A Baker's Shop

A Baker's Shop in Ballymena

In an earlier blog we came across 'Max' McIlhagga who emigrated to Australia where he won a baking competition near Sydney. I wonder if there is any link to another McIlhagga baking enterprise? My last blog named Elizabeth McGrillis who married James Spence McIlhagga. Her brother was Jimmy McGrillis who teamed up with two McIlhagga sisters in the 1930s to run a Baker's shop in Lower Mill Street, Ballymena, County Antrim. They are all photographed in front of the shop above. Jimmy, who was the baker, is on the right. It is of course very much a photograph of its time - we may doubt whether Health and Safety would countenance such a shop advertising and presumably selling cigarettes today!

The sisters were Mary (May) and Elizabeth. They were daughters of James Spence and Elizabeth McIlhagga. May was born in Coleraine, County Derry, in 1907 and died in Belfast on 1st May 1971. She left a son and two grand-daughters. Elizabeth was born on 14th September 1912 in Ballymena and died there on 29th September 1997. Jimmy McGrillis and his sister Elizabeth came from Coleraine, where their father John was a 'Car Driver'.