Episode 4 The Travelling Picture Show

The Travelling Picture Show is out on the road again

visiting towns and villages across Northern Ireland

and reliving our past through home movies.

Today we're going to meet the people who took the films,

those who appeared in them

and anyone with a good old story to tell.

Well, the wonderful thing about Gilford

is that it's still very much a community.

Every morning at seven o'clock the mill hooter would go

and it was so loud that we all knew, time to get up for school!

People of all denominations have come to Moyallon Camp,

and spent the week getting up to all sorts of nefarious actions

round the countryside.

You know, the summer camps - there's a great sense of fun.

It's amazing how many couples have ended up marrying

through meeting at the camps.

Hello, and a very warm welcome to the Travelling Picture Show

which today comes from the Upper Bann Valley.

Now here we're right in the middle of all those rolling drumlands of County Down.

Once they could boast of a truly thriving linen industry,

but I think we have the perfect ingredients for today's programme.

We have the beautiful setting of Gilford Castle,

we have wonderful, wonderful old home movies to watch

and I have to tell you, we have some really interesting people

to talk to today. So what more could you ask for?

I hope you're going to be able to stay with us.

Gilford, County Down, sits on the River Bann

close to the towns of Banbridge, Tandragee and Portadown.

Now, Gilford was once a thriving village,

home to one of the largest linen mills in Ireland.

Today, I'm afraid the mill is no more,

its workforce long gone, and the streets are quiet.

My favourite bit when I was sent shopping was

they used to have the old-fashioned loaves,

square rolls with a crusty top.

And they were baked fresh every day and they were so delicious.

It was a very active place in those days,

with everything you could think of going on. We even had a cinema!

A lot of the families that still live in Gilford are those

that have been there for generation after generation.

And I think, for all of us,

like looking through old family albums, it just brings that

smile back again, to sort of think, "Oh, there's my grandmother

"and, my goodness, look at my uncle Harry in his shorts," and things.

So, I think there'll just be a feeling of affection

and warmth when people see it all over again.

In July 1953, Gilford was visited by royalty.

The streets were absolutely packed,

everyone eager to be part of this historic occasion.

None more so than local amateur film-maker Tommy Gilpin.

And Tommy's daughter, Dorothy, also remembers the big day.

There was such talk, the thought that the Queen of England

was coming to Gilford.

I was quite young at the time

and was belonging to Moyallon Primary School

and Mr Jackson, the headmaster at the time,

had us all regaled out, and we all had to stand with our flags

and we thought we were going to meet the Queen.

But, actually, we were just brought out of the school

and along the route the Queen was driving.

And then we all stood and waved and what have you, to see the Queen,

which was, for us, really exciting.

And exciting, as well, to join the cavalcade and show your support.

But the good people of Gilford didn't need the excuse

of royalty dropping by to really enjoy themselves.

The Civic Festival was organised round the sort of church fete.

We used to have band parades and beauty competitions and, eh,

all the fun of the fair.

And there's Tommy Gilpin - good to get a glimpse of him

in front of the camera this time.

Dad would have been very inventive, so when he first got a chance

of a cine camera he jumped at it and he just loved that.

He was very involved in St Paul's Church,

so nearly everything event that went on in the church,

my father has on cine film.

The village festival was actually ran by the church to raise funds

for building and restoration of the church,

which, again, my father and local people were very involved in.

In those days, if you had a festival, everybody in the village

turned out, it didn't matter who, what you were - everybody joined in.

The village got involved completely.

It was so exciting for the children,

cos it was just something different.

The big houses of the Upper Bann

have close associations with the linen industry,

and one of the finest is Woodbank.

It's home to the Sinton family.

Maynard Sinton still lives here, and he's also guardian

of a treasure trove - the family's cine films.

When we look at old family photographs,

and indeed cine film, the sun is always shining.

But maybe that's because we only got the camera out

when the weather was good! Our intrepid cameraman braved

the harsh winter of 1947 to record County Down in the snow.

Growing up at Woodbank in the '40s was made even more exciting

when wartime visitors dropped by.

The Sinton family have always been from around this area,

Tullylish and Moyallon.

The house here was a wedding present to my grandparents in the 1930s.

My father spent his life here

and I've spent my whole life at Woodbank.

Childhood memories of here are brilliant.

CHILDREN SHOUTING

My sisters and I playing around with ponies, on horses...

The Bann runs around the house and around the land,

and it's a beautiful river and it's great

cos you can get down into it.

We swam in it as children

and played round it for many a happy hour.

We're very privileged to live at Woodbank

and living in a house like this, it has its advantages

and disadvantages, but it's nice for people to see how life was.

The family were to do with the linen industry

and we had a spinning mill in Tandragee.

Life revolved around the mill and just growing up at Woodbank.

My father would have been the main one for taking photographs

and cines and probably before him,

my grandmother as my grandfather was killed at a very early age.

