From the pages of the Down Recorder, July 3, 1979

From the pages of the Down Recorder, July 3, 1979

3 July 2019

BALLYCULTER — A young Castlewellan girl uncovered a Bronze Age gold dress fastener worth about £1,000 when she was gathering potatoes on a farm near Downpatrick.

Twelve year-old Elizabeth Ann Ritchie, of Ballybannon Road, told a coroner’s court that she had taken time off from potato picking to help a friend look for her pet frog when she made the amazing find last October.

She told Mr Gerald Duffy, coroner for North Down, that she spotted a piece of shining metal sticking out of the ground on the farm at Ballyculter and at first thought it was part of a horse harness.

The item was taken to the Ulster Museum where Dr Laurence Flanaghan confirmed it was a late Bronze Age gold dress or sleeve fastener, dated about 77BC and worth about £1,000.

Dr Flanaghan said that 88 similar gold fasteners had been uncovered in Ireland, but only two had been found in Northern Ireland during the last 50 years. He also pointed out that gold was more common in Ireland during the Bronze Age than in most other parts of Europe.

The jury concluded that the fastener had been intentionally hidden or concealed and therefore declared it treasure trove.

Although young Elizabeth is likely to receive compensation for discovering the fastener, the coroner ruled that it becomes the property of the Queen and will be handed over to the Treasury.

ARDGLASS — A verdict of death by misadventure was recorded on a 26 year-old man whose body was found washed up at Ardglass in February this year after the boat on which he was fishing sank.

An inquest jury at Downpatrick on Thursday heard how James Edward Greer, of Elmfield Park, Donaghadee, had been held up in the water for about 15 minutes by his skipper, who eventually had to let go of him.

The badly decomposed body of Mr Greer, who could not swim, was washed up at Sheepland Begg on February 4.

The skipper of the boat said he held the deceased for about five minutes after their vessel was hit by a big wave off Peel in the Isle of Man.

He tried to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but Mr Greer was unconscious and after another ten minutes he had to get him go because he himself was in danger. Mr Greer went straight down under the water.

BALLYNAHINCH — A job market centre aimed at easing the local unemployment situation is geared to open in Ballynahinch in the next few weeks.

The market will be operated from premises at High Street in the town and the venture has been organised by the Department of Manpower Services.

There are already five other job markets operating throughout the province which have proved very successful in combating the unemployment problem.

Employment services in Ballynahinch had previously functioned from the Crown Buildings, but a spokesman for the Department says that operations will now be carried out from the High Street centre.

“The new job market will comprise a careers officer and a back-up staff,” he said. “This is a modern concept to help fight the dole queue crisis.”

The spokesman stressed that job markets were quick and efficient with job vacancies displayed on boards for people to study.

He added: “We have various furnishing problems to sort out, but we hope that the Ballynahinch market will be open in a few weeks’ time. It will be open five days a week during normal working hours.”

STRANGFORD — Three elderly women were taken to Downe Hospital on Thursday afternoon after the bus in which they were travelling crashed into the back of another bus near Strangford.

The two buses, owned by Newtownbreda Baptist Church, were involved in the accident on the Downpatrick Road. They buses were travelling together when the brakes in the rear bus failed and it collided with the leading bus. One of the women taken to hospital was detained overnight.

NEWCASTLE — Mr John Hume, one of the province’s three new MEPs, received a standing ovation when he came to Newcastle on Sunday to thank those who had helped in his European election success.

Speaking to a capacity crowd in the Slieve Donard Hotel, Mr Hume reviewed the work of the SDLP over the past ten years.

Mr Hume said they had rejected the philosophy of domination by one section of the community over the other and they had totally rejected violence as a means of attaining political ends.

Mr Hume then turned to the SDLP attitude towards Europe and said: “We may not agree with everything within the EEC, but we agree with its basic principles which have succeeded in bringing bitter enemies together in peace and harmony.”

SAINTFIELD —  More than 60 bands and 70 lodges are expected to invade Saintfield for the first Twelfth of July demonstration held there since 1969.

Already the final touches are being made to preparations and the town is expected to welcome 10,000 spectators and 3,500 Orangemen.

The organisers hope that the scorching weather which greeted the parade in Killyleagh last year and Dundrum the year before will return to make it a memorable day. The long range forecast reckons that the warm, dry spell may continue.

BALLYGOWAN — Two hundred workers at the ropeworks factory in Ballygowan will lose their jobs within the next three months.

A spokesman for the Belfast Ropeworks Company Ltd, the owners of the factory, says that heavy losses have been sustained in recent years and therefore all production will have to be brought to a halt.

The workers, both male and female, will be declared redundant during the course of the next 13 weeks. The marking and selling activities of the company will be unaffected and customers will continue to be supplied.

The company spokesman said he regretted that it had become necessary to cease the manufacture of rope and twine products and carpet fibre at the local factory.

“The cost of production at Ballygowan has consistently exceeded what the market can bear, while the remoteness of the factory from its principal market in Great Britain imposes a further burden in respect of prohibitive transport costs, particularly for finished goods,” he added.

DOWNPATRICK — Downpatrick Young Farmers had a very successful day at the 15th annual Young Farmers’ county rally on Saturday. Out of the 21 clubs Downpatrick gained maximum points to won both the Farm Tasks Shield and the Rally Shield.

Overall, the club achieved a high number of placings, including a second from Pat Turley in weed identification and a first from Vincent MacNabb in soil assessment.

STRANGFORD LOUGH — The Department of Energy has no future plans to use Strangford Lough as an experiment centre in the battle to harness wave energy as a source of power.

More than 18 months ago scientists gained valuable information for a sea trial buoy which was built at the marine biology station in Portaferry and nearby at Marffield Bay.

A Department of Energy official has informed the South Down MP, Mr Enoch Powell, that no further tests at Strangford Lough are planned at present.

The official was answering a question raised by Mr Powell in the House of Commons asking whether the Department had taken into account the experiments in the lough.

During the experiments scientists monitored radio signals from the buoy which experienced a wide range of weather conditions during a one-month period.

The device was small scale, but it gave scientists enough information to produced a design for a full scale device. It is thought that a chain of such buoys could one day be one of our main sources of power.