extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair. COUNTY ANTRIM The most important market town in mid-Antrim was Ballymena, with Randalstown and Portglenone holding their own for many years. All three started off with just two fairs, increasing to twelve in the nineteenth century. After that they almost faded out altogether in Randalstown and Portglenone but increased to twenty-one in Ballymena – more about Ballymena later.       Randalstown, formerly called Mainwater and then Ironworks, was granted a charter in 1683. In addition to its two fairs it was granted monthly markets which were known far and wide for the high quality of the linen sold at them. At that time it had an extensive bleach-green and was described by the Ordnance Surveyor of the 1830s as ‘a neat little linen-bleaching town’. It was once a pot-walloping borough, i.e. anyone who boiled a pot (of yarn) and lived within the borough was entitled to vote. However, although it benefited from its situation on the main coach route to the North West, it was overshadowed by the excellent linen town of Ballymena. As a result all its markets declined – even its once renowned grain market. Farmers then decided to take their wheat to Belfast, where it fetched a higher price and there was the added advantage of being able to collect a load of lime at Carnmoney on the way home.       Nearby Toome also had monthly markets and a fair on Easter Monday but these were poor and said to be held more for entertainment than business. At one time stage coaches stopped daily at the inn on the main street to change horses. The village came to life from June to March for the eel fishing. The Donegall family held the fishing rights, renting them out annually to Lord O’Neill. The Donegalls also owned the right of ferry across the Bann. There were two boats, a large one for animals and a small one for foot passengers. The fare ranged from a penny for a foot passenger, sheep or pig to sixpence for a loaded car. Lord O’Neill also collected the tolls at the bridge, which wasn’t unreasonable since he had built it at his own expense in 1792. He also rented out portions of bog, generally a rood in each piece for half a guinea, or two guineas per acre. These were in great demand and through time the bog became dotted with sod huts ‘of the most wretched description’. The only other fair in this part of Antrim was held at Staffordstown ‘by a large oak tree in a cluster of houses’. The patent was taken away, probably as early as the eighteenth century, because of the terrible fights which took place there.       Portglenone suffered a similar fate to Randalstown. Its sales of brown linen dropped from around 2000 webs to less than 100 in each market in the 1820s. Its fairs and markets for other goods, however, continued to flourish. There was a small market for meal, yarn, potatoes and flax every Tuesday and the first one in the month was Fair Day, when the usual animals (with the exception of horses) were exposed for sale. G.H. Bassett does not mention a fair in Portglenone in his list for 1888. This may be an omission, or it may have been revived soon after, for the town had twelve in 1895. Portglenone had the advantage of being close to water transport. Heavy goods such as timber, coal and slates could be brought all the way from Belfast by lighter.       Ahoghill, Broughshane, Kells and Connor also suffered from their nearness to Ballymena. Ahoghill was once famous for its fairs, its bleach greens and a good small market at which linen was sold but these fell away while those in Ballymena prospered. Broughshane was probably named after Shane O’Neill who had a residence nearby in the sixteenth century. Its market was held on Wednesday but again it was a small affair, people preferring to walk or ride the three miles to Ballymena. Two fairs were held annually in the village and a third across the river at the O’Neill residence at Tullymore.       Kells and Connor held four fairs each but they were never held in opposition to each other, those in Kells being held in January, March, June and September and those in Connor taking place in February, May, August and October. The cattle and pigs sold at these fairs were mostly bought by dealers. The villagers were mainly weavers, though most had a few acres of land on which they grew a little flax which they manufactured themselves. When mill-spun yarn was introduced they accepted yarn for weaving from the proprietors of the mills. As in other parts of the county, many derived support from cutting and drying turf during the summer and selling it from door to door or in the market place in winter. The people of Connor and Kells helped the poor whenever they could. A beggar at the door was usually given a gowpen (two handfuls) of meal or two gowpens of potatoes. In addition to this, a special sermon was preached and a collection made at Connor Meeting House at the beginning of winter for the purpose of buying blankets for those who needed them. A similar service took place in spring to provide the poor with some flax seed. The Presbyterians of Connor and Kells were almost to a man engaged in the rebellion of 1798, as were many other ‘respectable’ persons in the neighbourhood, encouraged no doubt by their church ministers.       