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Tag Archives: County Down


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Birth of E. R. Dodds, Irish Classical Scholar

Eric Robertson Dodds, Irish classical scholar, is born in Banbridge, County Down, on July 26, 1893. He is Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford from 1936 to 1960.

Dodds is the son of schoolteachers. His father Robert is from a Presbyterian family and dies of alcoholism when Dodds is seven years old. His mother Anne is of Anglo-Irish ancestry. When he is ten, he moves with his mother to Dublin, and he is educated at St. Andrew’s College, where his mother teaches, and at Campbell College in Belfast. He is expelled from the latter for “gross, studied, and sustained insolence.”

In 1912, Dodds wins a scholarship at University College, Oxford, to read classics, or Literae Humaniores, a two-part, four-year degree program consisting of five terms of study of Latin and Greek texts followed by seven terms of study of ancient history and ancient philosophy. His friends at Oxford include Aldous Huxley and T. S. Eliot. In 1916, he is asked to leave Oxford due to his support for the Easter Rising, but he returns the following year to take his final examinations in Literae Humaniores, and is awarded a first-class degree to match the first-class awarded him in 1914 in Honour Moderations, the preliminary stage of his degree. His first tutor at Oxford is Arthur Blackburne Poynton.

After graduation, Dodds returns to Dublin and meets W. B. Yeats and George William Russell. He teaches briefly at Kilkenny College and in 1919 is appointed as a lecturer in classics at the University of Reading, where in 1923 he marries a lecturer in English, Annie Edwards Powell. They have no children.

In 1924, Dodds is appointed Professor of Greek at the University of Birmingham, and comes to know W. H. Auden, whose father George, Professor of Public Medicine and an amateur classicist, is a colleague. He is also responsible for Louis MacNeice‘s appointment as a lecturer at Birmingham in 1930. He assists MacNeice with his translation of Aeschylus, Agamemnon (1936), and later becomes the poet’s literary executor. He publishes one volume of his own poems, Thirty-Two Poems, with a Note on Unprofessional Poetry (1929).

In 1936, Dodds becomes Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford, succeeding Gilbert Murray. Murray decisively recommends him to British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and it is not a popular appointment. He is chosen over two prominent Oxford dons, Maurice Bowra of Wadham College and John Dewar Denniston of Hertford College. His lack of service in World War I and his support for Irish republicanism and socialism in addition to his scholarship on the non-standard field of Neoplatonism, also does not make him initially popular with colleagues. He is treated particularly harshly by Denys Page at whose college, Christ Church, the Regius Chair of Greek is based.

Dodds has a lifelong interest in mysticism and psychic research, being a member of the council of the Society for Psychical Research from 1927 and its president from 1961 to 1963.

On his retirement in 1960, Dodds is made an Honorary Fellow of University College, Oxford, until his death on April 8, 1979. He dies in the village of Old Marston, northeast of Oxford.

Among Dodds’s works are The Greeks and the Irrational (1951), which charts the influence of irrational forces in Greek culture up to the time of Plato, and Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety, a study of religious life in the period between Marcus Aurelius and Constantine I. He is also editor of three major classical texts for the Clarendon Press, Proclus: Elements of Theology, Euripides‘ The Bacchae and Plato’s Gorgias, all published with extensive commentaries, and a translation in the case of the first. His autobiography, Missing Persons, is published in 1977. He edits Louis MacNeice’s unfinished autobiography The Strings are False (1965) and MacNeice’s Collected Poems (1966).


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Birth of Norman Stronge, 8th Baronet & UUP Politician

Sir Charles Norman Lockhart Stronge, 8th Baronet, senior Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) politician in Northern Ireland, is born on July 23, 1894, in Bryansford, County Down.

Stronge is the only son among two children of Sir Charles Edmond Sinclair Stronge (1862–1939) of Tynan Abbey, County Armagh, and Marian Iliff Stronge (née Bostock) of Walton Heath, Epsom, England. The family holds one of Ulster‘s oldest baronetcies and has a distinguished tradition in public life. Educated at Eton College, he serves in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers during World War I and is mentioned in dispatches by Sir Douglas Haig after the opening Battle on the Somme in July 1916. He is awarded the Military Cross (MC) and the Belgian Croix de guerre. After the war he begins farming in County Londonderry. While in Londonderry he serves as High Sheriff of the county from 1934. Seven years later he moves to his ancestral home, Tynan Abbey, on the death of his cousin Sir James Stronge. He becomes the 8th Baronet in 1939, a year after his election to the House of Commons for Northern Ireland for Mid Armagh. He is appointed High Sheriff for Armagh in 1940.

