in Arches House. Our speaker will be Dr Ann McVeigh, formerly of the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. The title of Ann’s talk is ‘Vere Foster: the Man who Paid Women to Go Away’. Vere Foster is remembered for his contribution to education in Ireland but Ann’s talk will cover other intriguing aspects of his life.
Our annual outing takes place on Saturday 13 May and this year we will be going to Ballyscullion Park near Bellaghy for a tour of the house and garden followed by lunch. We will also visit the Home Place, the Seamus Heaney centre in Bellaghy.
We will soon be making plans for the 2017-18 season, which will start in September. New members will be made very welcome.
The memorial to Richard Kane in Westminster Abbey
Randalstown Historical Society opens its 2016-17 season on Thursday 1 September with a talk by Linda Ervine on “The Hidden History of Protestants and the Irish Language”. Linda is Irish Language Development Officer and Turas Project Leader with the East Belfast Mission.
New members will be made very welcome so come along to Arches Community Hall at 8.00 pm.
Full details of our talks for the coming season can be found on our Programme page
Twenty-four members enjoyed an excellent day out on 21 May when we went by coach to the Lisburn area. Our first stop was at the Ulster Aviation Society’s Collection where we enjoyed a picnic in the sunshine before being split into groups for a guided tour of the impressive collection of aircraft and other exhibits.
We then proceeded to Brookhall Historical Farm which boasts a chapel with roots as far back as the 12th Century as well as an interesting collection of farm implements, a beautiful garden and a lake.
We rounded off the day with a delicious evening meal in the Templeton Hotel.
