One of the Balmoral Show’s best known personalities passes away

“He attended this Royal Ulster Agricultural Society event 62 years in succession,” the Rev Dr John Nelson told mourners at Alfie’s funeral service in the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church in Crumlin.

It’s a record of attendance that is unlikely to be broken. Alfie from Aldergrove, made his final appearance at Balmoral in 2009 when yet again he won the Northern Ireland Supreme Championship which he had carried off several times in the past.

His friend and fellow pig breeder Hubert Gabbie of Crossgar recalls: “I was a judge that day in 2009 at Balmoral when his large white took the title for Alfie. Down the years he won countless prizes and championships with his pedigree pigs.

“In the days when pedigrees were important Alfie, who was President of the Northern Ireland Pig Breeders Association, was always in pursuit of the perfect bloodline. Breeders in the Republic and all over the UK bought his pigs and he sold them in Europe too.”

Alfred Elliott Martin was born in Monaghan and moved to South Antrim with his family when he was eight years old. He grew up at Parkfield in Aldergrove on a farm whose neighbours were the Christie family also of farming stock and whose daughter Lena became his childhood friend.

And as they grew up the pair became a courting couple and married in St Catherine’s Parish Church where Lena was a member, on June 1952 when they were in their 20s.

“We were looking forward to our 60th wedding anniversary in a few weeks time, but it wasn’t to be,” says Lena who was secretary of St Catherine’s for 37 years in succession to her mother while Alfie was an elder in the Crumlin Old Presbyterian Church.

“We took over a farm at Rosebank in Aldergrove and built it up together,” she adds. “We both loved animals and Alfie was devoted to raising pedigree pigs all his life until he was forced into retirement by ill health.”

At the funeral service Dr Nelson told the story of how when he was a three year old in Monaghan the young Alfie went missing one afternoon and was found later in a sty with a sow and her litter of piglets.

Alfie, who is survived by Lena, was buried in the family plot in the Old Presbyterian churchyard in Crumlin.