pogues entry historical cottage

Anna was a remarkable woman who brought her family up with the philosophy that "Love is Enough", despite the family's desperate battle to survive amidst poverty and deprivation. Alexander Irvine adopted her model as his philosophy for life. As he said, "in the face of direst poverty when food was poor and scanty and our clothes in rags, my mother, in every respect but the material one was a lady, and that is why I wrote her spiritual biography and called it, with a touch of irony "My Lady of the Chimney Corner".

Dr. Irvine tells of what Antrim was like in the nineteenth century in his various books: The Souls of Poor Folk; Love is enough: My Cathedral; The Chimney Corner Re-visited; A fighting Parson; From the Bottom up; The Man from World's End; God and Tommy Atkins; The Life of Christ; The Soul of a Slave. In spite of his humble beginnings Alexander Irvine travelled far afield to become an influential and reputed man of international acclaim. He had an extraordinary and varied career as a miner, soldier, actor, author, college professor, preacher and social reformer.

In 1903 he graduated in Theology from Yale University as Dr. Alexander Irvine and then proceeded to preach as a Minister in New York's important Fifth Avenue Church of the Ascension. He also served as Chief Morale Officer of the Allies at the Front in the Great War at Lloyd George's personal request.

He enjoyed the friendship of many contemporaries; amongst them King George V, US President T. Roosevelt, Einstein, Madame Curie, Mark Twain and W.B. Yeats.

However, the greatest person to him was his mother Anna, he never forgot her advice, to be "God's Ploughman" and a "Helper of Men", nor did he ever forget his roots in Antrim.

Dr. Irvine died in Hollywood, California in 1941. In 1946 his ashes were brought back and laid to rest beside his parents in the little graveyard in All Saints Church in Ireland.

The "Chimney Corner" cottage, situated in Pogue's Entry, off Church Street, Antrim is the historic setting for one of the best loved books by an Ulster Writer: "My Lady of the Chimney Corner", by Dr. Alexander Irvine (1863-1941).