dabbler et all
how many remember "The Market" in Lisburn ,how it was from 1948 to 1965 before the swimming pool and the MOT building took over most of the area? I can remember going with my mother and brother Eamon in a pram to buy chicks, a pig escaping and the owner chasing it, then later a Scotsman called Hector selling his wares from a large lorry. Then inside the stalls where the vendors sold everything from womens drawers to mens socks, Tilley lamps, elastic for Knickers, razor blades, physics, nappies, cures for sore heads , ointment for piles etc, etc, you name it!
Donald

Yes, Donald
I have written previously about the market. I didn’t know the names of any vendors, but very clearly I can still see the stalls. When it was closed, the boys from Haslem’s Lane used to climb over the wrought-iron gates to play among the stalls. Are you reading this, Masters Gillian, Stevenson, Mc Shane? Or, approaching three score years and ten, perhaps looking down from above? On second thoughts, there wouldn’t have been a pair of wings to fit any of you, lovable 'divils' that you were.

Donald, do you remember the guy who used to sit outside the public washrooms in Haslems lane with his dog while he played A tune on a hand saw.the next stop after that was the slaughter house and then on to woolies which seemed to have everything from a needle tto an anchor

Yes , on most market days ( Tuesdays ) he sat there and the handle of the saw which was cushioned with a piece of rag was clamped under his chin. He could coax haunting melodies out of the saw.
Donald

I remember that old man with the saw. Tuesday was our half day from school, (Carrick Academy) so we would always run around to the market, never know who you might see, and what treasure we could find. Last visit home in 2001 I was disapointed to see that the market was just about gone. Sylvia.

Got a phone call on Tuesday from a friend from Miami who is at present visiting his folks in Lisburn. He went last Tuesday morning to the Market, said it consists entirely of 4 clothes stall and 1 fish stand! When I think of it in the fifties and sixties, poultry, pigs, crockery, clothes , etc etc, how times have changed
Donald

I was also disappointed when I went home two years ago to see what now constitutes a market in Lisburn. But........it was nice to hear the fish stall is still there....Jonathon Cochrane from Ardglass has been going to Lisburn market since the sixties....I know because he used to be my boyfriend! When I used to work in Christies Wallpaper shop in Bow Street I would go round and flutter my eye lashes at him in my lunch hour on Tuesdays......

Maureen, How small the world is. My wife,s people are from Ardglass and her Aunts, ( Molly ) used to be employed by the family pulling prawns.
Donald

Maureen
it,s me again, forgot to ask you, 1960 I worked in Hilden mill with Ronnie Patterson who later married Julia Grey from Kilden, any relation? He would be around 64 / 65 now
Donald

Donald et al,
I have just checked out that everyone I know is safe, after hearing about the dreadful explosions in London.
I say this just to confirm that I’m not entirely buried mentally in the past.

I remember the public toilets in Haslems Lane, and the tuneful saw. The first time I ever heard a saw ‘played’ was on the stage at a childrens party at Thiepval Barracks, thrown by GIs. I think it was to do with the end of the war.
Ardglass? Did anyone know a boy from Ardglass, with very ginger hair, who lived around Church Street, Lisburn, with a family called McKeown? I just remember him because he came from out of town, and had bright hair. I don’t know why he was living there, though I knew that family.
That IOGT Hall that I asked about – my dad said it was the ‘I owe granny tuppence hall.

Donald As you say it's a small world!
I do have a cousin called Ronnie Patterson but I'm sure his wife's name is Doreen. He is/was an electrician and had a shop down in Finaghy. I'm not normally so vague about my family members and who they are married to but some of my cousins were a fair bit older than myself and somehow we never seemed to have had the same association with them as we did with my aunt Lizzie heasley's kids and uncle Victor ones.