Qualla: Comber https://qualla.com/comber en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:12 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/y/comber-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Comber https://qualla.com/comber Comber: Introduction https://qualla.com/comber/ Photo credit Eric Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. On Easter Sunday morning 1912, the man who knew exactly how the Titanic had been built was last seen on the bridge of the sinking ship, throwing deck chairs to passengers in the water. Thomas Andrews was 39, the chief naval architect of Harland and Wolff, and the son of a wealthy Comber linen-and-grain family. He had grown up in this small Ulster market town between Belfast and Strangford Lough. The town remembers him with a memorial hall, a school named for him, and a Titanic audio trail that winds through the streets where he learned to count rivets. Comber is the kind of place that produces a Thomas Andrews and then carries on selling early potatoes and pipe-band trophies as if nothing had happened.

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Image: Eric Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/y/comber-wp/gcey-comber-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Comber: Where the Rivers Meet https://qualla.com/comber/ Photo credit Irishdeltaforce, CC BY-SA 3.0. The name 'Comber' comes from the Irish 'an Comar,' meaning the confluence - in this case of the Glen River and the Enler River, which join at the centre of town and then run east into Strangford Lough. A settlement grew here in the early 1600s during the Plantation of Ulster, whe...

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Image: Irishdeltaforce | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/y/comber-wp/gcey-comber-where-the-rivers-meet.mp3 0:06 2 full Comber: The Man on the Bridge https://qualla.com/comber/ Photo credit Albert Bridge, CC BY-SA 2.0. Thomas Andrews was born in 1873 in Ardara House, half a mile from Comber's Square. He apprenticed at Harland and Wolff in Belfast at fifteen, rose to managing director by his thirties, and personally supervised the design of every major White Star liner, including Olympic, Titani...

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Image: Albert Bridge | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/y/comber-wp/gcey-comber-the-man-on-the-bridge.mp3 0:06 3 full Comber: The Earlies and the Geese https://qualla.com/comber/ Photo credit Albert Bridge, CC BY-SA 2.0. There is a particular potato that ripens here in late May and early June - small, waxy, sweet, grown in the deep estuarine silt of the Ards Peninsula. It is called the Comber Earlies, and in 2012 it became the first Northern Irish food product to receive EU Protected Geographical...

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Image: Albert Bridge | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/y/comber-wp/gcey-comber-the-earlies-and-the-geese.mp3 0:06 4 full Comber: Gillespie's Column and a Difficult History https://qualla.com/comber/ Photo credit Daniel Williams, CC BY-SA 4.0. Rising 55 feet above the centre of Comber's Square is a stone column with a statue of Major-General Sir Robert Rollo Gillespie on top. Gillespie was born in Comber in 1766 and killed in 1814 storming a Gurkha fort at Kalunga in northern India - one of many British officers who di...

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Image: Daniel Williams | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/y/comber-wp/gcey-comber-gillespies-column-and-a-difficult-history.mp3 0:06 5 full Comber: The Greenway https://qualla.com/comber/ Photo credit Elkay62, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Belfast and County Down Railway ran trains from Belfast to Comber from 1850 until 1950, when it was closed by a postwar transport board that judged road traffic the future. The track bed sat empty for half a century, slowly being reclaimed by hawthorn and bramble. Then, begin...

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Image: Elkay62 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/e/y/comber-wp/gcey-comber-the-greenway.mp3 0:06 6 full