Today we were talking about the effects of war in Ulster, do any of you remember the air raid shelters, bombers taking of from the maze area towing gliders etc.?

Hi
I remember the air raid shelters in Hilden school playgrounds. The bunker in the boy,s was boarded up with wooden doors and used as a store but the girls playground one was accessable and we used to play in it as children. I seem to remember also a bunker in Bridge Street Hilden beside the Billiards hall and it being knocked down to allow the bus from Lisburn to Tullynacross to turn the corner. Also in the space between the houses in Mill Street and Bridge Street Hilden was the foundation of a bunker.
Where Hillhall primary school now stands , across from Fergerson,s shop , were remnants of a prisoner of war camp for German soldiers who were,
Donald

continuation
allowed out at daytime to work for the local farmers according to stories in the early fifties.
Also Americans were stationed in " the Chains " at Lambeg and there was a bunker in the back garden which could still be be seen middle fifties from the Lagan river bridge. It was a domed type and unlike the flat roofed ones in Hilden
I remember an older man called Davy Edgar from Hilden and my Uncle Bobby Mateer recalling their stints as "Firewatchers" in Hilden mill. Their duty was to watch from the roof for the approach of German bombers and raise alarm if there were fires
Donald

Rail problems due to snow. No visit from grandkids. Now torrential rain outside window.

I asked, long ago, if anyone remembered German prisoners being held in a gated compound at the corner of Linenhall Street and Smithfield. I am sure this is not my senility at work. On the opposite side of the road from Kitty Malloy’s shop and Hanna’s blacksmith. As I wrote previously, the prisoners handed us kids money through the locked gates to go and get ‘messages’ from the local shops.

and flour and prisoners...
I’ve just had one of those incredible out-of-the-blue memory jolts. The flour mill! The gated compound at the corner of Linenhall Street, THAT was it. Flour! As quickly as I write this, doubt creeps back in. Were those men not really prisoners? Was that just a story from parents locked in my mind? Or was it, for a time, used to hold prisoners?
When I ponder on stuff like this, I realise, fit though I undoubtedly am, I’m getting old. Who on Earth would CARE what it was?

Dabbler,
afraid that was before my time, I only remember the "Hibs" hall there and across from it where the new post office now stands was a derelict building which I believe was once a trading place for linen. There was a small Gospel hall as well. Like I said on the forum some time ago my Uncle Ronnie married Muriel Bradley from there, whose brother Patsy, you knew, died very young.
Yesterday I had to clear snow from the front of my garage, footpath and garden path three times, the last time at midnight after coming home from the subway station after lifting my wife who went with her ladies club to the Theater. it,s something I enjoy doing.I,m not allowed to spread gravel on the garden path as my wife says it,s carried into the house on our feet. There is a law here which states that if someone slips and injures himself because the footpath in front of your property ( also if it,s rented property ) is not properly cleared and salted between 5.00am and 10.00pm you can be made liable for doctor,s bills, compensation, loss of wages, etc etc.
Happy new year all and looking forward to lots of craic and banter in the new year.
Donald

Donald
You are a mine of information.
It is fascinating to hear about your uncle Ronnie marrying Muriel Bradley. Simply as a name from the very distant past. Muriel, (I think you said she is still around), would not remember me, but would remember some of her neighbours, Coulter, English, McKearn, Hamilton, Lundy, all of Linenhall Street, as well as, perhaps some from Bullicks Court and Wards Court. I recall Hugh MacWilliams. I think he lodged with the Bradleys.

Sorry Fraser. Ill-mannered of me, jumping in with my rubbish in the middle of the war. In the forties/fifties air raid shelters took up more than half the space of the catholic schoolyard in chapel hill.

Dabbler
The name English rings a bell - Minnie?
Also Hughie Mc Williams, he lived down the Low Road later on, He was a mate of Pete Rickard the newsagent, didn,t know about him lodging with the Bradleys, but it was possible as they had a lot of space upstairs. I helped old Mrs Bradley to flit to the Low Road in the sixties. I remember in Linenhall St they had a communal toilet out the back, when you visited it you had to bring your own ( news ) paper with you.
Donald

Hi Fraser,I remember the air raid shelter at the Central School when we went there, also the Nissan hut's at Long Kesh which I suppose are long gone by now.Ken.

Hi Fraser,

I well remember the air raid shelters in both Mercer St. and Sloan St., I had quite a fall off one of them.I also remember German prisoners being taken out for walks up the Saintfield Road. I think they where housed in what was later to be Sammy Allen's coal yard. I remember as well being taken up Clogher Hill to see a place where a German plane had crashed,does anyone else remember this?

Beano

The only air raid shelters I remember were the ones in Millbrook on the same side as Mrs Armstrong's wee shop and the ones at the back of William Foote School.

Fraser &co
There were flat-topped shelters in many places. ‘The Green’, (well, I suppose it was a sort of ‘green’), at the top of Bullicks Court, off Linenhall Street, had three or four, all in a line.

there were air raid shelters in mckeown street off antrim street and prisoners of war held in the railway station land at junction of antrim road and north circular road. anybody else remember that?
tom