Daughter of Laharna

“Daughter of Laharna” provides a glimpse of family life in Laharna Hotel, Larne, which was Patricia’s home for 24 years, and also details its history from 1833 - becoming the largest tour hotel in Ireland. Her father George A. Beattie was Resident Manager of Laharna Hotel, Larne from 1935 and in the Second World War, as part of essential services, looked after troop feeding at Larne Harbour and later the American Officer’s Club in the former Midland Hotel, Belfast. These were formerly railway owned hotels. Laharna Hotel was the base for a 6 day tour of N Ireland and with some 200 tourist residents weekly, from April to October, shows the great extent of tourism in the Province before “The Troubles” began in 1968, lasting some 30 years. The hotel, destroyed by fire in 1999, was then demolished.

This is a personal history of the Beattie family’s life in the hotel, how George, born in Belfast, became an hotelier, his lifelong hobby of music as a piano accompanist and church organist. It records many events such as the Titanic launch, WW2 events in NI, the tragic sinking of the Princess Victoria in 1953 and family life in Larne.