Our day started very early today as we had to leave for Belfast airport at 6.30am for our 8.00 am flight to Newcastle. We flew with Easy Jet and I had to laugh when I saw the plane on the tarmack. Remember that reality TV show about Easy Jet and all the problems passengers had and how the staff dealt with them. I thought OMG what are we in for! But to my surprise it was a great 45 minute flight with no problems at all. We arrived at Newcastle International airport and made our way to the hire cars which went without a hitch. Sat Nav is a wonderful thing and our Danny Boy (our affectionate nick name for the male voice) directed us perfectly to Sunderland which took about 45 minutes. We are staying at a fabulous Victorian terrace B&B, Mowbray House right in the centre of town. My first impressions of Sunderland are that it is a working man's town and it seems there is much activity at the moment with construction going on everywhere. The huge football stadium dominates the landscape to the north of the city. We made our way to the Library and started our research on John McGuigan. The lady's in the local history department were very helpful but the microfiche readers were so old and antiquated that they were doing my head in. However we were able to find John's death notice from 1880 but not much else from the limited newspapers they had available. We were absolutely thrilled to find an advertisement from the Sunderland Year Book of 1904 for the business of John's grandson, James Henry McGuigan. We laughed when we read the ad and you can be assured that McGuigan spunk is certainly alive and well in J. H. McGuigan:
J. H. McGUIGAN
For Value
Departments:
Underclothing, Hosiery, Fancy Drapery, Haberdashery, Stationery and Fancy Goods
Inspect my stock!
Compare My Prices!
See What I Save You!
My Motto: Small Profits, Quick Returns.
Notice: I pay carriage on all parcels over 5/- to any station in the United Kingdom
J. H. McGUIGAN, The Fancy Draper
Largest, Best, Cheapest
34 Vine Place, Sunderland.
I would have to say that J. H. McGuigan seemed to be a forward thinker - don't you just love his great marketing tag line, The Fancy Draper! We left the library and found a great pub for a bite to eat. The food was wonderful and so reasonably priced. I now know first hand that Perth IS very expensive to eat out all thanks to our wonderful mining boom. Next our Danny Boy took us safely to the Bishopwearmouth Cemetery where John is buried. This cemetery is in such a beautiful location and with the maps I had downloaded from the internet we were able to locate John's grave. My greatest concern was that his grave would be unmarked but to our delight the headstone was in REMARKABLE condition given it is over 130 years old so as you can imagine we were very excited when we finally found it. His grave is situated right beside a lovely chapel in the Catholic section of the cemetery. Tomorrow we will go to the hardware store to buy a bucket and shovel and clean up alittle around the grave. I hope the authorities don't think we are body snatchers LOL!
I brought some small stones gathered from Henry and James grave in Melbourne and Mary has brough stones from the McGuigan grave at Maghera so we plan to bury them at John's grave tomorrow symbolising the family being all together once again.
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