At the outbreak of war in 1939, Stronge joins the North Irish Horse as a lieutenant but has to relinquish his commission the following year due to ill health. He is then granted the rank of captain. Resuming his political career, he becomes Assistant Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Finance (Assistant Whip) (1941–42) and then Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Finance (Chief Whip) (1942–44). His period as Chief Whip is marked by more robust and “fluid” debate within the party and significant backbench discontent in early 1943. In June 1944 he is elected chairman of Armagh County Council, and in the following year is returned unopposed in the general election. He becomes Speaker of the House of Commons of Northern Ireland in 1945 and in this position he earns the respect of, and makes friends with, politicians of every hue, and is regarded as a moderating influence. It has been said of him that he disproved the myth that politicians at Stormont never spoke to each other. He is unopposed in every postwar election up to 1965, when he sees off the challenge of the Liberal candidate. He does not contest the 1969 general election. He is made Chevalier of the Order of Leopold in 1946 and in the same year is appointed to the Privy Council of Northern Ireland. A member of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, he is a delegate to its 1950 conference in New Zealand. Another interest is the Royal Over-Seas League, of which he is president for a time.

Stronge is closely associated with Sir Basil Brooke, Dame Dehra Parker and Sir Henry Mulholland. He is president of the Northern Ireland area council of the Royal British Legion, sovereign grand master of the Royal Black Institution, president of the Federation of Boys’ Clubs, and chairman of the Commercial Insurance Co. and of the Central Advisory Council for the Employment of the Disabled. It is this last position that causes a brief interruption of his speakership, with an act of parliament deemed necessary to remove any doubt about it having been an office of profit. A prominent member of the Orange Order, he is also chairman of the BBC appeals advisory committee and the Northern Ireland scout council. His retirement from public life in 1977 is marked by his investiture as a Knight of Grace by Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester.

A leading member of the Church of Ireland, Stronge becomes Commander of the Order of Saint John in 1952 and is for many years on the Armagh diocesan synod and council. Until his death, he is a nominator for the position of rector and reads the lessons each Sunday morning in Tynan parish church. In September 1921 he marries Gladys Olive, daughter of Major Henry Thomas Hall of Knockbrack, Athenry, County Galway. They have three daughters and a son, James. In his later life he lives with James, a bachelor, on their 800-acre estate near the border. James is educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford. He succeeds his father in the Mid Armagh constituency in 1969, serving as Ulster Unionist MP in the Stormont parliament until 1972. He is firmly opposed to the Sunningdale Agreement of December 1973, which he describes as a “great act of political appeasement.” Although both are known in the locality, neither seeks public attention and both live relatively quiet lives. Stronge likes to work in the garden but has little interest in the farm, most of which is let out to tenants.

Stronge and his son become prominent victims of the Troubles when a unit of the Provisional Irish Republican Army shoots them dead on January 21, 1981, at Tynan Abbey and sets the mansion alight, destroying it. The Provisional IRA statement describes them as “symbols of hated unionism” and their killings as “direct reprisal for a whole series of loyalist assassinations and murder attacks on nationalist people.” The killings come five days after an attempted assassination of the former MP Bernadette Devlin McAliskey and her husband. Tynan Abbey is long held to have been an easy target, given its relative isolation and its proximity to the border. In 1985 a man is tried for their murders but is acquitted. In 1999 the shell of Tynan Abbey is demolished.

(From: “Stronge, Sir Charles Norman Lockhart” by Tom Feeney, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Preparations Commence for the Plantation of Ulster

On July 19, 1608, preparations commence for the plantation of six Ulster counties of Armagh, Cavan, Coleraine, Donegal, Fermanagh, and Tyrone.

The Plantation of Ulster is the organised colonisation, or plantation, of the Irish province of Ulster by people from Great Britain during the reign of King James I. Most of the settlers, or planters, come from southern Scotland and northern England. Their culture differs from that of the native Irish. Small privately funded plantations by wealthy landowners begin in 1606, while the official plantation begins in 1609. Most of the colonised land had been confiscated from the native Gaelic chiefs, several of whom had fled Ireland for mainland Europe in 1607 following the Nine Years’ War against English rule. The official plantation comprises an estimated half a million acres of arable land in counties Armagh, Cavan, Fermanagh, Tyrone, Donegal, and Coleraine. Land in counties Antrim, Down, and Monaghan is privately colonised with the king’s support.

Among those involved in planning and overseeing the plantation are King James, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Arthur Chichester, and the Attorney-General for Ireland, John Davies. They see the plantation as a means of controlling, anglicising, and “civilising” Ulster. The province is almost wholly Gaelic, Catholic, and rural and has been the region most resistant to English control. The plantation is also meant to sever Gaelic Ulster’s links with the Gaelic Highlands of Scotland. The colonists, or “British tenants,” are required to be English-speaking, Protestant and loyal to the king. Some of the undertakers and settlers, however, are Catholic. The Scottish settlers are mostly Presbyterian Lowlanders and the English mostly Anglican Northerners. Although some “loyal” natives are granted land, the native Irish reaction to the plantation is generally hostile, and native writers bewail what they see as the decline of Gaelic society and the influx of foreigners.

The Plantation of Ulster is the biggest of the Plantations of Ireland. It leads to the founding of many of Ulster’s towns and creates a lasting Ulster Protestant community in the province with ties to Britain. It also results in many of the native Irish nobility losing their land and leads to centuries of ethnic and sectarian animosity, which at times spills into conflict, notably in the Irish Rebellion of 1641 and, more recently, the Troubles.


