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Special Collections
Museum Building Archives
The stories of the Ulster Folk Museum’s 50-plus vernacular buildings are held here. From the installation of Duncrun Cottier’s House in 1963 to that of Gilford Cinema in 2003, every building’s history is documented in maps, photographs and surveys of original locations, biographical details of their residents or employees, and records of their transfer to Cultra.
Within these archives, you will find a wealth of information, including maps, photographs and surveys that detail the original locations of the buildings. Biographical details of the residents and employees who worked in these buildings provide fascinating glimpses into how they shaped, and were shaped by, human lives. The records also chronicle the transfer of these buildings to the Cultra site, ensuring their preservation for future generations.
In addition to the building-related materials, the Library & Archives house a treasure trove of meeting minutes, publications, and scrapbooks that date back to 1906, capturing the history and evolution of both the Folk Museum and the Ulster Museum (formerly known as the Belfast Municipal Museum). These invaluable resources offer a glimpse into the institutional development, achievements, and activities of these cultural institutions.
Furthermore, the papers of the esteemed founders of the Folk Museum, including Estyn Evans, George Thompson, and Alan Gailey, are also part of our collection. These documents provide a deeper understanding of the vision, dedication, and contributions of these individuals in establishing the Folk Museum and shaping its early years.
Folk Museum Questionnaires
For three decades, the Ulster Folk Museum curators circulated questionnaires to the public province-wide on set aspects of rural life per year. They started in 1961 with thatched houses, ‘the hearth’ and ‘traps and snares’ as themes, and finished in 1989 with ‘skipping games’. This collection contains the answers received from all over Ulster. Other themes include flax-scutching, handloom-weaving, spinning wheels, haymaking, straw ropes, folk drama, dialect, descriptions of persons and animals, seasonal diets, milk, bread, edible fats, ether-drinking, omens, luck, cures, charms, traditional songs, team sports, family life, healing, farming, field boundaries, migrant labour, working clothes, spades, ‘the last sheaf’, and manures, landlordism, wedding customs, calendar customs, the May queen, Christmas celebrations, and the Danes in Ireland.
Folklife Collectors’ Books
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'These fast-perishing traditions of ours must be recorded before they disappear from the earth as if they had never been.’ The mission outlined by the Committee on Ulster Folklife and Traditions in 1955 was undertaken initially by volunteers around Ulster who documented the disappearing local traditions. The resultant hoard of exercise books of handwritten notes and illustrations from seven counties and many schools comprised much of the core research material underpinning early volumes of Ulster Folklife journal and the emerging Ulster Folk Museum over the next decade. These books contain fascinating primary accounts on topics like housekeeping, crafts, festivals, supernatural beliefs, local place-names, agriculture, communications, towns, fairs, poetry, emigration, wedding customs and rituals of wakes and funerals.
Brotherhoods Collection
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This is a diverse collection of items relating to brotherhoods, fraternal organisations, Orangeism, freemasonry and friendly societies. Material from the Grand Royal Arch, Grand Orange of Ireland, Apprentice Boys, Odd Fellows, Rechabites and Ancient Order of Hibernians among others is here. Contents include regalia, symbols, lodge history, songs and poetry, constitutions, minute-books, menus, rites, initiation ceremonies, membership certificates, byelaws, attendance books, published articles, and research notes compiled by anthropologist Anthony D. Buckley.
Transport Collections
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The Transport collections encompass almost every form of conveyance. The Moneypenny papers relate to nineteenth-century lockkeepers on the Newry Canal. A huge Harland & Wolff archive includes thousands of ship plans. Correspondence of the company chairman, Lord Pirrie, is also here. Boxes from Shorts Brothers contain manuals and ephemera of Belfast’s aircraft industry. Letters, sketches and photographs of pioneering aviator Lilian Bland provide a personal perspective of early flight. Harry Ferguson collection features much early correspondence and publicity material for the famous Massey Ferguson tractors. A panoply of railway material includes timetables, tickets and maps from dozens of train companies in Ulster, southern Ireland and Great Britain, and railway signalling engineering publications. A host of public and private bus companies’ paperwork and paraphernalia is housed here too, with trams and trolleybuses besides. Motorcycle racing’s popularity shines through the raft of programmes for the Ulster Grand Prix, North West 200 and kindred events back to the 1920s. And among legion car manuals and private firms’ collections, the sizeable archive of DeLorean Motor Company brings things back to the future.
Richard Hayward
These are the personal papers of one of the best-loved cultural figures in Ulster and Ireland in the 1930s-60s period. Hayward (1892-1964) was a prolific travel writer, actor, filmmaker and recorded singer, and this large collection of miscellanea contains travel notebooks, music and poetry notes, photographs, manuscripts, essays, interviews and research; as well as notes on Ulster countryside, Ulster humour and Ulster food; plus invitations, correspondence from a wide range of contacts and unique copies of his commercial films.
Finnebrogue Papers
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This collection comprises Perceval-Maxwell estate papers from eastern County Down, and includes account books, architectural drawings, family correspondence and photographs, between 1802 and 1954. Letters span several generations, though notably to Phoebe Laura Cherry (1899-1973) from her sister Sylvia in South Africa.