New Lease of Life For Ardglass Shield Hall

FILM projectionist, Willie Connor, reeled back the years on the first day of trading in Milligan's new mini supermarket which opened in Ardglass, this week.

The shop stands upon the grounds of the once iconic building, the old Shield Hall Cinema in the town which was located at the top of the old fishing port.

Many of the older generation can still remember the laughter and excitement within its walls decades ago as the silver screen flickered to life.

Describing the history of the old cinema house, Willie said: “The cinema opened in 1945 with ‘The Four Feathers’ just after the war and the driving force behind it was Gerry Milligan whose family ran the local store in the village next door to the cinema.

Willie Connor looks over the old projectors in the Shield Hall (Photography by J.Moran)

“Gerry was the first projectionist and did six weeks training at the Grand in Belfast. Pat Fitszimons then took over as projectionist and he trained me into the job, and Arthur Overend also trained up with me and he later went on to be the projectionist in the Downpatrick cinema.

“There used to be two shows a night and it proved to be very popular with it filling up most nights. There were two projection machines in the projection room, a small dark place you access from a door outside the hall, it was in that wee room that all the memories started from. There was an RCA two-speaker sound system too which worked well.

“It was interesting that by the time we got the film from the central film distributor in Belfast, they were well worn on the reels and tended to break. There was of course the usual disturbance in the audience with the stamping and boo-ing as we would splice the film.

“I can always remember the packed houses, after the big 34-seater bus had arrived for the shows bringing people from as far away as Ballykinlar and Saul. For many this was the first time they had seen the cinema and it was a great social occasion in Ardglass when the bus arrived in the evening. Mary Milligan whose family owned the hall looked after the tickets at the door.

The Shield hall takes shape as Milligan's Shop gets set to move in

“The American GI’s billeted in the hall during the Second World War and there were many big night there when locals use to jitterbug with the American soldiers. In those days the dance was frowned upon by quite a few of the older people in the community. But the hall itself had established itself as a centre for entertainment.

“At the side of the hall there was a boiler and Gerry used to get coal from the harbour to keep it stoked up. The Milligan family back them ran a coal business and a coal boat used to dock in Ardglass. But there was no toilets in the hall in those days and the nearest water was at a pump at what is now known as The Cut in High Street over a hundred yards away. So water had to be carried there in buckets.

“I recall many funny moments over the years such as two elderly sisters who always sat in the front row. They loved cowboy films and on one occasion the cattle stampede was coming closer to the foreground of the film and one jumped up to her feet and was so involved that she threw her umbrella at the herd and it went clean through the screen. They were the ones who got so engrossed they would be shouting ‘ Behind you!’ at the characters on screen.”

"Cowboy films with Gene Autrey, Roy Rogers and Hop Along Cassidy were very popular and I can even remember a showing of the 1939 version of Dracula with Bella Lugosi. That was for the over-sixteens."

An end of an era for Milligan's Shop in Ardglass

Willlie explained he used to work seven days a week running two shows a night and loved every minute of it. “I can still see the screen in my minds eye from up above, dancing throw the thick smoke that belched up from the audience.

“Many of the fishermen coming to the port used the cinema in those days and they would have sat there filling their pipes with War Horse tobacco, lighting up with Swan matches and puffing away. Sometimes the air in the hall was so thick you could hardly see the screen clearly.

There were still many gutter girls coming to Ardglass even in those days after the start of the decline of the herring trade in the port and they were very friendly with the local families who often put them up. Many of the gutter girls married local men and later brought up families in Ardglass.

“There was always a romance in the air around the Shield hall and in fact I met my wife Pat there in the old days. We were almost 15 at the time and we went together seven years before we got married. Her family had come from Belfast. My brother Natie also helped out on occasions in the projection room.

“And I can remember one regular cinema go-er who always brought his own cushion with him. In the early days there were the front row seats, the middle row and the tiered more comfortable seats at the back.

“Just after the war a lot of RAF personnel from then RAF Bishopscourt just two miles away would have used the cinema. They would have courted the local girls and sat in the back seats. But the usher was always there to make sure there was no hanky panky.

“Every week a poster was stuck on to the front door displaying the big show for the week at the Shield cinema. There was usually a queue to get in and sometimes it stretched down High Street. But the hall itself also doubled up as a dance hall and when a ceili was on, the seats would all be tucked away under the stage. The original lighting in the hall was electric but when it went off as it occasionally did, Tilley lamps were used and everyone just got on with it.

“I can remember one particular film, “The Song of Bernadette” which was very popular and it ran with full houses for a week. When the chapel came out at 8pm there would always be a rush into the shows, tripping over each other to get the best seats to see the shows.”

Willie had a good word to say about all of the patrons back in the old days. “It was amazing but everyone was so well behaved. There never seemed to be a bad word or even a row, and certainly drinking wasn’t part of the social scene back then.

“The cinema in Ardglass ran until 1962. Back then there was not much money about and it was difficult for many families. Back then there were plenty of characters around such as local shoemakers Jimmy Cross and Bill Diamond. It was a very happy time in my life, with lots of cherished memories.”

Arthur Overend, who learned his craft under Natie Connor, explained he first set foot in the projection room when he was eleven. “I was just helping out then,” he said, ‘But I picked up the film bug. I used to take over when Natie went out for a smoke. The big reels were two and a half feet across and ran for 18 minutes on the Simplex projectors. Eventually I learned how to change them.

“I can remember films such as Glenn Ford in the ‘Desperados’. There were double features in those days with B movies, and there would be the ‘trailers’, with Pathe News.

“When the carbon arc burned out the film there was always the usual stomping on the floor. The hall would have been plunged into darkness and the usher Comgall Milligan would be out there quickly with a torch trying to calm everyone down.

“In 1959, a very popular film was ‘ A Night to Remember’ starring Kenneth More. And then, one day there was a notice in the paper which said that the cinema ‘would be closed without further notice’. And that was that. It all had come to an end. Television has taken off and less people were attending the cinema across Northern Ireland.

“The show band scene took over and some played in the hall but it ended up as a disco, then a youth club, and eventually lay empty. This all started off as a hobby for me. My first wage was actually one pound a week. Everything has moved on incredibly from the days of black and white film and the premises now is taking on a new lease of life after all these years.”