The Ulster into which Clare Hamilton was born in October 1936 is now as remote as if she had been born in some much earlier century. Clare’s story is her own, but I have tried to be accurate about the details of everyday life in that very different world, a world where telephones were rare and the pony and trap was more common than the motor car.
I am grateful to all those who gave their time to help me, particularly the staff at Armagh Museum, Armagh Ancestry and the Irish Studies Centre in Armagh who were all not only helpful but welcoming. I hope they will think their efforts were worthwhile.
My greatest debt, however, is to my cousin John Ross who lent me the newspaper and magazine articles written by my uncle, William John Ross of Salter’s Grange. Writing on many topics for Ulster publications he catches the mood and the preoccupations of the time, even down to the post war beauty hints which he wrote under the name of Doris Gibb!