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Birth of Colin Bateman, Novelist, Screenwriter & Journalist

Colin Bateman, novelist, screenwriter and former journalist known mononymously as Bateman, is born on June 13, 1962, in Newtownards, County Down, Northern Ireland.

Bateman attends Bangor Grammar School leaving at the age of 16 when he is hired by Annie Roycroft to join the County Down Spectator as a “cub” reporter, then columnist and deputy editor. A collection of his columns is published as Bar Stool Boy in 1989.

Bateman has been writing novels since his debut, Divorcing Jack, in 1994. Divorcing Jack wins a Betty Trask Award in the same year and is adapted into a 1998 film starring David Thewlis. Several of his novels feature the semi-autobiographical Belfast journalist, Dan Starkey.

Bateman’s book Murphy’s Law is adapted from the BBC television series Murphy’s Law (2001–2007), featuring James Nesbitt. He explains on his website that “Murphy’s Law was written specifically for James Nesbitt, a local actor who became a big TV star through Cold Feet. The ninety-minute pilot for Murphy’s Law on BBC One was seen by more than seven million people, and led to three TV series, on which I was the chief writer.”

Bateman’s eight-part series Scúp is written in English and translated into Irish. It is produced by Stirling Productions and BBC Northern Ireland. A second series has since been commissioned.

Bateman’s children’s book Titanic 2020 is shortlisted for the 2008 Bisto Book of the Year Award and the Bolton Children’s Book Award

Much of Bateman’s work is produced under the name “Bateman” rather than his full name. His 2007 novel I Predict a Riot bears (among others) the dedication: “For my Christian name, gone but not forgotten.” Since 2016, he has moved increasingly into film, writing the screenplays for The Journey, starring Timothy Spall and Colm Meaney, and Driven starring Jason Sudeikis and Lee Pace. Both films are premiered at the Venice Film Festival and selected for the Toronto International Film Festival. He is currently writing films about Fidel Castro in New York, ‘The Hotel Theresa’ and the British double agent George Blake.


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The Battle of Antrim

The Battle of Antrim is fought on June 7, 1798, in County Antrim during the Irish Rebellion of 1798 between British troops and Irish insurgents led by Henry Joy McCracken. The British win the battle, beating off a rebel attack on Antrim town following the arrival of reinforcements but the county governor, John O’Neill, 1st Viscount O’Neill, is fatally wounded.

The outbreak of the United Irish rebellion in Leinster on May 23 had prompted calls from Ulster United Irishmen to take to the field in support of their southern comrades. However, the organisation in Ulster had been severely damaged in a brutal disarmament campaign the previous year, and the new leadership are less radical and are not willing take to the field without French assistance, which is expected daily.

After waiting for two weeks while the rebellion rages in the south, the grassroots United Irish membership in Antrim decides to hold a number of meetings independent of their leaders. The outcome is the election of Henry Joy McCracken as their adjutant general and the decision to rise immediately. McCracken, together with James Hope, quickly formulate a plan to attack and seize all government outposts in County Antrim and then for the main attack to fall on Antrim town. Then using artillery seized at Antrim, the rebels are to march on Belfast in conjunction with the United Irish rebels in County Down.

McCracken has high hopes that many members of the militia will desert and join him, as disaffection is believed to be widespread, evidenced by the execution of four of the Monaghan militia for treason in Belfast in May.

On 6 June, McCracken and James Hope issue a proclamation calling for the United army of Ulster to rise. The initial plan meets with success, as the towns of Larne, Ballymena, Portaferry and Randalstown are taken and the bridge at Toome damaged to prevent the government from rushing reinforcements into Antrim from west of the River Bann. The rebels then assemble at Donegore Hill in preparation for the march and attack on Antrim town, where an emergency meeting of the county’s magistrates called by the county governor, Lord O’Neill, is due to take place.

Although almost 10,000 rebels assemble at Donegore, many display reluctance for the coming fight and stay on the hill in reserve or desert later so that probably fewer than 4,000 actually take part in the attack. The United Irishmen in Ulster are mostly Presbyterian, but are joined with Catholic Defenders and the tension between the two groups on the march likely causes some desertions. These difficulties lead to a loss of momentum, and the attack is delayed. McCracken is forced to make adjustments to his plan of attack, which had envisaged a simultaneous overwhelming assault on the town from four separate points.

The town is garrisoned by a small force of about 200 yeomen, cavalry under Lt. Col. William Lumley and armed volunteers but they also have four artillery pieces and the delay in the rebel attack allows them to send requests for assistance to Belfast and Lisburn from where reinforcements are already on the way. The garrison forms themselves at the base of the demesne wall of Antrim Castle, with artillery to the front and cavalry to the rear with their flanks anchored by the Market House and Presbyterian Meeting House. A part of the Scottish Quarter in the town is also burned by the garrison as it is perceived to be a stronghold of rebel sympathisers.

