Fairfield Ball-Alley

This structure was built for playing handball by the young men of Fairfield in 1933 in a corner of a field owned by Sonny Forrister. As Bobby Cafferty recalled in an interview in 1995 ' Well, we used to be always mad for ball playing, and ball playing up to a gable of a house, and the women would have it whitewashed, and she’d come out ,and clear us away, to hell from it [...] an we said at the finish, that we’d put up a ball alley [...]', Bobby and Bob Gallagher went with 'the lads from around the place', collecting to pay for the cement, casings and other materials and they put it up themselves. After a year, the finished ball-court was blessed by Canon Hegarty the local parish priest who played in the first game with Jack Griffith, Mikie Blehein and another now forgotten local, with a huge crowd roaring them on.

Sundays would see the young girls and boys gather around the ball-alley in 'doubles' competitions which the evenings would echo with the ball striking the cement wall of the ball-alley for many years. Teams from Crossmolina would even visit in a challenge to the locals once and a while.

A second ball-alley was located where the store of Mitchell's shop now stands, in Moygownagh village. A restored ball-court may be seen on the Ballycastle rd. in a drive north into the neighbouring parish of Kilfian.