Nellie reckons her home town is a 'smashing' place

LARNE'S potential for tourism has received a ringing endorsement from a lady who spent a lifetime working in one of the world's premier attractions.

After years of meeting and greeting holidaymakers at the famous Fun House on Blackpool’s Pleasure Beach, Nellie Pearson is well qualified to run the rule over her native Larne. She did so during a three-week stay with nephew Roy McFaul and family at Magee Park recently.

Nellie, or Ellen as she is also known, left Larne to work in a Blackpool guest house some 50 years ago. She has returned a number of times for family weddings and funerals, but her extended stay in August was the first real opportunity to meet old friends.

Welcomed back by her sister, Margaret, Nellie said she couldn’t believe how much the town had changed. “I hardly know it now because the changes have been unbelievable,” she said.

The terrace house in Portland Street where Nellie and her six siblings lived is still standing and evokes memories of childhood. Their father Denis, who worked as a docker, and mother Jane died when Margaret, the youngest, was still young and oldest sister Clare took on the role as head of the family.

The McFaul children attended the former St Mary’s School at Agnew Street and their playground was the Sandy Bay beach; the Redland, where their feet were stained by the ore; or at what used be known as the Slab Lands and is now Curran Park.

Nellie went to work in the Pye factory at Bay Road. She recalls that her boss was one of the few survivors of the Princess Victoria disaster in 1953.

By her mid-twenties, Nellie had attained the position of charge hand, but she and her friend, Annie Holden, accepted an invitation from a friend of the family to work in a bed-and-breakfast establishment in Blackpool.

In the Lancashire resort she met her husband, the late Jack Pearson, and they had three sons.

Nellie worked in the cafe at the old Fun House, which entertained generations of children from its opening in 1934 until it was burned to the ground in 1991. Her friendly demeanour endeared her to the Thompson family, who still run the multi-million pounds attraction, and Nellie was one of the first Pleasure Beach staff that holidaymakers met.

She was always delighted to hear an accent from this side of the Irish Sea.

“It always amazed me how many people from here had their holidays in Blackpool,” she said. “And a lot of them went back year after year.”

So how much has Larne changed since Nellie lived here?

For a start, there was no Harbour Highway and port traffic came through the town and over the bridge at Curran Road. Antiville estate had not been built and there were three premier hotels on the main street - McNeill's, the King’s Arms and the Laharna.

Larne boasted two cinemas (the Regal at Curran Road and the Savoy on the site occupied by Poundstretcher at Lower Cross Street). The entertainment offering extended to the Plaza ballroom and separate bath houses for ladies and gentlemen at the promenade in the days when a swim meant a dip in the sea, before the pool at the leisure centre was built.

“One thing that is still here is the Silver Lounge,” said Nellie, who enjoyed a meal there during her stay.

“It brought back a lot of mempries because we all used to go the Silver Lounge for our lunch on Sundays after we got out of church,” she recalled.

When Nellie took her leave of Portland Street, no one owned a car and very few people in the town had a phone.

“I remember in the early days when Nellie used to phone home she had to ring Etta McAuley’s house and we would be there, waiting,” said Roy. “Everybody has a mobile phone nowadays, but back then you had to phone a friend and basically make an appointment to take a call,” he added.

Nellie is very fond of Larne as she remembers it, but what does she make of it now?

“I think it’s a smashing place,” she said.

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