We used to, as children, you know, on a wet Sunday afternoon

in the winter time, the cines would have been brought out

and various ones were watched.

Well, I'm not so sure the lady of the castle would approve

of cardboard cups in her lovely dining room in the castle,

but, nevertheless, I loved watching you as a family in

that lovely old film, but, Maynard, there's so many of you these days. Introduce everybody.

-My wife, Joy.

-Hello.

-Elder sister, Adeline.

-Hi.

-Younger sister, Nicola.

-Hi.

-George belongs to Nicola.

Eldest son of mine, Timothy, and youngest son, Robin.

I was particularly watching your son, the boys,

watching the old film. Is there anything in it that surprised you

-when you looked at it?

-Dad!

-And how good-looking he was!

-Exactly!

THEY LAUGH

And Joy, what about you? Because you're the lady of that house.

I've been there about 23 years now and Maynard's father had always

talked about the cines and it was really, really lovely to

actually see them cos we never actually got around to seeing them.

It was lovely to see them as children all playing together.

-Absolutely beautiful, really enjoyable.

-What fascinates me

is the fact you lived in quite a grand way, and yet you

-had the innocence of all this stuff going on around you.

-It was a grand

house but we lived in a simple way. I mean...

We did the weed killing, and when we were old enough

we learned to drive the tractor so we were useful for Dad,

we worked at haymaking, collected the eggs, fixed fences...

Every year we had to scrub out that old swimming pool and paint the slabs

round the edge blue and white and then Dad would fill it up with water

and put a load of chlorine into it,

so by the end of the summer we were all blonde because we had just been

bleached to kill any bugs that were in it, but we've survived!

What fascinates me is the fact of why your family

was so ahead of the game in terms of cine.

I mean, I gather even your grandmother, as well.

She was big into taking cines, as well.

We remember long, hot summers in just the garden

-and Granny in the garden. She gardened. We were self-sufficient.

-How important was Granny?

Oh, she was always there, in the background. The matriarch.

She was widowed, actually. When Dad and Auntie Didi were very young.

So, she lived there on her own, really, for many years,

and she gardened constantly

and I think at one point opened it to the public.

I was sitting beside your local GP

and he was telling me he went round one day to see her and she said,

"Come in for a swim!" And then she talked to somebody and said,

"I'm in the pool with my doctor!"

LAUGHTER

That's right.

She was County Commissioner of the Girl Guides, as well.

They always used to come and have their summer camp

down in the fields alongside the river.

We used to go down and learn to build things with sticks

and light fires and we used to eat with them and Mum used to spend

her life coming down to get us to come back up to the house and leave them all.

Leaving behind the dark days of rationing and recession,

we welcome the 1950s.

The Quaker influence on Gilford is everywhere -

big houses, workers' cottages,

and the old mill stands guard over the village itself.

The Quakers came here in 1675,

led by Alec Christy,

a famous name in the linen industry in the valley

and his son established the first bleach green here in 1711.

They established the linen here

because there was an abundant supply of soft water.

Also, the sloping banks in the valley would enable them

to use those banks for the bleaching of the linen.

In the 1840s industrialisation came in,

and the most significant figure there is a chap called Hugh Dunbar.

And he recognised that industry was changing

and he decided to concentrate his efforts in Gilford,

and he built the mill that stands in the centre of the village.

Gilford Mill is a huge complex.

It was one of the largest mills in Ireland.

They employed 2,000 people.

SLOW JAZZ MUSIC

The bowling club came, really, out of the mill environment.

It was an opportunity for people from all aspects of society

to meet together on equal terms.

So, you have the mill manager meeting with the most humble worker.

It was a very democratic and a very beautiful place, as well.

In its time, it was completely surrounded with rhododendrons

and azaleas and lovely trees,

and to this day it's still a beautiful spot.

Gilford Mill closed down in 1987.

It was a sad occasion to see a once proud industry

that had employed so many people now just a derelict building,

majestic as it looks today,

as it did when it was in full operation.

But the land wasn't only used for work.

The whole family seemed to be horse mad.

-Yes.

-Yes.

Dad and Auntie Didi spent most of their time on horses

and its lovely for us to see all that footage of the old ponies

that we've heard so many stories about.

There's one called "equestrian events",

with various point-to-points and days hunting here and there.

My father and Auntie Didi,

they hunted with the North Armaghs as children

and then, laterally, with the Newry Hunt.

Auntie Didi, she was head of the Iveagh Pony Club

for a long many years.

I also loved seeing, which I've never seen before, actually,

-horses being taken off a plane.

-It could have been Uncle Bill.

Bill Buller from Scarva, when he went to the Olympics.

And it could have been bits of the film that they took of that.

It was a fantastic life, just guddling around with ponies

and it was just a way of life that we were brought up with.

As you know, weddings are always a good excuse to get dressed up,

and this one was no exception.

