Roller skating swept Britain in the years before the First World War, and for a few short summers, Portrush had one of the finest rinks in the country to show for it.
A rink built for a craze
The Portrush Winter Gardens Committee formed in 1908 and proposed a skating rink for the pleasure gardens beside the railway station. Built at a cost of £4,352, the rink offered 20,000 square feet of maple wood flooring — enough for around 2,000 skaters — and the operating company spent a further £350 on hire skates alone. It opened on Thursday 1 July 1909, running three sessions a day, and was reported glowingly in the Coleraine Chronicle under the headline “Rinkers and Spectators at Portrush,” praising both the facility and its manager, Mr Ritson, and noting visitors arriving from across the UK specifically to skate.
A short, bright season
A Fancy Dress Skating Carnival followed on 27 July 1909, and the rink even opened over Christmas that year with a further carnival on 27 December — genuinely unusual for a seaside attraction more associated with summer trade. Period advertisements survive for both events, alongside job postings for staff and skating-fashion ads aimed at ladies keen to look the part.
The fashion moves on
The rink ran successfully through two more seasons, but by 1912 it was opening later in the year, with part of the floor already converted over to dancing as skating’s popularity began to fade. In 1913, just four years after its grand opening, the building was rebuilt entirely into a cinema, ballroom and theatre — bringing Portrush’s brief roller-skating era to a close almost as quickly as it had begun, a reminder of how fast Edwardian leisure fashions could turn.