``There’s a line of thinking that our six MLAs turn left after Kircubbin and leave us down here on our own. We can either roll our sleeves up or fall into the Lough.'' Portaferry has good looks, history, witty people. Like other beautiful places where recession has heightened misfortunes, it sometimes swings from despairing to upbeat against the odds.
The Exploris aquarium and nearby pink-walled hotel facing Strangford Lough are both closed until further notice, a double blow that left some afraid the town is slowly but surely closing down. At dusk the hotel’s lights cheered the seafront and travellers on the incoming ferry, vital link to Strangford and rest of County Down across the water. The hotel has been a welcoming sight for decades, even if too expensive for day-trippers visiting the exotic fish, the enclosed shark-run of Exploris. The hotel gable wall still advertises ‘afternoon tea £17.95 for two persons’ illustrated with tall pink tea-pot, near sellotaped notes that apologise ‘for any inconvenience. Due to unforeseen circumstances the Portaferry Hotel is now closed.’
Strangford and Portaferry are both jewels, perfect small waterside towns. But where snug little Strangford is a handy distance from Downpatrick and Ardglass, Portaferry is an extra hop away across the treacherous currents of the Narrows, back turned to the Protestant, unionist, loyalist Ards peninsula.
Unionists John Taylor, Iris Robinson, Mike Nesbitt, David McNarry have squared up for the Westminster seat, none displaying much affinity with Portaferry. There was an incident some years ago when McNarry was thought to have characterised the town in sectarian fashion. He denied angrily that this was his intent. But there have never been significant votes in Portaferry for him nor his rivals.
Instead local SDLP councillor and businessman Joe Boyle stands repeatedly in Westminster and assembly elections, rueing the 1200-1300 electors he reckons stay at home. Elections expert Nick Whyte wrote after the 2010 Westminster election that the low nationalist poll puzzled him: perhaps as in olden days they deem the cause lost? Narrow misses keep Boyle going, only 30 votes between himself and the DUP’s Michelle McIlveen for the last Stormont seat. Boyle got no transfers, McIlveen did. Now she visits as a minister with DUP MP Jim Shannon to see the imposing Portico ‘cultural centre’ created inside one of Portaferry’s disproportionate number of fine buildings, Greek revival-style temple built as a Presbyterian church.
After a wet summer with the biggest local attraction out of commission may not be a good time to test opinions in a seaside town. Some are pleased as the Portico site develops, some mutter that the main local culture is ‘ a drinking one.’ (But then 18th century smugglers landed rum and whiskey in the lough.)
In the spring it was reported that £214,000 allocated to do up the aquarium had been lost because the council ‘failed to appoint a contractor.’ Like outgoing Alliance MLA Kieran McCarthy, non-unionist champion before the SDLP man’s election, Boyle notes with irritation that unionists see Portaferry’s stand-out attraction as ‘a burden on the ratepayers, in the corner of the borough so not strategically important enough to warrant the running costs.’ He and McCarthy argue that Exploris lures in visitors who benefit the wider region.
Boyle’s fast food shop chugs on in the big, low-footfall square, but he talks as enthusiastically of the Presbyterian church-turned ‘Portico’ as about the equally striking (1752) Market Hall, the square’s anchor building. This was United Irishmen territory once. The fine ‘Strangford Lough and Lecale Partnership’ website recalls that the yeomanry garrison in the hall, guns sent ashore from a Royal Navy ship off Portaferry Quay which fired on the United Irishmen with their pitchforks and pikes as they marched into the Square. Between ten and forty men died. Some escaped to the Isle of Man: ‘fifteen Presbyterians, eleven Catholics and one Protestant’ were captured.
Trust Heritage Initiative support worth £230,000 for the Market Hall to launch farmers’ markets among other schemes, interest in re-opening the hotel, money from SDLP minister Mark H Durkan’s department to refurbish Exploris and the seal sanctuary: reasons, Boyle says, to be cheerful.
If money arrives to turn the town’s 35 defunct street lights back on, and the ferry schedule settles on an earlier morning start to funnel school-children and traffic away from the roads – and re-openings happen - by next summer it might be ‘back to the glory days and life again in Portaferry.’ Otherwise? The dark strip by the closed hotel and aquarium shadows a beautiful place.
