Welcome to the Newtownards History & Genealogy Website

In memory of William David Derek Beattie, the people's historian

1947 – 2016

Published as a tribute to his humanity, passion and dedication

This website was originally designed, researched and published solely by Derek Beattie as well as continually updated by him over a period of many years until his untimely death, fuelled by his passion for people and history and in particular, his passion for the town and people and history of his Newtownards, his home ground.

Fuelled also by the pleasure he saw it was giving to the thousands of people who sent him more photos and information and told him how much they loved browsing his website to reminisce and to share pictures with younger generations. Derek took great pleasure in pleasing people.

Following a mysterious disappearance of his website shortly after his death, it has been reconstructed and re-published by Friends of Derek Beattie as a tribute to him and his tireless work gathering together this huge and invaluable resource for local historians and ex-pats alike, and for the benefit of all those who have missed dipping into this much-loved collection.

As such the site is now a finished document but for the sake of local history, if anyone has any more historic photo/s or information they would like added to the site, they can include it in an email with explicit permission to publish it. Be assured it will be reviewed and considered and we will do our best as volunteers but with limited time and resources we cannot say if or when it may be published, nor can we answer any queries.

Click here to enter the Website


Privacy Statement

1. The General Data Protection Regulation 2016 (GDPR).

The General Data Protection Regulation 2016 is in force with effect from 26 May 2018 replaces previous EU data regulations and supersedes the laws of individual member states. Its purpose is to protect the rights and freedoms of natural persons (individual living people) and to ensure that personal data is not processed without their knowledge and, wherever possible, that it is not processed without their consent.

2. Friends of Derek Beattie is a group of 10 private individuals who were friends of Derek Beattie and are fellow amateur local historians and genealogists with a wish to see that this valuable and huge collection of historical photos and information continues to exist and be accessible to everyone.

3. The content of this website is data collected by Derek Beattie and held electronically by Friends of Derek Beattie purely for the purposes of publication of genealogical and photographic local history on the website.

This website, as when Derek ran it, involves no ads, no selling of data, no pop ups, no mailing lists, no marketing. It’s just here so people can look.

4. The only personal data held by us is the pictures and accompanying names you see published on these pages. That publication is the only reason we hold it. This data will not be used by us for any other purpose.

5. If you contact us for any reason your email address will be used only for dealing with your communication and then deleted.

6. We respect your privacy and if there are any items about you then you have the right to have the items removed or amended as you wish. For this purpose, you can contact us using the Removal of Data form below and your request will be actioned within 28 days.

Removal of Data form

This form can also be used to request corrections.

If you wish to have any data removed or amended please give the following information in an email to this address – supervisor@newtownardshistory.co.uk

1. Your name

2. A contact email address

*your email will be used only to contact you in connection with this website*

3. In brief, what you want removed

4. In detail, please list the Page address and specific details of exactly which picture and/or text items you would like removed.

*Page addresses is in your address bar above the page containing the data. It begins with www.newtownardshistory.co.uk/

*For pictures you can right-click on the picture, select “Copy link” and paste the link in your email. That address will direct us straight to that specific photo. With this method give details of the photo content please, for confirmation*

5. Please tell us why you would like the data removed