The landscape around Ballymena is dominated by Slemish, the mountain over which Saint Patrick himself roamed day after day for six years as he herded swine for his master Miliuc in the fifth century. The same Slemish was to dominate the landscape where John Sherriff farmed at the turn of the twentieth century. His farm was situated in the townland of Drumcrow a few miles outside Glenarm. It consisted of two or three mountains and eighty-four acres of good arable land. John kept a few hundred black-face sheep which were usually purchased at Cushendall Fair in the month of August, costing from four to eight shillings apiece. Since Cushendall was twenty-eight miles away it took two days to bring them home. This entailed an overnight stay at a lodging house in Carnlough with accommodation for the lambs in an adjacent field. John also kept bullocks (usually Galloways), a few sows, a bull, fifteen cows, three horses, two goats and a pony for the trap – used mainly for going to town and taking the family to church.       John had very decided views about everything, including putting in crop. Although he had a fiddle for sowing corn he never used it, preferring instead the old-fashioned way of throwing grain from a sheet slung over his shoulder. He had honed this to a fine art, so many handfuls to so many paces, to ensure an even distribution of seed. He used the same method to sow flax. When the corn was being harvested he left a corner of the field uncut for the birds. The winnowings of the barn were also given to the birds. On New Year’s Day he threw a sheaf of corn to the cattle. John was very particular about his midden. The manure had to be shovelled up, and the heap built neatly into a square. He expected the ground around it to be brushed and cleaned so that no muck lay underfoot. Nor would he tolerate any broken windows about the place. These had to be mended right away.       John was a Presbyterian of Scottish descent and like many of his ilk and generation he ruled with a rod of iron in his own house. He subscribed to Shakespeare’s theory, ‘Such duty as the subject owes the prince, even such a woman oweth to her husband.’ He considered himself a Christian, although he did not attend church. He had fallen out of that habit after being thrown from his horse, thereafter walking and talking with the aid of a stick. (He waved the stick about as he laid down the law to his household.) However, he expected his wife and family to attend church whether they were thus inclined or not. They had to change into and out of their best clothes and go back and forth to services and prayer meetings several times every Sunday.       Nor did ‘the oul fella’, as his son Joe irreverently called him, allow anyone to read a newspaper or any other secular material on the Sabbath. On that day the open Bible was placed on the wide window sill in the big farm kitchen and anyone who wished could read a few verses of scripture. He himself spent hours on end reading sermons. The minister visited twice a year and made prayer. The family usually had an idea when he was coming, for the name of the townland was announced from the pulpit the previous Sunday. Father McKillop also visited – on account of the servants. After a few exchanges about the crop and the weather, John would take him ‘up the house’ and offer him a glass of whiskey, which he always accepted. He never did this with the minister.       John was friendly with Henry McNeill who owned the King’s Arms Hotel in Larne and ran a business hiring horses and traps to tourists during the summer. The two had been reared in the same part of the country and counted themselves almost kinsmen on that account. John supplied the hotel with potatoes and fresh vegetables (mainly carrots and onions); also corn and hay for McNeill’s sixty or seventy horses that toured the coast road with visitors at the height of the season. When the season ended about fifty of these wintered on the Sherriff farm. No money changed hands for this but if John wanted to, he could use a couple of them while they were in his care.       His attitude to wakes was, to say the least, unusual. No one in the family was allowed to attend a wake – in his opinion they were ‘a lot of nonsense, only giving a family under stress more trouble. Sure people are only there for a day or two and then they are gone and they are on their own anyway,’ he would say. Nor would he have any truck with Orangemen or Orangeism, and references to Orangemen were not complimentary. ‘A man was better off looking after his house and family than running after such things,’ he averred.       