Our Northern Ireland correspondent Gilbert Cromie begins a history of one of Ulster’s iconic pipe bands of yesteryear, a band that help lay the foundation of the Province’s modern, burgeoning pipe band movement….. The Robert Armstrong Memorial Pipe Band was formed in the autumn of 1947 by members of the Church Lads’ Brigade Pipe Band which was connected to St Aiden’s Parish Church, Blythe Street, Belfast.  The St Aiden’s Church…

In 1972 the band were selected, along with the Robert Armstrong Memorial (Grade 1), Dromara (Grade 2), Howard Memorial (Grade 3), and Ballykeel Moneyrea (Grade 4), to represent Northern Ireland at the Intercontinental Gathering at the CNE in Toronto, Canada. They were placed ninth as a band and fourth in drumming. Along with the Armstrong Memorial, they were invited back again in August 1977 to compete once again at this…

Tom Anderson, from Paisley, Scotland, was posted to Dublin by his employer in the late 1960s and he was engaged by the St. Patrick’s Donaghmore Pipe Band to become their Pipe Major and tutor. He had been the Pipe Major of the Renfrew, later British Caledonian Airways, Pipe Band. Whilst in Ireland he became All Ireland (1971 and 1978) and Ulster (1980) Solo Piping Champion. For a short time before…

In 1951 the SPBA NI Branch came into existence and while the majority of competing bands in Northern Ireland had joined it, St Patrick’s along with most of the bands from the Cookstown, Dungannon and Omagh areas, remained with the Northern Ireland Band Association. In 1951 the band won Grade 4 at the Cookstown Young Farmers Club contest at Loughery Grounds, Cookstown. The band must have joined the SPBA NI…

After the Second World War the band recruited Pipe Major Harry Sawyers as their tutor and this led to great success through the decade and into the 1950s. In addition to the successes he achieved with the band, of equal importance was his ability as a teacher to improve the tuning and playing techniques of the band’s many young members. This tutelage would prove paramount during the decades that followed….