Every once in a while, usually after a glass of red wine, I have a look at mum and dad’s old photos. They met in the late 1950s, in a hall over in Garvagh. Although dad was ten years older, it was apparently love at first sight. Looking through the trove of photos from that late 50s and early 1960s era, they clearly have a love for the north coast, notably Portstewart. It is a beautiful...
A Moment in Time My parents, Richard Mulholland and Eleanor Quinn, got married in the summer of 1961. After the wedding at First Moneymore, the wedding party drove the 34 miles northwards for the wedding reception on the coast. They stopped at the Rose Gardens in Coleraine for photographs. Afterwards they made the short trip to the reception in the Carrig-na-Cule Hotel in Portstewart. It was...
I came across an old photo in mum’s archive. She had written below it, Herbie Stewart. The picture looks like it was taken in the late 1950s, or maybe early 1960s. But most likely, given similar type photos in her archive, late 50s. I am unsure of who Herbie Stewart is – whether he was from Eden, Ballymacpeake, or one of the Stewarts from her side of the family (Quinn). Or...
A few weeks ago, I cleaned up a couple of photos that mum had in one of her albums. Below one of pictures, she had written in red ink, “Hopefield Hospital 1956.” I had never heard of this hospital. On further research, it turned out to be a small hospital just outside Portrush. Mum’s family had lived in Portrush for a time (before moving to Moneymore). The hospital would...
Here’s a photo from the late 1960’s. After cleaning the image up a tad, mum’s handwritten comment from below the original photograph in her scrapbook was re-inserted. On the left, Aunt May (i.e. my mother’s aunt), then comes my mum’s father (William Neely Quinn), mum, then her mother, then her husband (Richard Mulholland). Aunt May never married. We would visit...