Cushendun Old Church Project second-hand and local-interest book sale, September 9 and 10
There could be some tough customers hustling for bargains this year at County Antrim’s favourite seaside booksale in the National Trust village of Cushendun. The builders are due to start work shortly on restoring Cushendun Old Church to turn it into a community heritage and arts centre in 2018.
For that reason, the annual Old Church Project second-hand and local-interest book sale on European Heritage weekend (Saturday 9 and Sunday 10 September) will be held in elegant Glenmona House – facing Cushendun beach – rather than the Old Church itself. A wide range of quality ‘rescued’ hardback and paperback books will be on sale as well as new books of historical and local interest at competitive prices.
Volunteers from the Friends of Glenmona will be selling their splendid home-made cakes and buns with tea and coffee in the Garden Room, so if you can’t wait to get home to start reading that terrific novel you’d been looking out for, you can plonk yourself down on the terrace – or the beach – and get stuck in!
Earlier this year, Cushendun Building Preservation Trust, which is behind the Old Church Project and the book sale (as well as Cushendun’s popular Big Arts Weekend in the month of May), had the welcome news that major grants from Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council and the Heritage Lottery Fund had secured the rescue of the Old Church after more than a decade of campaigning. The grants mean that this lovely 130-year-old building – which had been at risk of irreversible dereliction – has a sustainable future as a resource for the local and the wider community.
Other funders whose contributions are a welcome vote of confidence in the project are Ulster Garden Villages, the Pilgrim Trust and the All Churches Trust, but local fund-raising is still vitally important. So please come and support the book sale. And get in there before those bookworm builders!
Glenmona House will be open, and books will be on sale, from 11am to 5pm on Saturday 9 and Sunday 10 September. Refreshments will be on sale between 11:30 am and 3:30 pm.