What we saw at the seaside…
A walk along Ballyholme Bay in Bangor with marine life campaigner Aileen McClenaghan…talking treasure, litter picking and how she believes even doing little things can help our big seas.
The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever. The sea, the great unifier, is man’s only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat.
Jacques Yves Cousteau
If you are of a certain generation, you may remember Cousteau’s magical television documentaries from a time when colour television was beginning. For the first time, world-wide audiences - whether they lived close to shores or a thousand miles away - could see the beauty of under the sea. But Cousteau was also one of the first to warn about the consequences of pollution.
Now our understanding is better, but all is not lost. While governments and international bodies move to take care of the big stuff, many individuals are looking out for the little things.
Aileen McClenaghan is one of them. Her Instagram page full of little horror stories and hope as she documents what she finds on walks along our sea shores, so of course, I had to join her on a sunny, breezy early August morning.
From left: Aileen with a full bag of rubbish collected from Ballymacormick Point in 15 minutes; lifting a dead herring gull on our walk - Aileen has credentials to allow her to do this; a real jellyfish (top beside the rock) and a plastic bag - similar, but one’s deadly ….. and some “treasure” including vulcanised rubber bottle stoppers, Smartie lids from different decades and the weird little “frozen Charlotte” bath toy.
If you want to know more, or perhaps invite Aileen to talk to your school class or group, contact her via her Instagram account @whattheseasaw or by email whattheseasaw@hotmail.com
Music by audionautix.com
Nailing it!
Peter Vannucci (left) and Alan Dempster - stalwarts of the Bangor soccer scene.
Part One of our “Game of Two Halves”
It’s late summer now and the football season has begun again - from the Premier League to the many amateur soccer associations.
To mark it I spoke to two super-fans of the game in Bangor. Peter Vannucci was one of the original players with Bangor Swifts and for many years, their chronicler. Alan Dempster joined his team, Bryansburn Rangers, as a teenager when the club was well-established and played a record number of times for their teams before becoming Club Chair.
Both clubs celebrated their 50th anniversaries in the last four years so I joined them for a chat about football past…and present.
This is the first part of our conversation…and remember, “no-one is bigger than the club!”
Part Two following shortly!
Music: Building Inspiration by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
Bend it …like Bangor footballers…..
Next up on Little Bangor Stories – the history of amateur soccer in Bangor. In this little teaser my two pundits Peter Vannucci and Alan Dempster give a fascinating insight into just how intrepid and adaptable Bangor Swifts and Bryansburn Rangers were in their early days. To begin, Peter recalls where the Swifts had their team base right at the beginning….
Connor Park at Stricklands Glen - once a football pitch where school teams and amateur soccer players tussled!
Next up on Little Bangor Stories – the history of amateur soccer in Bangor. In this little teaser my two pundits Peter Vannucci and Alan Dempster give a fascinating insight into just how intrepid and adaptable Bangor Swifts and Bryansburn Rangers were in their early days. To begin, Peter recalls where the Swifts had their team base right at the beginning….
Music: Building Inspiration by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
110%
The second part of our chat with Alan Dempster from Bryansburn Rangers and Peter Vannucci of Bangor Swifts and Bangor FC about the history of amateur football in Bangor over the last 50 years. Memorable moments and a peek at the future!
“I learned all about life with a ball at my feet…” Ronaldinho
Second half!
The final part of my conversation with two well-known names on the Bangor football scene - Peter Vannucci and Alan Dempster.
They recall a few of their memorable moments from the early days of Bangor Swifts and Bryansburn Rangers - including “international” fixtures in Dublin - and we couldn’t help but look to the future too.
From left: The commemorative booklets from Bryansburn Rangers and Bangor Swifts; how the Abbey Street pitch looks now - it was used by teams in the 1970s and Alan Dempster with his daughter Amber who is one of Bangor FC Ladies’ star scorers.
Music: Building Inspiration by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
Has anyone seen Herbie?
At Little Bangor Stories at Aspects Festival, a visitor had a memory of the time Herbie visited Bangor - do you remember?
Herbie - the star of the Disney films in the late 1960s/early 1970s - not in Bangor! Picture courtesy of Pixabay.
What a fabulous night we had at the Aspects Festival in Bangor in September!
