Mics are live…
Gardening isn’t my thing - but I appreciate my favourite plants all start with a seed and that’s how this idea began too…a tiny idea.
I have lived in Bangor all my life and am old enough to remember that things do change, often without us even noticing. It’s the natural process and nothing can stand still.
It got me thinking, though, that it might be worth documenting how people lived their lives in Bangor in decades past. And by documenting, I mean hearing it from them - from the horse’s mouth.
So here they are…some little Bangor stories.
I hope you enjoy listening.
I would love to be a good gardener - even just a gardener - but it’s not to be. I do know though, that every plant starts with a little seed and this is mine. I hope you like hearing ordinary people’s voices because my interviewees have great stories, most not already heard.
Bangor is the place I have called home all my life and there have been some big changes to our new city and lots of small ones which were probably hardly noticed by most. We were just getting on with our lives beside the shores of Belfast Lough.
The seed was planted during walks with my husband around the town. As older people do, we’d often stop at a street or a particular building and remember (or try to) what business was there or which school friend lived where. We told each other stories of different times and it sparked an interest.
I mulled the thing over for a while and then one winter’s evening in between Christmas and the New Year, an old, old friend knocked at the door. I hadn’t seen her in decades, yet we were thick as thieves as children, and we did the fastest “remember when” and “what about now” in history.
It turned out her father was still going strong in his tenth decade and she really wanted people to know about what he’d done for Bangor. And although I’m not quite into my nineties, I knew the universe was saying “go!”
And here’s what’s coming up!
Heard it through the Grapevine…
It all begins with an idea.
“I never was an important person in the town at all.”
Jim Boal is emphatic as he tells me this.
At 91 he lives a gentle life close to the sea along the Bangor coastline. His home is full of memories, from photographs of his wife Margaret who died some years ago, to scrapbooks recording significant professional and personal moments, to objects which show his love for his career as a pharmacist in the city over many decades.
If he had spent his time working solely dispensing medicines and aides, that would have been enough for any person intent on helping fellow humans, but Jim did much more and this conversation covers just some of those achievements.
Pictures from left: Jim Boal in his first shop; an advertisement from the local paper; the interior of The Grapevine youth centre and a publicity shot taken to publicise Jim’s Bang & Olufsen merchandise in his second shop on Queen’s Parade.
As a schoolboy living in the Shrewsbury area off the Belfast Road, he started a soccer team – the Burnside Rovers – and the boys returned jam jars to save for their kit. He became a chemist. He invented a pill dispenser. He started Bangor Camera Club. He was an early-adapter of new audio technology. He worked in the evenings with young people. He facilitated the opening of the YMCA in Bangor. He wrote professional manuals on nursing home care.
Most importantly, he is the adored head of a family who – in the course of making this podcast – admitted that even they hadn’t realised how much their father and grandfather had done with his life.
As you will hear, Jim is one of our unsung heroes and inspite of his insistence, so vital to what we have now in Bangor.
It was such a privilege and pleasure to talk to him.
Coincidentally…..
It’s funny how stories follow you around!
A letter to the local paper in 2025, praising Jim Boal for starting Bangor Camera Club.
….I recorded the interview with Jim Boal early in 2025 and our chat was wide-ranging, including some material I wasn’t able to use in the final long episode.
But a few weeks later, I spotted this Letter to the Editor in our local newspaper – the County Down Spectator – and I just had to go back to our conversation and find this little clip.
Now Jim said he thought Bangor Camera Club’s inaugural meeting was in 1962 – but it was actually in 1961 and it’s still going strong!
https://www.bangor-camera-club.co.uk/
NASA’s website also confirms that May 5, 1961 was the day of Alan B. Shepard’s flight aboard his Mercury capsule Freedom 7 and the day he became the first American in space. Three weeks later, says NASA, US President John F. Kennedy committed to achieving a lunar landing by the end of the decade.
Momentous indeed!
Coming soon….a disco like no other…
There’s been nothing like it since!
It wasn’t a dream…it really happened in the Bangor of the early 1970s….and it was a magnet for young teenagers desperate for music, dancing…and love!
Lumber (verb)
- to kiss, to snog, to shift another person, perhaps in a clumsy teenage fashion. Archie and Campbell, the stars of our next episode - set in a 1970s disco - explain how it was done…..
Stomping at the disco….
“Sometimes I felt that I’d dreamt it all…”
…. confided my husband Campbell, while we were talking about this episode of Little Bangor Stories.
I knew what he meant.
Life can be so vivid at times, can’t it? Some experiences we think we will remember forever – especially when we’re young – but the years roll on and other moments take up bigger spaces in our memory.
Then you hear a word or a song that brings it all back.
