Doreen's going 'plaque in time' with Ulster's past
The Ulster History Circle is the group which puts up the commemorative blue plaques in towns and cities across Northern Ireland.
The voluntary organisation aims not only to create memorials to the significant people who have lived in, or spent time in, Northern Ireland but also illustrate that history is all around us.
Since the group began in the 1980s, they have erected 104 plaques, marking a diverse range of people – including engineers, sportspeople, scientists, soldiers, businessmen and artists – who have made a contribution to life in the Province.
Famous writers such as Oscar Wilde and
CS Lewis, inventors Harry Ferguson and John Dunlop and Charles Davis Lucas, the first recipient of the Victoria Cross, are among those immortalised by the memorials.
Its chairperson, Doreen Corcoran was born in Carrickfegus but raised in Greenisland and she says it was her proximity to Carrickfergus Castle that fuelled her life-long interest in history.
What is your earliest memory?
It's not my earliest, but one of my most vivid memories is the day World War II was declared.
My father always stayed in bed on Sunday mornings with the newspaper – the rest of us had to go to church and Sunday school but he was able to lie in.
Our wireless was in the kitchen and it was my mother who heard the announcement that we were at war with Germany. She immediately ran up the stairs to tell my father.
Even as a five-year-old, I knew something was happening – there was a definite atmosphere in the house.
I ran up the stairs after my mother and I remember her speaking, my father putting his paper down and my parents both looking terribly serious.
It was 70 years ago, but it's a very powerful memory.
What was it like being a child during the War?
During the blitz, I wasn't in the least afraid – back then I had no notion that people were being bombed and killed, I just remember the lights and the noise.
From our house we could see across the lough to Belfast.
When the air raids happened, the city was lit up from one end to the other – I thought it was exciting and interesting.
My father was an Air Raid Precautions warden and I was used to him going out in his uniform.
He was away in Belfast for three days during the second blitz – outside London, it was the biggest loss of life in the UK on one night, nearly 1,000 people were killed.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
I was terribly ambitious, and always interested in politics – I remember reading the political columns in my father's newspapers from the age of 10 or 11.
I wanted to join a local paper, be a journalist, then run for Parliament and become an MP.
None of it came true in the end – though I suppose I did begin some writing later in life.
I got a scholarship to Queen's but my mother had three children behind me so I had to get a job when I finished school and earn money to put into the house.
In 1953 I sat the exam for the Imperial Civil Service and got a job in the Special Commissioner's Office for Income Tax in London.
I started on 500 a year – my mother couldn't believe the amount of money I was earning.
You had to stick with the job in those days, even if you hated it you couldn't go off and do something else.
How did you join the Ulster History Circle?
We lived in Scotland up until my husband, John, died in 1975.
I was 40 at the time with two teenage daughters and I made for home again and settled in Northern Ireland.
Just after I got back, I was at the founding meeting of Carrick Historical Society, then I joined the Ulster Historical Foundation and it evolved from there.
Most people will know of the Ulster History Circle from the blue plaques.
Yes, and that's all we do – we are not really like other historical groups in that sense.
The organisation was set up by Jimmy Hawthorne in the 1980s when he was director general of the BBC here.
To begin with, because it was voluntary, the production rate for the plaques was fairly low.
It cost 500 to make a blue plaque, now it costs 700.
Belfast City Council have taken us on board, and pay us a certain amount per year for a number of plaques.
We're conscious of the concentration of plaques in Belfast.
People could be born halfway up a mountain somewhere but, if they were going to be significant, they tend to come to the city.
However, we do like going out in the country to put one up when it's possible.
How do you decide who gets a blue plaque?
We get suggestions all the time and we have a working list that is brought up at our monthly meeting.
People rise and fall on the list, plus there is an additional waiting list of about 50 other names.
We don't usually need to vote on the names, everyone puts their ha'penny worth during the discussion and it's decided from there.
So far, we've always had a consensus – we've never had anyone digging their heels in and saying they deplore a person.
The only thing we steer clear of is politics because it is so contentious, that's the only caveat we have.
It excludes a lot of names from our recent history, but the minute you touch them a whole argument erupts.
Which historical figures do you most admire?
Being a woman, it would have to be female, and I should say we don't have enough plaques to women.
All the women we do have are very worthy, but some are a bit naughty too, like Sarah Grand for instance.
She was born in Donaghadee in 1854, ran off
aged 16 with a ship's surgeon and toured the
world before she became a novelist and championed women's rights.
She wrote about the spread of syphilis, and how it was rife in Victorian society, a taboo subject at the time.
No publisher would touch her books at first, but they became hugely popular.
She must have been an incredible person.
Are there any people whose stories you find particularly moving?
The tragedy of Thomas Andrews – my heart goes out to him because he was a fantastic engineer
who designed the Titanic, the greatest ship of its time, but his story ended in such a sad way.
To think of that man on this wonderful ship's maiden voyage realising it was sinking is heartbreaking.
Everyone said he made no attempt to save himself, he even gave away his life jacket and was last seen standing beside a mantelpiece looking thoughtful.
He didn't want to do anything else but go down with the ship.
Are there any people who don't deserve their blue plaque?
I wouldn't dare say!
There are some where I feel I wouldn't like the people if I'd ever met them.
Yes, they may have been historically significant but I suspect in real life they were a big, puffed-up ball of hot air.
Who is the most overlooked figure in Northern Ireland's history?
We're always very conscious of overlooking people, and we were sorry that we couldn't do anything for Ruby Murray.
We got a letter from her husband inquiring about a blue plaque and I had to write back and say that she didn't qualify.
Recipients of a plaque have to be dead for at least 20 years – though this can be shortened if the person was born more than a century ago.
Ruby qualified in every respect but that one.
But we were able to put him in touch with Belfast City Council and there is now a plaque dedicated to her at the Ulster Hall.
Is there one period in history that you would have liked to have lived in?
No, I'm content with being around now, and I don't have a nostalgic view of the past.
I've always had trouble with my teeth, and I only have to look back and think of the agony I would have been in.
Even in relation to something like glasses, look at the technology we have today.
But I'm always conscious that life was much harder without things like flushing lavatories or electric kettles.
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Belfast
Wednesday 30 May 2012
Today
Light showers
Temperature: 12 C to 20 C
Wind Speed: 9 mph
Wind direction: South
Tomorrow
Light rain
Temperature: 11 C to 17 C
Wind Speed: 9 mph
Wind direction: West
