Bella’s 100 years in her beautiful Down

Bella’s 100 years in her beautiful Down

15 January 2014

WHEN Killyleagh pensioner Bella Moulton started to feel her age last year, she reluctantly asked a neighbour to help her with the hoovering.

Having maintained her own house on the family farm throughout her adult life, Bella admitted the time had come for just a little bit of assistance. She was, after all, 99.

At the weekend, a fiercely independent Bella hit her 100th birthday, defying her 10 decades as she celebrated the landmark occasion surrounded by family and friends in her own home.

Reminiscing about a simple and peaceful life spent on the thatched family homestead, Bella says she has enjoyed a simple life in rural Down, never feeling the urge to travel abroad or to see the wider world, believing instead that there was no place more beautiful than the countryside outside her door.

Not taking ownership of her first television until she was in her 50s and happily surviving without electricity until the 1960s, Bella maintains some preference for the “old life”, finding gas more reliable than electricity and remembering the good work horses carried out on the family farm until a neighbour caused great excitement by bringing home his first tractor.

She also foregoes a contemporary diet, preferring champ and cabbage and an occasional glass of port.

“When I was young we picked potatoes in the field with horses dredging up the drills and us collecting them in potato baskets,” she said.

“I remember the excitement when the first tractor was brought to the area, but even then we still used the horses.”

Bella believes the weather posed less of a threat in her youth and says she thinks dangerous floods and storms are a relatively recent phenomenon.

“We had storms, and quite a bit of snow where you had to dig through the yard to get to the cattle, but there were no dangerous things like floods and high high winds.”

However, Bella does remember the sense of danger when the Germans bombed Belfast in April 1941.

“I remember hearing the Germans flying over the house, “ she said.

“They flew into Belfast from the south and went overhead around midnight. We heard all the sirens and the noise of the bombs going off.

“We thought we were far enough away not to be hit but everyone got out of bed and stood outside their houses to watch the jets fly by.

“On their retreat they ped their load into the sea at Killyleagh.”

Bella said throughout her life, and including during the war, she never “got worked up about anything” and believes taking joy in simple pleasures is something that is becoming increasingly lost in the modern world.

“When I was young, women were at home with their families but with the cost of living there is a lot of pressure to go out to work to earn more,” she said.