Huge quantities of tea were needed, especially in summer when extra workers were drafted in. This was bought in chests from S.D. Bell’s of Ann Street in Belfast. Whole webs of cloth were also purchased and laid by until the travelling tailor arrived. He normally stayed for a week or two, depending on how many in the house needed a new suit. Leftover bits were utilised by Mrs Sherriff for short trousers for the boys. That lady also found time to spin and card wool. Black wool was mixed with white and knit into socks for the family – thick heavy socks suitable for hob-nailed boots. The hired girls were given wool to knit socks for themselves.       In short, Mrs Sherriff worked her fingers to the bone in an endless round of washing, ironing, baking, cooking, milking, churning, knitting, jam making and the thousand and one other jobs to be done on a busy farm. Her husband acknowledged this from time to time by announcing loudly to all and sundry ‘Man works from dawn ’til setting sun, but a woman’s work is never done.’ Mrs. Sherriff knew that this was all the thanks she was likely to get.       John hired his men in Ballymena, setting off early in the day. The men travelled to and from the fair under their own steam, which was just as well as they often went out on the tear and didn’t put in an appearance again for several days. Like most towns, Ballymena had a good supply of public houses. William Street had at least a dozen, holding the record for any one street. The town’s fairs date back to the reign of Charles I, when a patent was granted to William Adair Esq. to hold two fairs annually. These prospered throughout the centuries, together with an extensive market held every Saturday for the sale of butter, hides, yarn and linen. By the nineteenth century around five thousand pieces of linen, each twenty-five yards in length, were being sold there every week. The webs were exposed for sale in the linen hall off Castle Street. The purchaser wrote his name on the web and arranged to meet the weaver afterwards in a rented room in one of the inns or hotels to pay for it. Some merchants bought houses in the town for this purpose, thus saving the rent. At one time Ballymena attracted buyers from Belfast, making it one of the most successful linen markets in Ulster. Its linen hall was the only one in the county still being used for its original purpose in 1888. By then weavers were using yarns given out by manufacturers. There were, in addition, spinning and hem-stitching factories, foundries and establishments for handling pork and beef. Much of the pork was presented for sale on carts in the open streets, as were yarn and flax. There was also a small grain market. Customs and tolls were payable to the above-mentioned William Adair (or his descendants) who claimed from both buyer and seller, in spite of which the town prospered and gradually absorbed the markets and fairs of the neighbouring towns and villages.       The meat market, fish market and shoe market were held in Bridge Street. The market house, weighbridge and public crane stood at the junction of Bridge Street and Shambles Street. Up to forty people sold meat there on Saturdays, the price ranging from one to five pence per lb. Mutton sold at from three to five pence, bacon and salt meat at from four to five. Fish cost from twopence per lb for pollan [a white freshwater fish] to a top price of sixpence for best salmon. Shoes were made of kipskin and sold at from three to five shillings per pair. Miss Courtney’s hotel, where coaches used to stop daily for a change of horses, was also in Bridge Street.       Anyone wanting to buy potatoes, lime or bricks went to Wellington Street. Castle Street was reserved for stalls selling soft goods. Cattle, horses, pigs, sheep and goats were sold in the general area of the Fair Hill and Market Yard just beyond William Street. At one stage there was a separate Fair Hill for the sale of horses. Police sometimes used a nearby house as a temporary lock-up for drunks.       By the nineteenth century Ballymena’s fairs were being held on a monthly basis. Many lasted two days and included the sale of horses, by now a big industry in the Ballymena and Randalstown area. Poor quality horses were bought in the South and West of Ireland, fed and nurtured until they were in show-yard condition and then sold on for the English and Scotch markets.       Hiring of course took place at the appropriate times. At the turn of the twentieth century you would still have found several hundred people presenting themselves for hire in the town. Adam Lynn catches the atmosphere in the poem ‘A Country Lad’s Observations on the Hiring Fair in Ballymena’.       The same characters and entertainers turned up at these as at Strabane, Limavady and a dozen other places – Pat McAllister, whose magic rub promised to make old people young; Seequaw, who claimed he could perform miracles but whose real talent was for pulling teeth; and Tie-the-Boy, who could escape no matter how many yards of rope were used to ensnare him.       Extracted from the Appletree Press title Hiring Fairs and Market Places by May Blair. Previous extracts regarding County Antrim: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Forthcoming extracts regarding County Antrim: Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13

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