A visit to Kilcooley Estate in Bangor today, left me reminiscing about my teens and early twenties, when I lived with my parents and family on Owenroe Drive, – one of the main routes through this large social housing development, – the third largest in Northern Ireland.

Both my late parents were buried from the Anglican Church in the estate, a modern example of church architecture, on Drumhirk Drive.

The estate, lying around 3 miles from the centre of Bangor, Co.Down, was built from the 1960s to the 1980s, mostly to house people displaced from Belfast by Republican violence. Because of this, most of the original residents were protestants, from strongly loyalist areas, and this has remained the case to this day, as the murals on the walls amply demonstrate. Some visitors to the area may find these strange or even intimidating, but there is a curious beauty to the artwork, as this image demonstrates.

Kilcooley, (The name comes from the Irish Gaelic Cill Chúile) has three main traffic entry points, from Clandeboye Road, from Rathgael Road and from the the A2 Bangor Ring Road., which brings the traveler pst these strange objects…

The estate has changed a lot since I left it in 1977, when we were married, and a lot of it has become run down, – although there has been new housing built, which looks well, and houses have been privately bought and are well cared for, and I understand a lot of good community work is being down for the benefit of those who now live there. Still, I’m not sure where this mural fits in among the paramilitary loyalist images…

Still, memories are memories, and I remember it when it was only a fraction of the size it is now, when we had fields opposite our house, and by night we could see the lighthouse beam sweeping across the sky. The fields are now houses and car parks and the lighthouse has long since stopped shining.

Images made with the Fujifilm X-T50 camera, on ‘Reala Ace’ film simulation.