A PERSONAL MEMOIR: SIXTY-FIVE YEARS' ACQUAINTANCE WITH CAVE HILL

My earliest memories of Cave Hill, in the 1930's, are patchy. For a school term, Easter to Summer 1939, I came from my home in London and stayed with my maternal grandparents in Waterloo Gardens to convalesce in the fresher air of Belfast. Normally, my annual visits, with parents and younger brother, consisted of two or three weeks each summer, divided between Belfast, Derry and Castlerock.

I recall pre-war outings to Hazelwood and Bellevue, sometimes by tram, but usually we walked up the Antrim Road, stopping at O'Neills for sweets. O'Neill's was at the top of Gray's Lane, the same building that has been Guy's for many years. Miss O'Neill manned the shop while her brother, Tiny, short for Constantine, delivered the "messages" with the help of his pony and trap. There was a brother, Father O'Neill the priest, greatly respected by Tiny and his sister. I remember going out to my grandparents' side gate, on Innisfayle Road to talk while my grandmother and Tiny had a bit of "crack" at the back door.

Sometimes we stopped at Cavehill Post Office at 694 Antrim Road, which was also one of the two gate-lodges for the Castle. Frank Beamish had succeeded his father as postmaster and was assisted by his mother, old Mrs Beamish, small and white haired. When we reached Hazelwood, we children skipped ahead up the earthen path, with logs as step risers , which followed the bank of a small stream. The alternative to climbing the steps of the path was a ride up the zig-zag road in the charabanc, popularly known as the "toastrack". Having alighted outside the Floral Hall, we would have a stroll around the pond to watch the ducks before setting off for Bellevue to see the animals. On other occasions we approached the zoo up the concrete steps from the Bellevue tram stop. About half way up the broad, impressive steps were the turnstiles, which made a succession of most satisfying clicks as one passed through. Many years later I heard this entrance referred to as "the moving staircase", on account of the cracks which appeared regularly due to subsidence.

My happy childhood memories of Bellevue and Hazelwood pale into insignificance compared with a wonderful and unusual event which took place in June 1939 on the lower slopes of the hill. I have a cherished photocopy of the programme. Its front cover declares "St. Peter's Dramatic Society presents Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream in the Open-Air Theatre at the Chapel Grounds on Friday & Saturday June 23rd & 24th 1939, at 8 p.m. Programme- two pence". Inside are listed the "Dramatis personae" including Yours Truly as the fairy Cobweb. Three of my school fellows (at Holyrood School, 42-44 Lansdowne Road) were Peaseblossom, Moth and Mustard-Seed. Our headmistress was the wardrobe-mistress and the producer was her husband, A.W. Bowyer (who taught in the Tec' with my aunt). The then curate at St.Peter's Parish Church, J.E. George, played the part of Nick Bottom, the weaver, with great eclat. I like the programme note: "As in Shakespeare's day, the same uncurtained stage must suffice for every scene, whether it be the palace where the Duke holds revel, or the fairy-haunted forest to which the lovers flee, to which the "rude mechanicals" resort to rehearse their play, and through which Theseus and his bride go hunting. Day and night are indicated by the poet, and are to be imagined by the audience". The "Open-Air Theatre" was a quarry which was shaped, fortuitously, like a Greek or Roman amphitheatre and situated close to the Chapel of the Resurrection, somewhere between, and half-way up, Innisfayle Park and Waterloo Park.

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In that Spring of 1939 my friends and I were able to wander about the hill in safety, almost as if it were our own back gardens. I remember exploring and playing around the ruins of a derelict mansion, Martlet Towers, uphill from the road and among the trees, of which only the gate-lodge still remains, opposite what is now Guy's and was then O'Neills. I remember a walled garden nearby and a gardener working in it. When we went off to play on the hill before the war, nobody worried about us because nobody needed to worry. That state of affairs has certainly changed for the worse.

At some date between 1939 and 1942 I recall struggling up to McArt' s Fort with two girls, Elsie Mayne who was a year or two old than me, and her older sister. They were nieces of Miss Sarah Mayne of 669 Antrim Road. Our route was up the Sheep's Path between the caves and Napoleon's Nose. I wasted a lot of time and effort on the path, where for every step forward one seemed to travel two backwards, before having the sense to take to the grass and scramble up quite quickly. When we reached our destination we lay down on our tummies and surveyed the panorama below. Today, looking up the hill, the Sheep's Path appears no more slippery in AD 2000 than it was in 1939 or so.