Campbell has known Archie – the other voice in this episode – for 60 years. They and their contemporaries were in their mid-teens at the time we are remembering, shaking off their childhoods and becoming individuals … young adults. It was a subject he and Archie thoroughly enjoying talking about – but for him, it still held that “Brigadoon” feeling.
And when you listen, you’ll probably agree, it was all a little bit strange.
In the course of their conversation, the pair also remember other places that younger people were drawn to in Bangor, so if “Cloud 9” and the “Rave Cave” evoke memories you have to listen!
It’s also a poignant story of how teenage years are swallowed up so quickly.
So please, imagine yourself in your best tie-dye and bell-bottoms, a corduroy Wrangler jacket over your shoulder or a maxi dress with shiny boots and let’s join the queue for the Coffin Disco….
Images via Pixabay EXCEPT the St. Comgall’s Primary School soccer team of 1966/67. Our two featured guests are together in the middle of the back row - Campbell Foster, smiling in his goalie shirt, to the left and a slightly more serious Archie Walls to the right.
“Sometimes I felt that I’d dreamt it all…”
…. confided my husband Campbell, while we were talking about this episode of Little Bangor Stories.
I knew what he meant.
Life can be so vivid at times, can’t it? Some experiences we think we will remember forever – especially when we’re young – but the years roll on and other moments take up bigger spaces in our memory.
Then you hear a word or a song that brings it all back.
Campbell has known Archie – the other voice in this episode – for 60 years. They and their contemporaries were in their mid-teens at the time we are remembering, shaking off their childhoods and becoming individuals … young adults. It was a subject he and Archie thoroughly enjoying talking about – but for him, it still held that “Brigadoon” feeling.
And when you listen, you’ll probably agree, it was all a little bit strange.
In the course of their conversation, the pair also remember other places that younger people were drawn to in Bangor, so if “Cloud 9” and the “Rave Cave” evoke memories you have to listen!
It’s also a poignant story of how teenage years are swallowed up so quickly.
So please, imagine yourself in your best tie-dye and bell-bottoms, a corduroy Wrangler jacket over your shoulder or a maxi dress with shiny boots and let’s join the queue for the Coffin Disco….
Chain gang….
For years, local councils have been recycling…..their chains of office!
This wooden gavel plate sits on the Mayor’s desk in the Council Chamber at Bangor Castle - or Bangor City Hall.
Councils in Northern Ireland are big on recycling, so it’s no surprise to see this gavel plate on the Mayor’s desk in Bangor Castle. Indeed, the chains that our Mayors and Deputy Mayors have worn over the years all knew previous lives and perhaps not always what you might imagine.
In our next episode I have a wander through the Council Chamber at Bangor Castle (Bangor City Hall) with two former councillors - Ian Sinclair and Karen Douglas. The craic was great as they remembered their time there, serving their constituents and the whole Borough and talk did turn to the mayoral chains of office as Ian was a Deputy Mayor and Karen a Mayor…..
Gifts from a famous brewing family…
It wasn’t just tea and biscuits. Sometimes councillors would be invited to enjoy something a little stronger in the Mayor’s Parlour at Bangor Castle during the North Down Borough Council days…as former councillor Ian Sinclair remembers…
Beautiful Bangor Castle
A wander through Bangor Castle in Bangor Northern Ireland with two former councillors sharing their memories of this gorgeous building.
Bangor Castle
Bangor Castle is our grand old lady.
She sits on the parkland edge of Castle Park, gazing down over the train and bus station to Bangor Bay in the distance. Beside her, is the North Down Museum and further down the park paths, her Walled Garden.
It’s at least the third iteration of “Bangor Castle” and was almost derelict when it was acquired by the then Bangor Borough Council as their base in 1941. Now it’s the council chamber for Ards and North Down Borough Council.
But this isn’t an episode about local politics.
Bangor Castle contains undoubtedly the most beautiful council chamber in Northern Ireland – Ireland perhaps – and as well as the thunder of debates, it has heard thousands of voices affirming “I do” at civil weddings as well poets, choirs, story-tellers and musicians at cultural events.
So, I was delighted when former councillors Karen Douglas and Ian Sinclair agreed to wander round with me, sharing memories, explaining what it meant to them and recalling how so many - from royalty to rescue dogs - have been made welcome under the beautiful stained-glass windows.
From left: Ian Sinclair and Karen Douglas……the stained glass windows in the Council Chamber….the rear of the Chamber where the Music Room gallery was situated…..the front entrance of Bangor Castle.
Podcast music by Shane Ivers - Silvermansound.com
Bangor’s City Statute from King Charles III presented in 2022
On the streets where we lived….