The attack finally begins shortly before 3:00 p.m. when the rebels begin a cautious march through the town. As rebel front ranks arrive to face the garrison’s defensive line, artillery opens fire on the rebels, causing them to pull back out of range. Large clouds of dust and smoke are thrown up which, together with the fires from the Scottish Quarter, obscure the garrison’s view of events.

The rebel withdrawal is mistaken for a full retreat and the cavalry moves out to pursue and rout the supposed fleeing rebels. The cavalry effectively runs into a gauntlet of rebels who are protected by a long churchyard wall and stationed in houses along the main street, suffering heavy losses to the gunfire and pikes of the rebels.

After routing the cavalry, the rebels attack the remainder of the garrison, which then begins to pull back to the safety of the castle wall. This is mistaken by a newly arrived rebel column as an attack on them, causing them to flee in panic. In the confusion, the county commander, Lord O’Neill, trapped with his magistrates, is fatally wounded by James Clements who avoids trial by joining the army. A rebel attempt to seize the artillery is only narrowly beaten off by troops stationed behind the demesne wall.

At this critical juncture, British reinforcements from Belfast arrive outside the town and, assuming it to be held by the rebels, begin to shell it with their artillery. This prompts more desertions and the rebel army begins to disintegrate, but their withdrawal is protected by a small band under James Hope which fights a successful rearguard action from the church grounds along the main street. This allows the bulk of the rebels to withdraw safely.

When the military enters the town, they begin a spree of looting, burning and murder, of which the most enthusiastic perpetrators are reported to be the Monaghan militiamen, who are anxious to prove their loyalty and expunge the shame of the recent executions of their comrades for sedition. The town of Templepatrick is burned to the ground and Old Stone Castle is razed to the ground. McCracken, Hope and their remaining supporters withdraw northward, establishing camps of ever dwindling size along the route of their retreat until news of the defeat at Ballynahinch causes their final dispersion. McCracken is arrested by yeomen on July 7 and is hanged in Belfast on July 17, having refused an offer of clemency in return for informing on his comrades.

Commemoration of the centenary of the battle, marked by a nationalist parade in Belfast on June 6, 1898, provokes loyalist riots.


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Death of Brian O’Neill, High King of Ireland

Brian O’Neill (Irish: Brian Chatha an Dúna Ó Néill), the High King of Ireland from 1258 to 1260, is defeated and killed by the forces of Roger des Auters at the Battle of Down on May 14, 1260.

O’Neill is the son of Niall Roe O’Neill, and grandson of Áed in Macáem Tóinlesc. His wife is Nuala O’Connor (Ní Conchobair), a daughter of Rory O’Connor (Irish: Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair), the last High King of Ireland before the Norman invasion. Therefore, through his mother, he is descended from Brian Boru (Irish: Brian Bóramha).

In 1230, Hugh O’Neill (Irish: Aedh Ó Néill), king of Tyrone, dies and is succeeded by Donnell MacLaughlin. MacLaughlin, however, is removed in 1238 by the Justiciar of Ireland, Maurice FitzGerald, 2nd Lord of Offaly, and Hugh de Lacy, 1st Earl of Ulster, who install “the son of O’Neill”, presumed to have been Brian, and take the hostages of the Cenel Owen and Cenel Connell. However, it may have been Brian’s cousin Donnell, who afterwards is killed by MacLaughlin. After this, O’Neill claims the kingship of the O’Neill dynasty as well as Tyrone, possibly with the aid of Hugh de Lacy, 1st Earl of Ulster.

In revenge, O’Neill with the aid of Melaghlin O’Donnell, king of Tyrconnell, defeat MacLoughlin and ten of his closest kinsmen at the Battle of Camergi, somewhere within Tyrone north of Omagh, in 1241. This ends the long rivalry between the MacLoughlin’s and O’Neill’s, with the MacLoughlin’s afterwards excluded from the kingship of Tyrone and Ailech.

In 1244, Henry III of England sends letters to various Gaelic Irish lords, including O’Neill, requesting their aid in a military campaign against the Kingdom of Scotland. In the end the issue is sorted out diplomatically. Copies of the letter are also distributed to O’Neill’s sub-chiefs including his tánaiste, Hugh Boy O’Neill.

A consequence of this infighting between the rival factions of the Cenél Eoghain allows the Normans to advance deeper into Gaelic Ulster, however, in 1243 de Lacy dies. Thus the Earldom of Ulster reverts to the English Crown and is taken over by royal administrators. John FitzGeoffrey, the king’s chief governor in Ireland, erects a bridge across the River Bann and builds castles at Coleraine and Ballyroney in Iveagh. From here FitzGeoffrey is able to penetrate deeper into Tyrone.

Despite ending MacLoughlin aspirations to the kingship, O’Neill forms a marriage alliance with them, however, this results in a war with the O’Donnells of Tyrconnell. Subsequently in 1248 O’Neill backs the king of Tyrconnell, Rory O’Cannon (Irish: Ruaidri Ua Canannáin), against the claims of O’Donnell. O’Cannon had been set up in the kingship by FitzGerald, however, rather than backing him, enters Tyrconnell and removes him in favour of Gofraid O’Donnell.