As part of #LateNightBangor we were given the wonderful Studio 1a - which belongs to Bangor Drama Club - for the evening and the creative folk from Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive produced an engaging and fascinating sequence of clips of Bangor from the last 60 years or so.
A number of people volunteered to talk to me and I’ll have a full compilation of their wee tiny stories very soon, but one visitor told an incredible story - so incredible that he admitted afterwards that although it IS etched in his memory, he sometimes doubts if it ever happened.
This so resonates with me, possibly some of you too…that recollection from the past that seems so fantastical, so unusual, so amazing or scary that you wonder if it WAS you.
But I would love it if you were there too and could confirm it for me and John….the day Herbie came to Bangor!
A Night of Remembering….
Little Bangor Stories was featured in Aspects 2025 with a wonderful event which included film clips from NI Screen’s Digital Film Archive. We were there to record some memories too and here they are. Enjoy the tales of Pickie Pool, Herbie and possibly the oldest graffiti in Bangor!
Thank you!
To the dozens of people who called into Bangor Drama Club’s cute Studio 1a on Bangor’s Hamilton Road on a beautiful late September night to hear excerpts from my podcast paired with wonderful archive clips from Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive!
It’s fair to say that the Pickie Pool footage prompted the most memories, but there were others too.
Being out and about with the famous Annie Roycroft - editor for years of the “Co. Down Spectator”, what it was like to grow up working in a Ballyhome shop, the spectacle of Herbie hanging off the Bank of Ireland building in Main Street….and the amazing story of what is probably Bangor’s oldest graffiti.
From left: Carole Murray and Brandy beside her dad’s graffiti “D.M. 1942” on lower Tennyson Avenue off Princetown Road; Herbie the Disney film star car and the audience at the event.
And…an insight into recording and how you must never take things for granted!
Little sparks of colour….
Gary McMahon collected some memories of an older Bangor for a dear friend and some years later, shared them with us at an Aspects Literary Festival event. I loved them and wanted to know more….
I first met Gary McMahon on the beautiful September evening that was our first appearance at the Aspects Literary Festival in Bangor. With the help of Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive, we had put together some memories from all the podcasts I’d completed up to then along with old film clips of the area and invited people who came to let me record their memories.
Some also contacted me beforehand and one of the emails was from Gary McMahon with his poetic lists of his Bangor memories. We recorded some of them and included his piece in the final collection from that evening, but I was intrigued, so afterwards asked if we could chat some more about the inspiration behind his writing.
All photographs courtesy of Gary.
If you are of a certain vintage, you will recognise the brown Renault 5 in the first image. It was Gary’s and a head-turner around Bangor’s streets from the late 1980s! In the centre is Gary with his father Norman and a photo of his mum Renee admiring the academic prize from his Conor House days. Now retired, Gary married Amanda in 2022 and lives in Bangor, recording music, his memories and just recently, producing prints to illustrate them too …. and I like to think that our conversation sparked his latest burst of creativity!
Gary has had an amazing career in banking, technology and even held a commercial helicopter pilot’s license but we didn’t meet to talk about that….it was all about his little Bangor memories … and he has a challenge for listeners at the end!
“Right, away you go….”
A little teaser of my conversation with members of Bangor Drama Club at Studio 1A on their 90th birthday. I didn’t expect an audience but they were welcoming and warm….and I didn’t expect meeting up with a friend and former BBC colleague either…but here she is!
The unexpected audience at Bangor Drama Club’s Studio 1A theatre for the recording to celebrate their 90th birthday.
It was probably what they were all thinking as we set up the equipment and sat around a table in front of them…
….but I wasn’t prepared to meet a friend, former colleague and stalwart of the Club for six decades …. well, memories of a different type of studio came flooding back!
Coming very soon….a lovely conversation about Bangor Drama Club - its history and hopes for the future - but until then, over to the unmistakable voice of Linda Taylor , formerly known as BBC newsreader, Linda Wray!
“You must remember to eat…”
Bangor Drama Club celebrates 90 years of entertaining audiences and producing stars of stage, screen and behind the scenes. I chatted to some of the members before there celebratory production of Boy’s Shop.
Music by Shane Ivers - silvermansound.com
Liam Neeson, speaking about advice given to him by Colin Blakely, whom the giant of Schindler’s List, Les Miserables and Taken, worked with in the 1980s.
According to our modern-day encyclopedia of everything, Wikipedia, Colin was “one of a post war generation of British actors who succeeded in making provincial accents more widely heard” , and he’s remembered for his prolific theatre work and film roles in A Man for All Seasons, Murder on the Orient Express and Equus, but it was while treading the boards in Bangor that he began to learn his craft - as a member of Bangor Drama Club.
He wasn’t the only one - `Doreen Hepburn, Linda Wray, Dan Gilbert, Alison Gordon, Cherrie McIlwaine, Dan Gilbert, Richard Holland, Laura Hughes, Christopher Logan starred. Additionally, behind-the-scenes Thayna McLaughlin, Ian Williamson and Cassandra Maeve Murphie also shone. But I must say, this is not an exhaustive list of well-known alumni!
From humble beginnings with readings in local halls and hotels, the Club now has its own theatre in Hamilton Road and is looking towards a bright future - via the enthusiasm from young people attending their youth group and the appreciation of other drama clubs and organisations for the transformation of the former Good Templar Hall, into a modern, welcoming space.
It was a great pleasure to meet there and talk to Linda Taylor (formerly Wray), Clare Greer, Joan Smyth and Michael Ievers - in the company of a small audience - to celebrate the Club’s 90th anniversary.
From left : Linda Taylor (Wray) seated, centre, in her first performance for BDC as the lead in Ann Veronica; Joan Smyth in Children’s Day; Michael Ievers in Winners and Clare Greer in Love in the Title.
From left: the BDC panel at the LBS recording - Joan, Linda, Clare and Michael; some of the audience who came to the recording; the fund-raising bricks in the foyer of the Studio 1A Theatre on Hamilton Road and the poster for Boyd’s Shop which will be performed in May as part of the Club’s 90th birthday celebrations.
Music by Shane Ivers - silvermansound.com
Break a leg!
On the opening night of Bangor Drama Club’s 90th birthday production of “Boyd’s Shop” Joan Smyth, Michael Ivers, Clare Greer and Linda Taylor share their hopes for the Club’s future.
It’s the opening night of Bangor Drama Club’s production of the 90-year-old play “Boyd’s Shop”, directed by long-standing member Linda Taylor.
I know her cast and crew are going to smash it and make BDC’s 90th birthday one to remember.
We had great craic during our conversation last month, reflecting on the Club’s past and future and here’s just a taster from Joan Smyth, Michael Ievers, Clare Greer and Linda Taylor.
Looking forward to their Centenary!
“And they all go hand-in-hand…”
Closing a creative circle with the words of the Bangor public who use Ward Park and an exhibition in the Park Life cafe by Gary McMahon (featured on LBS earlier in 2026) inspired by that interview and his “little points of colour”.
A podcast, pictures and Ward Park life…
The pergola at Bangor’s Ward Park
In the autumn of 2025 Little Bangor Stories was invited to take part in the Apects Festival during Late Night Art Bangor. It was an evening of enjoying some old film clips and recalling memories and the result is a few pages back on this website.
During that event, one of the people who took part was Gary McMahon, whose recollections prompted an interview all to himself in which he talked about his “little points of colour” in his memories - which then spurred him on to draw and paint these remembered visions of times and places gone by.
Scoot like a child on the terrifyingly-high slide in the old playground at Ward Park to Late Night Art in May 2026 when the much-loved cafe Park Life invited him to exhibit his work and LBS to chat to passers-by about our little city-centre park. We were completing the creative circle!
Ward Park was gifted to the people of Bangor in the early 20th century by the Ward family who built Bangor Castle and planted Castle Park. It had been a brickworks but landscapers transformed the space with ponds, bridges and lawns and it was opened to the public around 1910.
Since then it became the site of the Bangor War Memorial and the German U-boat deck gun; an air-raid shelter that now houses Park Life, flocks of ducks, geese, budgies, peacocks and fancy hens have made it their home; the grounds and grass see tennis matches, lawn bowls tournaments, school sports and softball games; the paths host a Park Run; it boasts a brand-new play park and a sensory garden and of course, every summer the Open House Festival Picnic in the Park Sunday afternoon music!
My thanks to all who stopped to chat and Park Life for the invitation to join May’s Late Night Art. Gary’s work will be on display in this cool little cafe until the end of June.
The extension to Bangor library has views over the pond and pergola; the sensory garden which replaced the old playground; a moor hen is just one of the wild birds you might see and Gary’s depiction of his memory of the Ballyholme beach diving boards on display at Park Life.
Black and white and loved all over…
A chat with BTO volunteer Adam Ringland about his work observing, monitoring and ringing the Black Guillemot chicks in the sub-colonies around Bangor, Northern Ireland.
… Bangor’s guillemots!
A chance meeting leads me to an uplifting conversation with the man on a mission to monitor the little birds that flock to our seafront each summer and a beautiful tribute to the late Julian Greenwood who sparked our love affair with them over 40 years ago.
Some might say that for Julian, the guillemots were his second family, such was his dedication. His work to support the various sub-colonies around Bangor has borne fruit, not least in the data he collected which now provides comparisons for Adam Ringland. Adam is a volunteer with the British Trust for Ornithology and the Copeland Bird Observatory and this year, he took on the job of studying the black guillemot (Cepphus Grylle) population in Bangor Marina, along the Eisenhower Pier and Long Hole and further afield to Seacliff Road.
Most of us, I’m guessing, think they only visit us in the spring and summer but Adam reveals that hidden behind their winter plumage they do pay flying visits to their nest boxes in those darker months! He is also keen to stress that his work wouldn’t be possible without the support of the folk at Bangor Marina and the people of Bangor themselves.
So, if you love these cute little birds too, I hope you’ll enjoy our conversation.
If you would like to report any ringed black guillemot sightings, you can contact Adam via email at blackguillemotsni@gmail.com
Adam Ringland at Bangor Marina. On the side of the commercial pier in the background you can see some of the specially-built boxes and pipes used by the guillemots during their breeding season.
Adam’s photographs showing, from left - courtship; a fledged chick in the marina; the winter plumage and a landing!
Thanks to Adam for his time and the ANDBC staff at Bregenz House for facilitating the recording.
The recording of the Black Guillemots singing was by Anthony McGeehan , XC1023555. Accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/1023555
The little holiday homes we almost forgot…
At one time, there were around 400 wooden holiday chalets in the Bangor area on coastal plots and lining our roads but most of them have now disappeared. This little yellow house in Groomsport has been listed and I got the chance to talk to two experts and fans about the history of these houses which provided family holidays, shelter in wartime and for some, a permament home.
The front of the little Groomsport holiday chalet which started our conversation on the tradition of these buildings all around Belfast Lough. Photo by Chantelle Niblock.
Forty or fifty years ago, roads around Bangor and North Down were dotted with compact wooden chalets. Sitting snugly on the land, they were refuges built around a hundred years ago by families wanting to escape to the seaside from the grime of a growing Belfast.
The original “flat-pack” buildings, some were constructed by specialist companies and many were simply copied or built with a knowledge that most of us have lost, using whatever people could find or reuse.
It’s been estimated that at one time there might have been as many as 400 around the Bangor and North Down area on coastal sites and along the main roads into the city. Now, so many have gone - their sought-after sites bought over by developers or the plots used to rebuild more solid family homes - but a few still remain.
I was so lucky to take a walk around the Andrews Shorefield site just outside Groomsport with Dr. Kevin Miller, Heritage Projects Officer with the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society and Dr. Chantelle Niblock, a lecturer with the School of Architecture at Queen’s University. This particular chalet was identified by the UAHS as an important example of its kind and while still in private ownership, is now a listed building . Both Kevin and Chantelle are fascinated by the history of these unassuming little buildings and while we started and ended our walk talking about the yellow house, you can sense their excitement wandering around another chalet in the area which you will also hear, is very much a vibrant and lively community.
The rear of the yellow chalet near Groomsport and the other chalet we explored (currently on the market) at Andrews Shorefield (both pictures by Chantelle Niblock); one of the four listed water pump markers on the Shorefield site and an old gateway on the coastal path at Smelt Mill Bay beside Stricklands Glen .Following the industrial use of that area over a century ago, several holiday chalets were built. More were placed up the fields towards the Bryansburn Road.
Music by Shane Ivers - silvermansound.com