Good news for the Northern tourist people these days. And there is plenty of information to be had from the Northern Ireland Tourist Board in Nassau Street, Dublin. Strangford Lough, the Mourne Mountains, the Giant's Causeway area, the Western lakes. Take your pick. But during a recent trip to Belfast, a present was made of one of those fine Friar's Bush softback publications, mostly pictorial: East Antrim by Doreen Corcoran. The pictures all came from the W.A. Green (18701958) collection now housed in the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum. Many of these record the blossoming of the seaside holiday towns: Larne with its cross-channel steamers, Whitehead, a "stylish resort". There are the Gobbins Cliffs, where a friend once recalled that in the 1930s, on the clifftops he almost had to (gently) kick puffins out of his way, so many were they. Then the odd archaeological aspects. A bare picture of what is locally called, in Islandmagee, the Druid's Altar, in fact a neolithic tomb, about three steps from the front door of what the caption describes as "an attractive Victorian villa". The tomb is bare, of course, but within living memory it was covered with roses. Then the rocking stone, an erratic or large, round boulder weighing 10 to 12 tons which in the past could be swayed by pushing with one finger. This is in Brown's Bay, about two miles away. A concrete bed now makes sure that this no longer applies.
The Whitehead of the pictures outshines Bray, some say. The clothes of young and old spick and span (1915). Great bathing. The village of Glynn was so charming it lured Richard Hayward to making his 1935 Film The Luck of the Irish there. Carrickfergus gets its due. It was in 1177 that John de Courcy arrived there to build his castle. The town was the chief habitation in what is now Belfast Lough. McSkimin's History of the County of the Town of Carrickfergus is still with us. And of course, the beginnings of the famous Antrim Coast road, where charabancs from McNeills hotel used to tour daily during the brief season. And Amanda McKittrick Ros, with a quote by herself: "I afford pleasure to and give satisfaction to the million and one who continually thirst for aught that drops from my pen." So much more, but Doreen Corcoran packs in a lot of information and it would all send you off in your car to see for yourself. Price in Stg., £4.95.