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Newry and Mourne Museum contains numerous notebooks in the collection. The information that each collate range significantly, giving an insight into the lives and experiences of the authors.
Charles Murray, from Acton, near Poyntzpass, joined the Royal Air Force in 1936. He initially trained in England but, by early 1939, was in Palestine, where he spent the early years of the Second World War. However, by 1943 Sergeant Murray was being stationed at various RAF Stations in Britain and Northern Ireland. He was killed on the night of 30 August 1944 when the Lancaster Bomber, on which he was a Flight Engineer, was shot down during a bombing raid on Stettin in Poland. One of the booklets is an RAF Observer’s and Air Gunner’s Flying Logbook, containing details of flying exercises in Palestine from January 1939 to December 1941. Two others are training notebooks containing pencil and ink drawings and diagrams of aircraft parts.
There are several notebooks in the extensive Hugh Irvine Collection. Born in Belfast in 1930, the son of a Presbyterian minister, Hugh Irvine came to Kilkeel in 1953 when he was appointed as a history teacher at the newly opened Kilkeel High School. He became Vice-Principal of the school in 1962 and was Principal from 1987 until his retirement in 1993. After settling in Kilkeel, he developed a keen interest in the history, archaeology, architecture, genealogy and folklore of the area around Kilkeel, the Mourne Mountains and Rostrevor. A number of school jotters contain Hugh Irvine’s own hand-written notes and research on various topics, such as, ‘Old families of the Mourne Country’ with newspaper cuttings from the Mourne Observer from 1956, notes on the Moore, Walmsley and McIlwaine families of Mourne, transcriptions of gravestones in Kilkeel, and a compilation of fairy stories in the Mourne area collected by Mr Irvine. A notebook titled ‘O Biology’, contains notes and details of bird spotting in the Mournes from 1984 to 1996. Several notebooks relate to Reverend Alexander Savage, one of which is a sermon handbook from the 1850’s, with handwritten notes by Reverend Savage, minister of Ballenon Reformed Presbyterian Church near Poyntzpass.
The Museum’s collection contains several handwritten recipe books. One was compiled by a student at Newry Technical School from 1914-1916, during the early years of the First World War, when fears of food shortages were growing. A recipe for ‘War Cake’ is included along with recipes in which ‘war flour’, which comprised of wheat and a percentage of other grains, was used.
School exercise books are also included, such as a blank jotter from Ashgrove Secondary School, Newry and a book belonging to Edward Devlin of Ballymacdermott, a pupil in the VI Class at Cloughoge Primary School, 1911-1912. Inside the front cover are labels relating to Devlin family history.
