HAMILTON’S History Centre scored this week with a donation from a former Hamilton Courthouse employee, in the form of an old courthouse desk.

Fortunately, the caretaker had the foresight several years ago when the Hamilton Courthouse was being renovated, to hang onto the old wooden desk, and saved it from going to the tip or being burnt.

Believed to be circa 1870s, the desk which started out as the solicitors’ bar but then became the court reporters’ desk is made of cedar with a slight incline for the ergonomic comfort of the lawyers, and journalists who used it.

One reporter impudently and inadvertently kick-started a trend of engraving their name into the desk and so began the tradition of engraving signatures and slogans for perpetuity over several decades, dating back as early as 1942.

Later in the twentieth century with the advent of technology in the 1990s and the use of recording equipment and laptops, the courthouse desk was eventually made redundant.

However, thanks to the caretaker’s prudence in rescuing it from being turned to tinder, the desk stands as a memorial of ghosts from the past.

Fortunately, he also hung onto two lockable ballot barrels that are well over 100 years old.

One was wooden with the title branded - Hamilton Common Jurors - from which names would be drawn for jury duty, the other was made from tin and labelled - Coleraine Special Jurors Reserve.

The three items have all been given to the Hamilton History Centre much to the delight of the volunteers who have scoured the desk’s surface for notable local names and quirky messages.

Among the engraved names are political slogans including “No Dams” and colourful messages to police.

Older readers would remember some of the Spectator’s journalists’ names from the 1970s and 80s; former sub editor Brian Ryan, and former editor Jacinta Clutterbuck, as well as former Detective Norm Mengler from the 1950s.