Bushmills and Great War exhibition on now in Hamill Hall

It opened on Monday and runs for a fortnight. There will be many things on display this year that have never been on display before, including a life size statue of our Victoria Cross winner, Robert Quigg.

A number of Bushmills families have handed in items for display and there have been others from farther afield. A brass shell case, brought up from the wreck of H.M.S. Racoon, sunk in a storm at Malin Head in 1917, and given to me by the man who brought it up, will be on display.

There is a sculpture of Robert Quigg and the men that he saved and this will be on view. This year’s exhibition will be held in the Hamill Hall on Upper Main Street and already a group from Fermanagh have confirmed that they will be visiting. Further research has found a name not mentioned on Bushmills War Memorial but which should have been there from the beginning. This will now have to wait until that research is complete. Organiser Robert Thompson said: “Many years ago I was shown certificates in memory of Johnston Kane from Bushmills and this was while I was writing the first Bushmills book. “Three years ago I found some things on ebay which referred to Johnston and I managed to get them. They were from a branch of the family from America. Last year his family came to the exhibition and I told them about what had happened and the stuff I had got from America. They went home and in half an hour they were back and gave me everything I had seen 30 years ago. It will make a very interesting exhibition this year.”