Broadcast archive keeps past alive

Ireland correspondent Denis Murray discovers the many hidden treasures contained in the BBC Northern Ireland Community Archive at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum.

It has a wealth of material from broadcasters such as WD Flackes

To hear the voice of Edith Russell, a survivor of the Titanic disaster, is one of those "hairs on the back of the neck" moments.

Here was a woman who had told a BBC Northern Ireland radio programme that she was "the next to last passenger in the last lifeboat, and the only lifeboat that was full.

"Sixty-eight passengers, about one third of them nearly children - that was the only lifeboat that carried the children."

Well, wow.

In the 1950s, I saw the movie A Night to Remember. Many years later, I saw Titanic, the James Cameron film.

Nothing in either of them compares to hearing that voice from that woman.

The archive has radio material going back seven decades

And I heard it in an astonishing and unique archive - the BBC Northern Ireland archive at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, at Cultra in north Down.

I just wish the television report for BBC Newsline could have been longer: Edith goes on to say that she entertained the children, and that only one would not stop crying; in fact he squealed like a pig.

Many years later, at a survivor's reunion, she met that child, who was by then a grandfather. He had his mother with him.

His mother, on the Titanic, had put him in a waste basket, and then jumped off the ship.

She only remembered him when she was safe on the Carpathia.

One of the stewardesses had heard him whimpering in the basket, and put him in the lifeboat.

Well, wow.

There's an astonishing spread of material

That's only the one of the many things in the archive with 19,000 tapes, and 20,000 stills, which contains radio material going back seven decades.

The archive curator, Francis Jones, says all sorts of people come into the museum to use it.

Radio and television producers, independent film makers, academics, and people whose relatives might have been on a programme "back in the day", and either just want to hear it, or make a copy.

There's an astonishing spread of material: education programmes with David Hammond, and the late James Hawthorne; dramas with Stephen Rea and Paul Muldoon; Inside Politics programmes with the legendary WD Flackes; comedy with James Young; and round Northern Ireland with Your Place and Mine.

There are also un-broadcast and un-edited interviews with the likes of Barry Cowan.

I could have spent the whole day there at this fantastic resource, available to the whole community.

BBC Northern Ireland's Community Archive at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in Cultra is open Monday to Friday from 9am to 5pm.

Anyone who would like to use the Archive can email staff at [e-mail] or call 028 9042 8428.