History

We Met At The Butt Hall

No public building could have been more appropriately named than Ballybofey’s Isaac Butt Hall. Lively and unique, welcoming to all creeds, classes and political persuasions, and in permanent party mode for most of a century, the Hall was the reincarnation of the giant figure it was named after in 1919.

To Donegal people and to Tyrone, Fermanagh and Derry people, the hall remains in memory as the great Ballroom of Romance. Happy, long-lasting marriages began in their thousands there. Those were halcyon days, between the 1950’s and 1970’s, when matchmaking was gone and marital breakdown still rare and people could and did choose a lifetime partner in the Butt Hall.

The founders of the Hall were not primarily concerned with dancing. They saw it as a social and educational centre, and were particularly interested in theatre. Those young men, the first Butt Hall Committee, moved mountains to finance their independent hall in the closing year of World War 1, collecting money across Scotland and organising voluntary labour. The Isaac Butt Hall, independent of any state, church, or political persuasion, opened its doors in 1919.

Public dancing was frowned on and severely restricted until the 1950’s, and for the first three decades the emphasis was on drama. The much-loved Daniels, Carrickford, and Anew McMaster travelling troupes played there regularly, and were matched by homegrown theatre under the guidance of founder member Master Anthony Timoney. Anew McMaster, the theatre great of the time, was heard to remark that Ballybofey was the greatest town for drama in Ireland.

Silent films were also shown at the Butt, and the dances that did take place were massive ones, involving 18-piece bands and final dances at 5 a.m.

As World War II approached, dances became more frequent. The 50-50’s, dances that were deliberately a mix of traditional Irish dancing and jazz/swing/English, were introduced. Huge Supper Dances became legendary. The Hall was becoming busier, but it was also becoming dilapidated and shabby, and by the end of the War it was almost unusable.

A vibrant new committee then reprised the events of 1918, and again moved mountains to totally rebuild the Hall in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. Sunday night dancing took in a fortune, and the showband boom generated further income.

The independent nature of the Isaac Butt Hall guaranteed that the money would be directly spent for the benefit of the community. The Committee embarked on a programme of investment and project support. Public lighting, the Herdsman factory, the lands that now hold the Car Park and commercial development, and dozens of smaller advances can be directly attributed to their activities.

The Committee “gave their head” to any club, which wanted to fundraise from dances within its walls, and McCumhaill’s GAA Club and the B&S Golf Club, to name but two, received their financial start at the Butt.

And the Balor Theatre. In 1959, a group of young people including Joe Mulholland started up the Butt Hall Players, which evolved through many successes into the present Balor Theatre. The old Butt’s most lasting monument is the nationally known Balor.

But it is the bingo players, the bazaar-goers, the youth clubbers, the concert artists, the visiting players, the musicians, the card players, and the Feisgoers who will remember this old, crazy, maple-floored building most fondly. And the dancers.

Above all, the thousands of dancers. And the spouses they met there.