‘Penny top’ gate, recycled torpedoes and jelly babies

The several hundred thousand members worldwide love and cherish all things gate and glorious - every shape, size and structure of gate - encountered in crowded city, desolate wilderness or pastoral hedgerow.

And every gate has an evocative, sometimes philosophical, narrative.

Today Christine from County Armagh recounts the remarkable vintage and pedigree of her garden gate - and from the sublime to the ridiculous, war historian Andy Glenfield introduces us to gateposts made from torpedoes!

But first to writer and broadcaster Rick Nugent’s memories of his dad, shared here on Father’s Day.

Fred Nugent was a Belfast joiner with “an eye for a funny turn of phrase, Rick told us.

When he passed away in 1995 Fred had written around a hundred poems.

Some are in a book called ‘Ballymacarrett Ballads’ (Shanway Press) named after the area in Belfast where Fred was born, lived, worked, married Ruth and together brought up Rick.

There wasn’t enough space here on Father’s Day for Fred’s wonderfully whimsical poem called ‘A Love Story’. So here it is:

I am a little jellyfish

My home is in the sea

I have a little jelly-girl

And man, she fancies me.

The oceans are our playgrounds

Our life is oh so jolly

And when a thunderstorm comes on

We snuggle ‘neath her brolly

Someday I’ll ask her to be mine

Her answer could be ‘Maybe’

But if it is a definite ‘Yes’

We could have a jelly baby!

Rick is hosting U105’s weekday lunchtime show for a fortnight from this coming Monday, meanwhile, from romantic jellyfish to old gates and torpedoes - which can only happen on Roamer’s page!

“A gate in my garden was made by my great-grandfather,” Christine’s email began, with some photographs attached.

Her great-grandfather, a blacksmith, moved from Galway to Richhill in the 1800s “probably as a result of the famine and in search of work” her note continued.

He got a job with a Cavalry unit stationed nearby and his smithing tools and some old gates that he made have been cherished by generations of his family.

Christine has re-erected one of his gates in her County Armagh garden, conserved by a relative with “the foresight to redeem relevant memorabilia from times past” she explained.

Her great-grandfather’s handiwork “can still be sighted around the County Armagh area,” she continued, “where his gates were referred to as ‘penny tops’. Possibly that was the price per bar used.

"He used a template to cut out the unique ‘penny top’ on each bar. Everything was solid iron and each gate was very heavy.”

Similarly robust, but less pastoral, are gateposts found by WWII historian Andy Glenfield - made of old torpedoes.

“They’re at Burnside Road, Dunadry,” he told me, adding, “they are believed to be Mark VIII 21-inch torpedoes.”

Are torpedo gateposts common sightings on his regular sorties to wartime locations here and further afield?

“These are the only ones I’m aware of,” Andy confirmed and he’s seen more than a few recycled WWII artefacts on his travels.

Around some fields near an old RAF base he found “walls made of broken-up concrete from former runways” and in an adjacent farmyard he noticed a squash court.

“What are you doing with a squash court on your farm?” Andy asked the farmer who explained that some of his sheds and outhouses had been WWII aircrew accommodation and “one old building was marked out as a squash court!”

The Dunadry torpedoes have attracted not insignificant public comment on Andy’s www.ww2ni.webs.com website and ‘The Second World War in Northern Ireland’ Facebook page, but he’d appreciate more information.

“Torpedoes were constructed and tested at Massereene at Antrim,” he explained “and you still can see the torpedo test platform in Lough Neagh.”

The local council has renovated an old torpedo recovery vessel called Joyce “and I’ve been told,” Andy added “but I don’t know for sure, that there were problems with testing because of the depth of the Lough so more tests were done in Scotland.”

If stormy weather marooned the personnel there were dormitories and kitchens on the platform and today its disintegrating hulk is an ideal home for cormorants and in summertime for Lough Neagh’s largest colony of breeding terns.

In winter the terns prefer West Africa.

Don’t we all...