O’Cannon, who had been expelled to Tyrone, and O’Neill once again lead their forces into Tyrconnell to confront O’Donnell, however they are defeated and O’Cannon is killed.

That same year, John FitzGeoffrey, who replaced FitzGerald as Justiciar in 1246, enters Tyrone and takes the submission and hostages of O’Neill. A resolution had been adopted at a meeting of the Cenel Owen that “since the power of the Foreigners was over the Gaeidhel of Erinn, to give hostages to the Foreigners, and to make peace with them, for the sake of their country.”

In 1249, the king of Connacht, Felim O’Connor, is given refuge from the Normans by O’Neill. In 1252, O’Neill and his brother give their submissions to the Justiciar of Ireland, who had marched to Armagh with a large force. A Rory O’Neill is given as hostage.

In 1253, as a sign of defiance against his vassal status with the Earldom of Ulster, O’Neill withholds his tribute to it and raids Iveagh, destroying the castle at Ballyroney. He also launches an offensive against the Normans in Leinster. That same year, the son of Maurice FitzGerald leads his forces into Tyrone to attack O’Neill, however he fails to take his submission or hostages and after battle suffers a heavy defeat at the hands of O’Neill.

In 1255, O’Neill makes a pact with Felim O’Connor’s son Hugh, whereby allowing Hugh free rein in the Kingdom of Breifne, he would aid O’Neill against the Normans of the earldom who are eroding his territory.

In 1257, the king of Tyrconnell, Gofraid O’Donnell, is mortally wounded in battle against the FitzGeralds and O’Neill uses this opportunity to try to exact Tyrconnell’s submission. As the Cenel Connell discuss what to do, Gofraid’s youngest brother, Donnell Óg, returns from fosterage and is conferred the chieftainship of Tyrconnell. He refuses to submit O’Neill stating the Scottish proverb “Every man should have his own world.”

FitzGerald in 1252 had built a castle at Caoluisce, on the banks of Lough Erne, near modern day Belleek, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, however, in 1258 it is the site where O’Neill, in the presence of his ally O’Connor, is inaugurated as “King of the Gael of Erin.” While he receives hostages from O’Connor and from O’Brien of Thomond, along with several other minor Kings from Meath and Munster, his claim is not recognised by those of the Irish closest to him including the other O’Neill factions, the O’Donnell’s of Tyrconnell, the MacMahon’s of Airgíalla, and the O’Rourkes of Breifne. The following year O’Donnell leads an attack into Tyrone.

In 1260, O’Neill, along with his O’Connor allies, launch an attack on the Normans of the Earldom of Ulster at Drumderg, near its capital at Downpatrick in modern County Down, Northern Ireland. The Normans levy the town, and with the aid of forces brought by Sir Roger des Auters, O’Neill and his allies are decisively defeated at the subsequent Battle of Down. The Annals of Inisfallen state that the forces recruited by the Normans consist mostly of native Irish and that the Normans play only a minor role.

In the battle, O’Neill is killed along with many other Irish nobles including over a dozen members of the O’Cahans. O’Neill’s head is cut off by the Normans and sent to King Henry III of England, a sign of how dangerous his coalition is believed to be.

After this battle, O’Neill becomes known in Irish as Brian Chatha an Dúna, meaning “Brian of the Battle of Down.”

After O’Neill’s death, the kingship of the Cenel Owen, and with it Tyrone, is taken by his cousin’s son, Hugh Boy O’Neill, ancestor of the Clandeboye O’Neill’s, who also has the support of the earldom of Ulster. Upon Hugh’s death in 1283 O’Neill’s son Donnell seizes the kingship, which until 1295 is highly contested between him and his second-cousin Niall Culanach O’Neill and Hugh Boy’s son Brian, until he wins outright control by killing his opponents.


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Birth of William Archer, Naturalist & Librarian

William Archer FRS, Irish naturalist, librarian and microscopist especially interested in Protozoa and Desmids, is born on May 6, 1827 (some sources say 1830), in Maghera, County Down.

Archer is the eldest son of Rev. Richard Archer (1796? – 1849), perpetual curate of Maghera hamlet, County Down, and his wife, Jane Matilda (née Campbell). Nothing is known of his education, though his two younger brothers attend Trinity College Dublin (TCD). At some point, he apparently appears to become estranged from his family.

Archer moves to Dublin around 1846, where for many years he pursues a business career. He achieves fame as a naturalist, and in 1849, is one of the twelve founder members of the Dublin Microscopical Club, of which he is the secretary and moving spirit for many years. Between 1858 and 1885 he writes over 230 scientific papers on Irish fauna and flora in the Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, the vast majority of which are short notes on desmids collected in Ireland. Sometimes the same article is published in two or more journals.

Archer is a member of the Dublin University Zoological Association and is elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA) on January 10, 1870, and Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1875, on which occasion it is stated that he has “a knowledge of the minute freshwater organisms unparalleled among British naturalists and perhaps not surpassed for any other country.”

