Beside Ramore Hill sits a recreation ground that’s now exactly a century old — rebuilt once already, and rebuilt again for its centenary.
Opened by the Lord Chief Justice
The original Recreation Grounds opened on 29 June 1923, replacing an earlier ground beside the railway station that had belonged to the railway company rather than the town. The opening ceremony was performed by the Rt Hon. Sir Denis Henry, Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, in front of several thousand visitors and residents, with music from the band of the 1st Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment, and a guard of honour supplied by the “B” Special Constabulary — a force formed after Partition and, at the time, camped near the town.
The new grounds were properly equipped for the era: four hard tennis courts, six grass courts, two bowling greens laid with Cumberland sod, an 18-hole putting green, a running track, a greenkeeper’s house, and a pavilion tea room, the whole site enclosed by a low concrete wall and iron railing with four gates. A larger wooden pavilion was added a few years later and served the grounds for nearly half a century, until it was finally replaced in the 1960s.
Portrush’s summer entertainment
From the mid-19th century, an Improvements Committee — and later, from 1928, the Portrush Sports Committee under Dr William Porte — used the grounds to run the town’s organised summer entertainment: fireworks displays by Brock’s Fireworks, military tattoos, and carnivals, a tradition that carried on into the 1970s. It’s the same civic thread that runs through Ramore Head’s own history next door — a hillside the town has spent a century trying to put to good use, one scheme at a time.
A second rebuild, a century later
The grounds were rebuilt again to mark their own centenary. A £3.3m regeneration scheme, funded by the UK Government’s Levelling Up Fund alongside the Department for Communities, covered 3.74 hectares and ran from construction starting in November 2021 to completion in October 2022. The modern scheme added a bowling green and a synthetic bowling training area, a new pavilion, a “Changing Places” accessible facility, an event space, an urban sports area, an adventure play park, and disabled parking and hard standing — a genuinely different recreation ground from 1923’s, built for what a seaside town’s public space needs a century on.
Sources
Sourced from “A Centenary of Recreation at Ramore Hill” — the 1923 account by Hugh McGrattan, reprinted from his book Portrush: The Port on the Promontory, with a 2023 update by John Beggs — published in Discover Portrush Magazine.