The Bangor Street Directory circa 1970 - a mine of information! Retired estate agent Denis Neill talk grocery shops and tomatoes in this little taster…
Missing its front cover, this copy of the Bangor Street Directory can be viewed at Bangor Library. It’s fascinating!
This was one of my first ideas for this podcast and I’m thrilled that I was able to meet with the retired estate agent and superb raconteur Denis Neill to talk about the Spectator Bangor Street Directory!
Published in around 1970 and the last of its kind for Bangor, there aren’t many copies still around - and yet many homes and businesses in Bangor would have had one at the time. My photographs to accompany the full episode which is coming soon were taken from a battered copy held by Bangor Library.
In the meantime, please enjoy Denis and I talking grocery shops…..and tomatoes!
Pleased to announce that Little Bangor Stories is now available on Amazon Music UK and YouTube! Just search for us!
Of barbers, builders and a little book…
Denis Neill tells tales based on the final edition of the Bangor Street Directory published 55 years ago.
Before there were Whatsapp group chats, before Facebook communities, how did we ever find out anything about Bangor?
Of course, there was chat – real chat – amongst friends and family – where to buy your coal or a car. Of course, there was our local paper, the Spectator. And of course, there was the tome of the Yellow Pages, but you only got a copy if you had a telephone line connected to your home.
However, fifty-five years ago, there was another publication.
The final edition of the Bangor Street Directory was published in 1970 by the Spectator and it’s become a valuable guide for historians, family history seekers and those of us who have a vague recollection of what might have been in a particular spot and who need something to settle the argument.
Incredibly, it listed who lived at nearly every address in the town – and then cross-referenced the names with the addresses. It detailed all the shops and businesses, churches, youth and sporting clubs, elected representatives, men’s and women’s organisations…it had everything!
I love it.
But I needed someone to talk about it….and who better than the former estate agent and excellent raconteur Denis Neill. His family business has been in Bangor for decades and so he has an accomplished insight into how things were, as well as an amazing memory. He talks about the friends he knew, how parts of our city got their names and an incredible discovery which benefitted a local church.
Join for this brief flick though the pages of the Bangor Street Directory.
Denis Neill in his office. A Sinclair Road sign. The Miloy building at Hamilton Road Presbyterian Church and various pages from the last edition of the Bangor Street Directory.
Little Bangor Stories is now available on Amazon Music UK and YouTube! Just search for us!
Music credit - Shane Ivers Silvermansound.com
Theatre flowers…
For a few weeks in spring, the auriculas are the stars of the show at Bangor’s Walled Garden - they’ve even got their own theatre! The woman behind this beautiful space, Nicky Kerr, tells me all about them
New to Bangor’s exquisite Walled Garden this spring was the dramatic Auricula Theatre. Situated on a wall close to the cafe and over-looking the formal lawn, the display of auriculas was amazing the day I visited to chat to the woman in charge, Nicky Kerr. They have finished flowering now, so the little theatre has closed until next spring, but here’s a taster of our full conversation, coming soon….
A German biscuit massacre…
Hooded crows….a danger to you plants…and tasty pastries..at Bangor’s Walled Garden.
One of the murder of hooded crows who believe Bangor’s Walled Garden belongs solely to them…..
Remember the hawk that terrorised an English town? Well, that’s nothing to what the hooded crows get up to at the Walled Garden in Bangor…Nicky Kerr tells a little tale of what it’s like….
Also available on YouTube and Amazon Music UK - just search for Little Bangor Stories!
“To plant a garden….
This spring, I was lucky enough to take a walk around Bangor’s glorious Walled Garden with Nicky Kerr, the woman behind it all. If you enjoy visiting gardens, this is for you!
…. is to believe in tomorrow”
Audrey Hepburn
I could hardly have picked a better day to chat to Nicky Kerr, the creative and talented woman behind Bangor’s glorious Walled Garden.
It was just before Easter and as well as the promise of spring and summer all around us, we had the sounds of birds and children playing. It was a delight for all the senses!
We wandered around talking about this and that and I’ve drawn a map to show you our path, in case you’d like to play this episode and follow it … but it’s enough, I think, to just listen to Nicky’s enthusiasm for her work and the future she’s giving us.
From left: the “fierce” roses under the old fig tree, an April shot of the rose bower entrance, a Bird of Paradise flower in the hothouse, the willow plantation.
From left: figlets on the old fig tree in mid-May, the bandstand, the edible garden where you’ll find the BHS volunteers and one of the auriculas that graced the “theatre” - it’s finished now but will be back again next spring.
A map showing our walk around the garden, should you wish to retrace our steps while listening! The Little Bangor Stories podcast is also available on YouTube and Amazon Music UK.