Archer begins a new career when he becomes librarian of the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) in January 1877. The bulk of the society’s library is being taken over by the state to form the National Library of Ireland. He becomes the chief librarian of the new institution and has the task of overseeing the changes. Most of the ideas put forward in his pamphlet, Suggestions as to public library buildings . . . with especial reference to the National Library of Ireland (Dublin, 1881), are used by Sir Thomas Newenham Deane in his design for its new building, which opens in August 1890. His adoption of the Dewey Decimal Classification system and the inception of a dictionary catalogue, both novel in the day, are to prove of lasting value to users of the library.

In poor health, Archer retires in 1895. He dies, unmarried, at his home, 52 Mount Street Lower, Dublin, on August 14, 1897. He is a shy, modest man, who declines professorships at the Royal College of Science for Ireland and at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), and who is nominated for membership of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) and the Royal Society without his knowledge.


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Birth of John Watson, Formula One Driver & Commentator

John Marshall Watson, MBE, British former racing driver and current commentator, is born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on May 4, 1946.

Watson is educated at Rockport School, in Holywood, County Down. His Formula One career begins in 1972, driving a customer March–Cosworth 721 for Goldie Hexagon Racing in the World Championship Victory Race, a non-Championship event at Brands Hatch. His first World Championship events come in the 1973 season, in which he races in the British Grand Prix in a custom Brabham–Ford BT37, and the U.S. Grand Prix, where he drives the third works Brabham BT42. Neither is particularly successful, as in the British race he runs out of fuel on the 36th lap and his engine fails after only seven laps in the United States event.

Watson scores his first World Championship point in the 1974 Monaco Grand Prix, while driving for Goldie Hexagon Racing. He goes on to score a total of six points that season, driving a customer Brabham BT42-Ford modified by the team. He fails to score Championship points the following year, driving for Surtees Racing Organisation, Team Lotus and Team Penske. At the 1975 Spanish Grand Prix he has the chance to score his first win. He is in second position, behind Mario Andretti, until he has to stop in the pits for checks after his car starts to suffer vibrations. Andretti retires later, and after rejoining the race Watson finishes in eighth, his best Championship result in 1975. In non-Championship races he fares somewhat better, taking second place in the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch, and fourth at the BRDC International Trophy race at Silverstone.

Watson secures his first World Championship podium with third place at the 1976 French Grand Prix. Later that season comes his first victory, driving for Penske in the Austrian Grand Prix having qualified second on the grid. After the race he shaves off his beard, the result of a bet with team owner Roger Penske.

In the third race of the 1977 Formula One season, the South African Grand Prix, he manages to complete the race distance, scores a point, and takes his first ever fastest lap. His achievements are overshadowed, however, by the deaths of driver Tom Pryce and a track marshal, Jansen Van Vuuren. His Brabham-Alfa Romeo lets him down throughout the season but, despite this, he gains his first pole position in the Monaco Grand Prix and qualifies in the top ten no fewer than 14 times, often in the first two rows. Problems with the car, accidents, and a disqualification leads him to race the full distance in only five of the 17 races. The closest he comes to victory is during the French Grand Prix, where he dominates the race from the start only to be let down by a fuel metering problem on the last lap which relegates him to second place behind eventual winner Mario Andretti.

In 1978, Watson manages a more successful season in terms of race finishes, even out-qualifying and out-racing his illustrious teammate Niki Lauda on occasion. He manages three podiums and a pole, and notches up 25 points to earn the highest championship placing of his career to that point.

For 1979, Watson moves to McLaren where he gives them their first victory in over three years by winning the 1981 British Grand Prix and also securing the first victory for a carbon fibre composite monocoque F1 car, the McLaren MP4/1. Later in the 1981 season, the strength of the McLaren’s carbon fibre monocoque is demonstrated when he has a fiery crash at Monza during the Italian Grand Prix. He loses the car coming out of the high speed Lesmo bends and crashes backwards into the barriers. Similar accidents have previously proven fatal, but Watson is uninjured in an accident he later recalls as looking far worse than it actually was. After James Hunt‘s abrupt retirement after the Monaco Grand Prix in 1979, he is the only full-time competitive British F1 driver up until the end of his career.

Watson’s most successful year is 1982, when he finishes third in the Drivers’ Championship, winning two Grands Prix. In several races he achieves high placings despite qualifying towards the back of the grid. At the first ever Detroit Grand Prix in 1982, he overtakes three cars in one lap deep into the race on a tight, twisty track that is difficult to pass on. Working his way from 17th starting position on the grid, he charges through the field and scores a victory in the process. He goes into the final race of the season at Caesars Palace with an outside chance of the title, but he finishes five points adrift of Keke Rosberg and level on points with Didier Pironi.