This brings me to the matter of Napoleon's Nose, a popular soubriquet for almost two hundred years. Before that it would have been simply "the nose". There are numerous hills or mountains in the Scottish Highlands named "An t-Sron" which is Gaelic for "the nose" and which is pronounced, approximately as "untrone". This accounts for the name of an area on the Antrim Road, under McArt's Fort, which is called "the Throne". "The nose" was a translation into English, and "The Throne" resulted from a change of meaning due to a similarity in sound. A view of McArt's Fort from the grounds of Belfast Castle. Photograph by Tommy McLaughlin   Napoleon's Nose is generally taken to be the nearer of the two promontories. It is best appreciated when seen from below. This picture was taken from McArt's Fort.

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During the Second World War our parents sent my six year old brother and me to Northern Ireland, from 1940 to Summer 1942 and again from Summer 1944 to Summer 1945.1 think it was in the Autumn of 1945,when I was fifteen and back at school in London, that I had a most graphic and horrifying nightmare. In my dream my brother and I were lying looking down over the cliff of McArt's Fort, or the Nose, at a Belfast which was a smouldering ruin as the result of an atomic bomb such as those which had fallen on Hiroshima and Nagasaki a few months earlier. I knew in my dream that we were the only survivors, bereft and alone.

In 1948 I came back to Belfast to go to Queen's University, staying with my grandmother and aunt in Waterloo Gardens. Among my many and varied cronies at Queen's were two male friends whom I shall refer to as BB and JM. On several occasions we wound up late on a Saturday night at 3 Cedar Avenue, the home of HM (JM's father, a politician). The assembled company would include the three of us, HM himself, his daughter and son-in-law, and maybe one or two others. We would linger over a supper enlivened with pleasant conversation and then adjourn to the drawing room for an impromptu musical soiree around the piano. HM's son-in-law was a good singer. I remember one such occasion in 1949 or 1950 when BB was walking me home up the Antrim Road in the early hours of the morning. It was light and before we got to Waterloo Gardens the birds were singing. A good many hours earlier I had been at a Queen's hop (in the Students' Union Dining Hall which was later upgraded as the Harty Room). BB, in his normally polite and punctilious manner was carrying my dancing shoes. But we had an argument as we walked along. (I can't recall the reason - possibly JM.) I don't remember what I said but, in a fit of pique, BB flung my shoes away and, moreover, left me to retrieve them from a gorse bush. I mention this incident because it occurred somewhere between Strathmore Park and Waterloo Park where, apart from the odd house and garden, the Castle grounds - gorse and blackcurrant bushes, wild flowers and coarse grass abutted on the pavement on the west side of the road. Changed times nowadays when every possible particle of land is being built on.

It must have been in 1953 that I actually participated in rock-climbing on Cave Hill. With two fellow members of the Irish Mountaineering Club, John White and Peter Grimley, and a rope, we climbed a gully or chimney where, or near where, the rock-face containing the caves adjoined the rest of the escarpment. Basalt is not good climbing rock as we knew, so I don't know what possessed us. The air was blue with Peter's curses as pieces of rock came, away in our hands and other crumbling pieces showered down upon our heads and shoulders. In those days climbers wore nothing more protective than woolly berets.

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In many ways, Cave Hill has not changed greatly in the last sixty plus years, but I feel sad when I look at the ruinous state of the Chapel of the Resurrection where I sometimes attended 3.00 pm Evensong on a Sunday, and see the additional building that is taking place in such very close proximity. I regret, too, the demolition of the Castle Stables, which have now made way for the children's playground. When I was young the Stables appealed to me more than the Castle, which looked rather self-satisfied in comparison. Perhaps because the Stables were less well-groomed, rather sadly neglected, they looked more mysterious and romantic. Whenever I walked past them I thought of "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your gold hair!"

Nowadays, sometimes alone and sometimes with Diane Hunter and her dog Clemmie, and equipped with poop-scooper and plastic bags, I take my border collie cross, Becky, up the hill. We go down to the Volunteers' Well and up again through the trees. We take various routes and re-explore the many paths.

How lucky we are to have Cave Hill! We need to try to help preserve it for the future.

Elizabeth K.C. Madill: April 2000