There has been an explosion of interest in the history of Lisburn after many years of neglect of its past, as four new books on the city illustrate
WHEN HE CAME across a collection of black and white photographs in the attic of a friend's house in Lisburn, the poet Colin Sloan knew he had found something special. The photographs were taken by the town clerk, Harry Duff, in the 1950s and 1960s and reflect everyday life in what was then a small market town overshadowed by the big smoke of Belfast, eight miles away.
Sloan studied the evocative black and white images, worked his poetic muse, and the result is his third volume of poetry, Lisburn Camera & Verse,a pleasing marriage of old photographs and new poems. The atmospheric pictures portray townscapes, buildings and parks, as well as urban decay.
Duff, who was a member of the Photographic Society of Ireland, carried his Leica with him during his lunch break every day and ended up with several thousand photographs. His pictures often feature people walking the streets, looking in shop windows, chatting on street corners or ploughing through the "big snow" of 1963. Many of the places he caught on camera have been swept away by a combination of unsympathetic town planners and the Troubles. And the Ford Prefects, Austin Sevens and Morris Minors have (mostly) been driven off to the scrapyard.
The photographs were individually wrapped in tissue paper, meticulously dated and filed in drawers in an escritoire; many were untouched for more than 50 years. Now, they have been salvaged for posterity within the covers of a book. Alongside each photograph Sloan has written a short free-verse poem in the style of the American poet Edgar Lee Masters, giving his own interpretation of the image through a vignette that is often to do with loss, love, mourning or regret.
SLOAN'S BOOK IS one of four on the city that will be jostling for shelf space in the shops this Christmas. There has been a veritable explosion of interest in the history of Lisburn after many years of neglect of its past. Designated a city in 2002, it's a place that doesn't normally generate much exposure in the media, but has attracted publishers cashing in on the nostalgia boom and writers tapping into memoir.
One of the North's leading novelists, Glenn Patterson, who was born in Lisburn in 1962, has just published a deeply personal family history, accompanied by a mix of humour and rage. Once Upon a Hill, Love in Troubled Timestells the poignant story of his grandparents, Jack and Kate, who lived in Antrim Street in Lisburn. The book is a cocktail of local history as well as the history of the Irish War of Independence and its aftermath.
It includes a Cork connection focusing on a week in Lisburn in 1920. On March 19th of that year, the IRA shot dead an off-duty policeman, Constable Joseph Murtagh, on Pope's Quay in Cork. In the early hours of the next morning, Tomás MacCurtain, Sinn Fein Lord Mayor of Cork and IRA commander in the city, was dragged from his bed and shot dead in retaliation.
At the inquest, one of those named was RIC district inspector Oswald Swanzy. By the summer, Swanzy, originally from Co Monaghan, had been transferred from Cork to Lisburn and on August 22nd as he was leaving church he was shot dead by an IRA unit dispatched to the area by Michael Collins. Reaction in Lisburn was swift and brutal with bitter sectarian rioting. Businesses and homes were looted and destroyed and Catholics murdered.
Patterson effectively captures the menacing mood of violence and explores his intrinsic connection to the town, looking at how events locally and nationally forged relationships that shaped generations of the family. He delved into family history, interviewing relatives and carrying out a huge amount of research to produce an impressively written book that contains humour as well as reflecting the blood on the streets of Cork and Lisburn - places separated by some 300 miles.
If Lisburn is famed in history for anything, it is for the fact that it was the cradle of the Ulster linen industry. Linen weaving was brought to the area by Huguenots, who fled France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The River Lagan was used to wash the fabric with a number of bleaching greens along its banks, the first established in 1626 at Lambeg, about a mile downstream. The area is synonymous with the enormous goatskin Lambeg drums used by King William III's army and by Orange marching bands on the Twelfth of July.
The parish of Lambeg at one time contained the greatest concentration of linen manufacture in the world. This connection is brought out in another of the books reflecting life and work in the townlands and mills. All Around Lambegis by Gilbert Watson, a local historian who has collected stories and written the history of Lambeg, Belsize, Seymour Hill, Tullynacross and Ballyskeagh, as well as telling the stories of the families who lived in the "Big Houses" and their involvement with the linen industry. The book is sumptuously illustrated and is a handy guide to the area.
The fourth new book, Lisburn: Phoenix from the Flames, by Nicola Pierce, charts the story of the small town from the early settlement of 1609 through rebellion, numerous skirmishes, fires, as well as two sets of Troubles, up to the present. It is the third book in a series in which the author has also documented the history of Coleraine and Ballymena.
THE PEACEFUL CITY shoppers and tourists come to visit today is a thriving place. At the Irish Linen Centre and Lisburn Museum in Market Square, you can step back in time to see the award-winning Flax to Fabricexhibition and watch weavers plying away in the handloom workshop. Cottage weavers once brought their cloth to sell at the Market House, which is now in a conservation area dubbed the "Historic Quarter". All around are links with the past and reminders of that heritage.
Café Crommelin in the centre is named after the Huguenot settler Louis Crommelin who helped develop the linen industry. The nearby Hilden Brewery, based in the home of a former linen baron, is a working brewery with a restaurant and visitor centre.
Viewed from a wider topographical perspective, Lisburn sits in the fertile Lagan Valley. A few miles southwest, Ireland's oldest horseracing venue, Down Royal, can trace its origins to 1685; the Lagan Towpath offers a scenic route for cyclists and walkers, and perched along the banks of the river, the Island Arts Centre is humming with musical and community events, and visual and verbal arts workshops.
In his book In Praise of Ulster, published in 1938, Richard Hayward described Lisburn as a "compact, tidy, prosperous-looking place" although he remarked that it "had a tremendous history behind it which few people think about today". Seventy years on, they are finally capitalising on their illustrious history spanning 400 years. Lisburn's past sits comfortably with its new-found commercial success, with designer shops, bustling bistros, stylish bars and speciality coffee houses lining Bow Street, Railway Street, Bachelors Walk and Market Square.
This new quartet of books may help garner a sense of what has gone before. And as the city prepares for next year's celebrations of the quarter-centenary of its founding, the books will help people look with renewed eyes at the rich and little-celebrated heritage on their doorstep.
Lisburn Camera Verse, by Colin Sloan, with photographs by Harry Duff, is published by Brehon Press; Glenn Patterson's Once Upon a Hill: Love in Troubled Timesis published by Bloomsbury; All Around Lambeg, by Gilbert Watson, is published by Colourpoint, and Lisburn: Phoenix from the Flames, by Nicola Pierce, is published by Waterstones