From the pages of the Down Recorder, December 15, 1993

From the pages of the Down Recorder, December 15, 1993

20 December 2023

NEWCASTLE – A site has been identified for Newcastle’s proposed new integrated college. Planning permission is currently being sought to develop the £3m project on a greenfield site near the town’s King Street, which is presently being used as a golf driving range.

A total of five sites were put under the microscope before college officials plumped for the King Street location and their choice has been welcomed by senior Department of Education chiefs.

Meanwhile, Mr John McCombe, secretary of Shimna Integrated College, says the doors will be swung open to welcome the first new pupils next September.

Applications for funding have already been made to the Department of Education and the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education and both bodies have pledged their support.

Mr McCombe says the greenfield site, which is close to the town’s All Children’s Integrated Primary School, is “ideally placed” and offers ample space to allow for future development.

DOWNPATRICK – Down Council chairman, Miss Margaret Ritchie, has been given back her gold chain of office – thanks to the Down Recorder.

The £7,000 chain went missing following an official engagement at Knockevin Special School on December 1, but it was returned to a relieved council chairman last Wednesday morning.

The person who discovered the nine carat yellow gold chain read in last week’s Recorder that a reward was being offered to anyone who found it.

And a matter of seconds after our switchboard opened on Wednesday morning, a caller rang to enquire how much the reward was for, before he got in touch with the police.

The chain was handed over to Miss Ritchie later that same afternoon just in time for her to wear it the following day at a crucial meeting of the Eastern Health Board.

KILLYLEAGH – A Killyleagh firm has scooped another major award and unveiled plans to achieve even more success in 1994.

Killyleagh Yarns is proud of its achievement in the total quality market which has been rewarded with an increased order book.

Over the past year, the company has taken on 60 new jobs and this week, Killyleagh Yarns was presented with the prestigious “Team of the Year Award”.

Mr Derek Scott, the company’s managing director, said quality was not a factor of size, investment or business, but a result of the involvement and efforts of everyone.

“We continually look for ways to improve the quality of what we do and the culmination of a lot of hard work has resulted in us receiving this latest award,” he said.

STRANGFORD – Work on Strangford’s new £230,000 jetty will commence early in the New Year and will take around three months to complete, it was confirmed this week.

Bulldozers will move into the village on January 10 to demolish the present reinforced concrete deck and piles to allow work on providing a new open berthing jetty to begin.

New tubular steel piles are also to be driven into the bed of the Lough to support the construction of a new precast superstructure, new fendering and mooring facilities.

Repairs are also scheduled to be carried out to the existing ferry slipway.

A spokesman for the Department said yesterday that the present structure  was “badly corroded”.

ARDGLASS – There were tears and solemn faces at Dundonald last week when the Eastern Health Board ratified the proposal to close Ardview House residential home in Ardglass.

After months of campaigning, Board members agreed to close the facility along with two other homes in Lisburn, despite eleventh hour pleas for them to defer a final decision.

The three-hour meeting was a tense affair and although several Board members expressed concern at what would happen to the residents who would be forced to leave their homes, the closure proposal was carried by seven votes to two.

The fight to keep the home open was led by South Down MP, Mr Eddie McGrady, Down Council chairman, Miss Margaret Ritchie, and Dr Michael Healy, chairman of the Ardview Action Committee.

But their arguments failed to cut any ice with the majority of the Board members and it was left to a distraught Mr Healy to telephone the residents at Ardview to tell them that the battle had been lost.

BALLYNAHINCH – Most of us toss logs on to fires at Christmas time, but Ballynahinch man Tony Rea makes better use of wood than letting it go up in smoke.

He is a self-taught woodturner, and fashions small, unique pieces of furniture, utensils and ornaments out of lumps of timber with his custom-built lathe.

Working from his Drumaness Road home, he finds the demand for natural wood items is growing fast, particularly from abroad. With teaching and display jobs also on the up, woodturning may take over from his building business completely.

“Woodturning started off as a hobby in 1989 and it really just went on from there,” said Tony. A weekend’s instruction on his newly-purchased lathe with a woodturning friend down south gave him the basics and his own style has developed since then.

“Getting the shape is the main thing”, he said, and without doubt the manoeuvring of a wood-chisel against a rapidly-rotating piece of wood, with all the splinters and dust, means the theory, like a potter’s wheel, is no pushover in reality.

“I try to use native Irish timber as far as possible, usually Burr-Elm and Oak,” he continued. “We aren’t getting trees cut down specially for woodturning, because the wood needs to be completely dead. We use scrap timber. You cannot turn a fresh piece of wood.”

Tony buys tree trunks, often paying for them by turning some of the wood into furniture. He says trees have a great spiritual value to people. “I take this old dead tree, which could be 100 years-old, and bring it to life in my work.”

DOWNPATRICK – The future of the Downpatrick Maternity Unit is back in the melting pot just weeks after the Eastern Health Board ruled that the local facility should be treated as a special case.

The Province’s Health Minister, Lord Arran, has over-ruled a Board guarantee on the future of the unit, giving it just three years to treble its annual number of births.

Local health chiefs have expressed “anger and amazement” at the Minister’s decision, particularly as the Board’s proposal to allow the maternity unit to remain open indefinitely had been fully discussed beofre it was made public.

Lord Arran made his announcement in an out of the blue statement last week and it seems certain to throw the Down and Lisburn Unit of Management and the Department of Health on a head-on collision course.

He said that if the local unit cannot meet the guidelines then he would expect the Board to cease purchasing consultant obstetric services in Downpatrick.

CROSSGAR – A new £350,000 technology suite, one of the most modern in the province, was officially opened at St Colmcille’s High School last week.

After many delays and a nine month construction programme, the building was officially opened on Tuesday by the Rt Rev Monsignor Colm McCaughan, Chancellor of the Curia for the Diocese of Down and Connor.

Sited on the tennis courts and in close proximity to the assembly hall, the suite consists of a systems room, a planning room and a manufacturing area, along with stores, toilets and a display area.