A year later in 1983, Watson repeats the feat of winning from the back of the grid at the final Formula One race in Long Beach, another street circuit, starting from 22nd on the grid, the farthest back from which a modern Grand Prix driver had ever come to win a race. His final victory also includes a fight for position with teammate Niki Lauda, who had started the race 23rd, though Watson ultimately finishes 27 seconds ahead of his dual World Championship winning teammate.

At the end of the 1983 season, however, Watson is dropped by McLaren and subsequently retires from Formula One. Negotiations with team boss Ron Dennis reportedly break down when he asks for more money than dual World Champion Lauda is earning, citing having won a Grand Prix in 1983 where Lauda did not. Dennis instead signs Renault refugee Alain Prost for comparatively little. Watson does return for one further race two years later, driving for McLaren in place of an injured Lauda at the 1985 European Grand Prix at Brands Hatch, in which he qualifies 21st and places seventh in the race.

In 1984 Watson turns to sports car racing, notably partnering Stefan Bellof to victory at the Fuji 1000 km during Bellof’s 1984 Championship year. He is also part of the driver lineup for Bob Tullius‘ Group 44 Jaguar team at the 1984 24 Hours of Le Mans driving an IMSA spec Jaguar XJR-5 powered by a 6.0 litre V12 in the IMSA / GTP class. In what is Jaguar’s first appearance at Le Mans since 1959, he briefly takes the lead toward the end of the first hour when the faster Porsche 956s and Lancia LC2s pit. Driving with American Tony Adamowicz and Frenchman Claude Ballot-Léna, they fail to finish the race due to engine trouble though they are classified in 28th place.

Watson also finishes second in the 1987 World Sportscar Championship season alongside Jan Lammers in the TWR Silk Cut Jaguar XJR-8 when they win a total of three championship races (Jarama, Monza and Fuji). He competes in the 24 Hours of Le Mans seven times over the course of his career between 1973 and 1990, finishing 11th, a career best, in his last start in 1990 driving a Porsche 962C for Richard Lloyd Racing alongside fellow Grand Prix drivers Bruno Giacomelli and Allen Berg.

After retiring from active racing, Watson works as a television commentator for Eurosport, the BBC, Sky Sports’ Pay Per View, BSkyb, runs a race school at Silverstone and manages a racetrack. He also becomes the first man to ever test a Jordan Formula One car in 1990. He currently provides expert commentary on the GT World Challenge Europe alongside regular Blancpain television commentator David Addison.

(Pictured: John Watson at the 1982 Dutch Grand Prix)


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Birth of F. E. McWilliam, Surrealist Sculptor

Frederick Edward McWilliam CBE RA, Northern Irish surrealist sculptor, is born in Banbridge, County Down, on April 30, 1909. He works chiefly in stone, wood and bronze. His style of work consists of sculptures of the human form contorted into strange positions, often described as modern and surreal.

McWilliam is the son of Dr. William McWilliam, a local general practitioner. Growing up in Banbridge has a great influence on his work. He makes references to furniture makers such as Carson the Cooper and Proctors in his letters to his friend, Marjorie Burnett.

McWilliam attends Campbell College in Belfast and later attends Belfast College of Art from 1926. After 1928, he continues to study at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. He originally intends to become a painter, but influenced by Alfred Horace Gerrard, head of the sculpture department at the Slade, and by Henry Moore whom he meets there, he turns to sculpture. He receives the Robert Ross Leaving Scholarship which enables him and his wife, Beth (née Crowther), to travel to Paris where he visits the studio of Constantin Brâncuși.

During the first year of World War II, he joins the Royal Air Force and is stationed in England for four years where he is engaged in interpreting aerial reconnaissance photographs. He is then posted to India. While there he teaches art in the Hindu Art School in New Delhi.

After his return from India, McWilliam teaches for a year at the Chelsea School of Art. He is then invited by A. H. Gerrard to teach sculpture at the Slade. He continues in this post until 1968.

The 1950s see McWilliam receive many commissions including the Four Seasons Group for the Festival of Britain exhibition in 1951. A major commission in 1957 is Princess Macha for Altnagelvin Area Hospital in Waterside, Derry.

During the Northern Ireland Troubles McWilliam produces a series of bronzes in 1972 and 1973 known as Women of Belfast in response to the bombing at the Abercorn Tea-Rooms.

In 1964 McWilliam is awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Queen’s University Belfast. In 1966 he is appointed CBE and in 1971 he wins the Oireachtas Gold Medal. He is represented in many public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and Tate Britain in London. In 1984 the National Self-Portrait Gallery purchases a McWilliam self-portrait amongst acquisitions from fellow Northerners Brian Ballard, Brian Ferran and T. P. Flanagan.

The Arts Council of Northern Ireland organises a retrospective of his work in 1981 and a second retrospective is shown at the Tate Gallery in 1989 for his 80th birthday.

McWilliam continues carving up to his death. He dies of cancer in London on May 13, 1992.

In September 2009 Banbridge District Council opens a gallery and studio dedicated to the work of and named after McWilliam.