Here we have Maynard's Aunt Diana marrying her Prince Charming,

Ivan, in St Paul's Church in Gilford.

The wedding breakfast - as it was called in my day -

took place in the family home and, best of all,

there was no need to book it in advance.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

ENGINE REVS AND CANS CLINK

However, something that did need to be booked in advance

was your place in the Quaker summer camp at Moyallon.

There's always been an outreach from Moyallon

and, although the actual meeting is small in number,

they've had this annual camp for many years.

People of all denominations have come to that camp and spent the week

getting up to all sorts of nefarious actions round the countryside.

The washing facilities at camp weren't that great.

Really, just cold water in the dorms and basic sinks.

Maybe on Sunday, if you spoke very nicely to the cook,

you could get some hot water from the geyser in the kitchen

and at least you could get a proper shave.

But I think, especially among the boys, personal hygiene

maybe wasn't just the top of the priority kind of thing.

I love this cine film. The joy and the innocence just leaps out at you.

It was filmed by Charles Lamb.

His daughter, Carolyn, cherishes the footage, as well.

A permanent reminder of a fun-filled childhood.

My memories were sleeping in rattly, rough beds

with straw mattresses.

I remember having midnight feasts in the dorms

and bats actually flying above us.

Sitting at the tables in the evening, we often had a plate of dates,

cheese and slices of apple, that kind of thing,

with bread for supper.

And you'd be sitting talking to a friend

over on this side, for example,

and over on your other side you might hear a girl's voice saying,

"David, would you like a date?"

And, of course, you'd look round in anticipation and there'd be

this nice girl coyly offering you some plate of dates and whatever.

I courted a rather attractive young lady years ago

and she brought me a to a meeting. It was Elizabeth.

And I married that girl, actually. Lucky me!

And she had gone to the Quaker Sunday school here and she

brought me to my first meeting here in Moyallon away in 1963.

Elizabeth, Noel talked about meeting you at a Quaker meeting.

I must just tell you my Quaker story,

-because my grandmother was a Quaker.

-Yes?

And her brother was a very strong Quaker,

and every Sunday, I was about maybe eight or nine,

he'd take me to a Quaker meeting, including Moyallon,

-so I do have a connection, actually, with your meeting house.

-Yes.

But I'm fascinated by the summer camps. I loved watching that.

It's the innocence of it all, really, isn't it?

As well as the Christian ethos there and Bible study

and all this aspect of it,

there's a great sense of fun, as well.

They have a singsong around the campfire at night,

and I lived on the Moyallon Road and my parents and my sisters and I

used to sit out at the front, in the front garden,

just listening to the camp songs wafting across the field.

We were just a field away, and it was very good.

And it's amazing how many couples have ended up marrying

through meeting at the camps.

In my student days

I was friendly with a girl,

as you are,

and we parted after a while, it just didn't work out.

But then, actually, seven years later,

she happened to be at camp and I was there, too,

and our friendship was rekindled,

so that was very nice and, in fact, a year later we were married.

It was a great novelty for young people,

to have that opportunity of getting together

and to escape the strictures of normal life

and, as you can imagine round in the countryside,

that was just seventh heaven for many of these townspeople.

They all used to go up for strawberry afternoon teas

and more leisured times.

Turlough House is just out of Moyallon on the way to Tandragee.

It was built as a wedding present for Alec Richardson and his wife.

It's still a family home owned by a doctor, of all people.

It's a very jolly place.

Health and safety closed the old camp down

because they were pretty rough, so it was stopped.

And one day the young people were taking their tarpaulins down

off the old camp and this stranger walked through those gates,

well-dressed man, and asked them what they were doing

and explained it was rather sad that this camp had been going

every year since the 1930s and now, because of health and safety, they were going to close it down.

And he asked them,

"Have you ever thought of building a purpose-built residential centre?"

And they go, "Oh, no.

"The membership of the Religious Society of Friends

"in the whole of Ireland is little over 1,000.

"How could they afford to build a residential centre?"

He said, "Well, if you do..." And he put his hand in his pocket

and he pulls out six Kruggerrands, gold Kruggerrands.

This is going back 12 years ago.

And he dropped it into their hands and says, "Cheerio."

And he walked out through those gates,

never heard of, never seen again.

We have no idea who he was!

So the young people said that they felt that this

was a sign that they should build this residential centre,

and older Friends, like myself, were very much opposed to it.

I mean, buildings? Heavens above.

But, anyway, they prevailed and, in the end,

the Society swung in behind them and we built that lovely residential centre.

And we hold the camps once a year,

a senior and junior camp still going strong.

We now have a lovely building.

But, do you know, the rough and ready memories

that I have are really special.

Well, I'm afraid that's where we have to leave it today from Gilford,

but I must say, it's been a real treat to watch some of those

precious moments from all the family films.

So, until the next time when we see you on The Travelling Picture Show,

thanks for your company and from all of us, bye-bye.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd