Bernard remembers the workhouse

Bernard remembers the workhouse

8 August 2012 - by David Telford

A FORMER Kircubbin man has made an emotional return to Downpatrick’s former workhouse.

Bernard Pyper and his brother William were placed there in 1940, but they only stayed for 18 months before scaling the perimeter wall and making their escape to Newtownards.

Last week Bernard, who now lives in England, visited the former workhouse which is now part of Down Council’s headquarters.

In an interview with Recorder reporter David Telford, Bernard provides an eyewitness account of life in the workhouse and tells how he turned his life around.

A WHITE camper van pulls into the car park at Down Council’s Strangford Road headquarters. Council staff take no notice of the vehicle. It’s not unusual for the public to use the car park as they frequently have various issues to discuss with members of staff.

But, when a fresh-faced pensioner who belies his 82 years got out of the camper van and walked into the council’s environmental services department, it soon became clear that this was no ordinary visitor once he explained to staff who he was and why he was there.

Bernard Pyper’s serene outward appearance gave no indication of the many emotions colliding inside his head. Over seven decades after he had run away from what was the former Downpatrick workhouse, he had returned.

Bernard often recalls his time at the workhouse but never for one moment did he imagine his return would be so emotional and that it would stir so many memories.

Born out of wedlock in Glastry on the Ards peninsula in 1930, Bernard lived with his grandmother Maggie Pyper and his aunt Minnie Pyper and her children and attended Ballyesborough Church.

He went to school barefoot and only wore shoes when going to church on Sunday. Bernard worked whenever he could to earn money to help his family and the work ethic he was known for as a child stayed with him throughout a career which spanned the Army, Merchant Navy and the Harland and Wolff shipyard.

Bernard worked for local farmers near his home and a descendant of one of them now makes the popular Glastry ice-cream. He was a happy child, getting up to mischief like all boys his age, with his antics including jumping off a barn roof using an umbrella as his parachute when he was eight.

His aunt also liked playing tricks and one Sunday night jumped out in front of Bernard, brother William and their cousins with a white sheet draped over her. A startled Bernard bolted straight into the Methodist Church where the evening service was in full swing, declaring to members of the congregation that “there was a ghost outside.”

His family then moved to the Spring Road in Kircubbin when he was nine and not long after his grandmother passed away, an event which still moves him to tears. It was 1940 and a man whom Bernard describes as a modern day social worker “dumped” him and his brother at the workhouse.

“Going there is something I will never forget,” he recalls, sitting in a cosy council office not far from where he remembers a huge cauldron used to sit for cooking the morning porridge.

B”My brother and I came from a loving family home to this place. The boys and men lived on one side of the workhouse with girls and women on the other. Even the main entrance was split in two to keep males and females apart.

“I was in an upstairs dormitory packed with small beds for around 40 boys which would have been above where the council garages at the front of the building are located. We were locked in our room at night in a cold stone building and the conditions were rough. We had a few blankets but no sheets on the bed.”

Bernard, whose cousin Cecil died in the workhouse when he was two-and-a-half, said breakfast porridge was made in the cauldron the night before and was “thick enough to cut with a knife.”

Still upset at the death of his grandmother, Bernard reveals that when he and his brother arrived at the workhouse, they were given clothes to wear.

“We changed our clothes to go to school and were assembled on the Strangford Road in the morning and marched to the Southwell School in English Street. We were marched back down in the afternoon and changed our clothes,” he recalled.

“While there were many children in the workhouse, they never had to work. We played on grass which is now used as a car park and had to make our own fun as we had nothing. If you have ever watched the film Oliver, you know what it was like in the workhouse and the staff in charge of us.”

Bernard arrived in Downpatrick when he was 10 and admits he missed the sanctuary and comfort of home life. Eighteen months later he and brother William ran away.

“We had just come home from school and changed our clothes when I said to William ‘let’s go.’ He was reluctant to leave, but I put him over the perimeter wall and the ditch on the other side and we were joined by another boy.

“It was a warm spring day when we escaped and we walked from Downpatrick to Newtownards. Once we were over the wall we just kept walking, only stopping along the way for William to get us some bread from a cottage we were passing. But the owner must have told police as they stopped William and I soon after when it was just the two of us and took us to a building at the rear of Ards Hospital.”

Bernard stayed there for a while and recalls he was used as a “guinea pig” to train hospital staff how to deal with gas attacks as the war was on which resulted in the young boy being regularly hosed down with cold water.

The two brothers were then placed with foster parents in Bangor but the stay was brief and unhappy. Bernard’s work ethic was again to the fore, delivering papers before heading to school and also selling papers on a Sunday to soldiers.

It was then off to a second foster home

but it was another unhappy stay before he was placed at Ballysillan Boys Home as a “volunteer” as he hadn’t commit any wrong doing. Bernard stayed until he was 16 and then it was off to more foster parents in Bangor where the stay was a happy one. He got up each morning at 5.30am to help a diary farmer deliver milk and then served his time as a carpenter with a local building firm.

Six months before his 18th birthday he forged his age to join the army and was posted to Salisbury for training with the Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers. He then signed up for various training courses which he enjoyed but the army top brass discovered Bernard had lied about his age and he was discharged.

Bernard stayed in Northern Ireland and worked at Harland and Wolff before signing up for the Merchant Navy which took him across the globe. And while he admits his early days were tough, his work ethic stood him in good stead and Bernard says he appreciates what he has when he thinks back to those days in the workhouse.

But why did he come back to Downpatrick?

“I am getting on a bit and I wanted to return to visit my past. To see the places where I had been and the hardship I’d experienced,” he explained, with tears again welling in his eyes.

“This workhouse is always in my mind. The times here were hard, but if they taught me one thing it was to look after yourself and do the best you can.

“I never thought for a moment that I would return here, but here I am. Part of me glad is I came back and it has certainly stirred a lot of memories. Coming back is a stark reminder of what it used to be like.”

Bernard says that “despite coming from nothing,” he has done well over the years and “has a few quid in the bank”. He has three children of his own and nine grandchildren.

“I look at my grandchildren and think of my life when I was their age. It is good to have my family as I never really had that growing up. What I did from an early age was work whenever I could and that stayed with me throughout my life,” he said.

“People today get it too easy in my opinion and there are those who don’t want to work because of the benefits they receive. It wasn’t like that in my day.”