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The Beginning of the Belfast Blitz

A Luftwaffe bomb kills thirteen people in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on the night of April 7, 1941. Ultimately, the city is devastated by air raids. Seven hundred people are killed and 400 seriously injured in what becomes known as the Belfast Blitz. The Blitz consists of four German air raids on strategic targets in Belfast, in April and May 1941 during World War II.

There had been a number of small bombings, probably by planes that missed their targets over the River Clyde in Glasgow or the cities of North West England. On March 24, 1941, John MacDermott, Minister for Public Security, writes to the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, John Andrews, expressing his concerns that Belfast is so poorly protected. “Up to now we have escaped attack. So had Clydeside until recently. Clydeside got its blitz during the period of the last moon. There [is] ground for thinking that the … enemy could not easily reach Belfast in force except during a period of moonlight. The period of the next moon from say the 7th to the 16th of April may well bring our turn.” MacDermott is proved right.

The first deliberate raid takes place on the night of April 7. It targets the docks. Neighbouring residential areas are also hit. Six Heinkel He 111 bombers, from Kampfgruppe 26, flying at 7,000 feet, drop incendiaries, high explosive and parachute mines. By British mainland blitz standards, casualties are light. Thirteen die, including a soldier killed when an anti-aircraft gun at the Balmoral show-grounds misfires. The most significant loss is a 4.5-acre factory floor for manufacturing the fuselages of Short Stirling bombers. The Royal Air Force (RAF) announces that Squadron Leader J.W.C. Simpson shot down one of the Heinkels over Downpatrick. The Luftwaffe crews return to their base in Northern France and report that Belfast’s defences are “inferior in quality, scanty and insufficient.” This raid overall causes relatively little damage, but a lot is revealed about Belfast’s inadequate defences.

On Easter Tuesday, April 15, 1941, spectators watching a football match at Windsor Park notice a lone Luftwaffe Junkers Ju 88 aircraft circling overhead. That evening over 150 bombers leave their bases in northern France and the Netherlands and head for Belfast. There are Heinkel He 111s, Junkers Ju 88s and Dornier Do 17s. At 10:40 p.m. the air-raid sirens sound. Accounts differ as to when flares are dropped to light up the city. The first attack is against the city’s waterworks, which had been attacked in the previous raid. High explosives are dropped. Initially it is thought that the Germans had mistaken this reservoir for the harbour and shipyards, where many ships, including HMS Ark Royal are being repaired. However, that attack is not an error. Three vessels nearing completion at Harland & Wolff are hit as is its power station. Wave after wave of bombers drop their incendiaries, high explosives and landmines. When incendiaries are dropped, the city burns as water pressure is too low for effective firefighting. There is no opposition. In the mistaken belief that they might damage RAF fighters, the anti-aircraft batteries cease firing. But the RAF does not respond. The bombs continued to fall until 5:00 a.m.

Outside of London, with some 900 dead, this is the greatest loss of life in a night raid during the Blitz. A stray bomber attacks Derry, killing fifteeen. Another attacks Bangor, County Down, killing five. By 4:00 a.m. the entire city seems to be in flames. At 4:15 a.m., John MacDermott, the Minister of Public Security, manages to contact Minister of Agriculture Basil Brooke seeking permission to seek help from the Irish government. Brooke notes in his diary, “I gave him authority as it is obviously a question of expediency.” Since 1:45 a.m. all telephones have been cut. Fortunately, the railway telegraphy link between Belfast and Dublin is still operational. The telegram is sent at 4:35 a.m. asking the Irish Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, for assistance.

By 6:00 a.m., within two hours of the request for assistance, 71 firemen with 13 fire tenders from Dundalk, Drogheda, Dublin, and Dún Laoghaire are on their way to cross the Irish border to assist their Belfast colleagues. In each station volunteers are requested, as it is beyond their normal duties. In every instance, all step forward. They remain in Belfast for three days, until they are sent back by the Northern Ireland government. By then 250 firemen from Clydeside have arrived.

Taoiseach Éamon de Valera formally protests to Berlin. Frank Aiken, the Irish Minister for the Co-ordination of Defensive Measures, is in Boston, Massachusetts, at the time. He gives an interview saying, “the people of Belfast are Irish people too.”

There is a second massive air raid on Belfast on Sunday, May 4-5, 1941, three weeks after the Easter Tuesday raid. Around 1:00 a.m., Luftwaffe bombers fly over the city, concentrating their attack on the Harbour Estate and Queen’s Island. Nearby residential areas in east Belfast are also hit when “203 metric tonnes of high explosive bombs, 80 land mines attached to parachutes, and 800 firebomb canisters containing 96,000 incendiary bombs” are dropped. Over 150 people die in what becomes known as the “Fire Blitz.” Casualties are lower than at Easter, partly because the sirens sound at 11:45 p.m. while the Luftwaffe attack more cautiously from a greater height. St. George’s Church in High Street is damaged by fire. Again, the Irish emergency services cross the border, this time without waiting for an invitation.

(Pictured: Rescue workers search through the rubble of Eglington Street in Belfast, Northern Ireland, after a German Luftwaffe air raid, May 7, 1941)