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Belfast

 

Saint Anne's is a modern Cathedral in a modern City, for Belfast itself is, relatively speaking, of very recent growth. It is indicated on an old Norman map (circa 1300 A.D.) as "Le Ford" and contiguous to its more important neighbour "Kragfergus" (Carrickfergus). From this early appellation is derived the modern name:

Belfast Cathedral History

?Reinsert mural section Peace lines Density of Belfast

I grow increasingly weary with wikipedia for the following reasons:
 * The Confirmation bias and its deadbeat father the Bias blind spot
 * Ad hominem refutations of sound arguments
 * Attentional bias
 * Lake Wobegon effect

Todo
Please add/remove/discuss this list


 * Lead: Expand lead to say something about modern Belfast
 * History: Add summary about Belfast during the troubles
 * Areas and Districts: ?Add parks section
 * Points of Interest/Attractions - restructure and combine into culture/areas and districts as per [GA Failed]
 * Culture: Add subsections Music/Literature/Performance art/Visual art/?Heritage
 * Music - Mention notable people, eg: Van Morrison, Brian Kennedy, Stiff Little Fingers, David Holmes, Ulster Orchestra, Sir James Galway, ?Waterfront, ?Odyssey, ?Ulster Hall
 * Literature - CS Lewis, ?Ian McDonald, ?Bob Shaw
 * Performance Arts - Lyric, Opera House, Kenneth Branagh, Stephen Rea, Liam Neeson (started in Lyric)
 * Visual Arts - John Lavery, William Conor, Paul Henry, Galleries
 * ?Heritage/?Architecture and Buildings - including museums/galleries
 * Economy: Add History of Economy
 * Local Politics: Add Law section
 * Transport: Add Something about docks/ferry
 * Add more images
 * Consider main tags for geography/economy/politics/etc eg:

Other possible sections
 * ?Education: Schools/Universities/Academic selection
 * ?Healthcare/hospitals
 * ?Tourism
 * ?Religion or ?Places of worship

Finally:
 * Copyedit for "compelling prose" - not just list of facts
 * Eliminate weasel words
 * Ensure NPOV (just state the facts).
 * Verify article (cite sources when necessary) and remove fact tags

Add to todo: Major historical events that occurred in city Major industries/products Taxes

Utilities
Most of Belfast's water is supplied from the Silent Valley Reservoir in County Down, created to collect water from the Mourne Mountains. Some of the city's water is sourced from Lough Neagh, via Dunore Water Treatment Works in Antrim. The citizens of Belfast pay for their water in their rates bill. Plans to bring in additional water tariffs have been deferred by devolution in May 2007. Belfast has approximately 1,300km of sewers, which are currently being replaced in a project costing over £100m and due for completion in 2009

Northern Ireland Electricity is the company responsible for transmitting electricity in Northern Ireland. Belfast's electricity comes from Kilroot Power Station, a 520 megawatt, dual coal and oil fired plant, near Carrickfergus. Phoenix Natural Gas Ltd. has been granted the licence for the transportation of natural gas across the Irish Sea from Stranraer to supply Greater Belfast from a base station near Carrickfergus.

Rates in Belfast (and the rest of Northern Ireland) were reformed in April 2007. The new discrete capital value system means rates bills are determined by the capital value of each domestic property as assessed by the Valuation and Lands Agency. The recent dramatic rise in house prices has made these reforms unpopular.

?Heritage
Linen Hall Library St George's Market beautifully-preserved city pubs, such as The Crown Liquor Saloon in Great Victoria Street, the world's most exquisite Victorian pub. Ulster Museum The City Hall

The National Museums and Galleries of Northern Ireland (MAGNI) holds collections of national significance at its three main sites: the Ulster Museum, the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum and the Ulster-American Folk Park. MAGNI also has responsibility for Armagh County Museum and for the W5 Science Centre at Odyssey, Northern Ireland’s landmark Millennium project.

Through its collections, MAGNI promotes the awareness, appreciation and understanding by the public of art, history and science; the culture and way of life of people; and the migration and settlement of people.

Shops and Markets
Belfast Zoo is located in the north of the City, on the slopes of Cavehill. Belfast City Cemetery contains the graves of many notable Belfast residents including Viscount Pirrie and Sir Edward Harland.

Churches
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH Rosemary St. 1781-1783 (Roger Mulholland) The oldest surviving place of worship in Belfast. Rev. Samuel Haliday, who became the congregation’s minister in 1719, established the Nonsubscribers when he refused to subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith. John Wesley preached in the church in 1789. Open to the public on Wednesday mornings: make sure you go inside to view the delightful oval interior, box pews and the 1922 First World War Memorial by Co. Down sculptor Rosamund Praeger.

SINCLAIR SEAMEN’S PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH Corporation Sq. 1857-1858 (Charles Lanyon, W.H. Lynn, & John Lanyon) Built for seamen arriving in Belfast. Its minister still visits every ship which docks at the port. Erected in memory of a merchant, John Sinclair. Inside are relics of the age of mariners, including a ship’s wheel, models of ships and lighthouses, chronometers and navigation lights from a Guinness barge. The bell from HMS Hood is rung as services start, and the lectern is shaped like a ship’s prow. Open on Wednesday afternoons from 14.00-16.30.

ST ANNE’S CATHEDRAL Donegall St. 1898-1904 (Thomas Drew) Has impressive stained glass windows, and figures of Courage, Agriculture, and Justice. Look out for the four Archangels around the nave, Michael, Gabriel, Uriel and Raphael. The tops of the pillars depict Courage, Science, Commerce, Healing, Agriculture, Music, Justice, Masonry, Arts, Women’s Work, and Wisdom. Baptismal area contains an amazing mosaic of The Creation. Made of over 150,000 pieces of glass, it shows the four elements, Fire, Earth, Air and Water.

ST GEORGE’S CHURCH OF IRELAND High St. 1811-1816 (John Bowden) Occupies the site of one of the very first buildings in the town, the Chapel of the Ford, built in 1306 to give travellers a place where they could give thanks for the safe crossing of the River Farset. Beal Feirste, from which the name “Belfast” derives, means “approach to the sandbank/crossing”. St George’s housed the overflow of the congregation of St Anne’s Parish Church nearby, before St Anne’s Cathedral was built on that site.

ST MALACHY’S CHURCH Alfred St. 1840-1844 (Thomas Jackson) The castle-like exterior and studded Tudorstyle door of St Malachy’s opens onto an incredible interior with a ceiling like an insideout wedding cake. In 1868, the largest bell turret in Belfast was added to the church. It was taken away shortly afterwards, due to complaints that its deafening noise interfered with the maturing of the whiskey in Dunville’s distillery nearby!

Schools
ST MALACHY’S SCHOOL Sussex Place. 1878 (Timothy Hevey) A Gothic Revivalist building situated beside the St Joseph’s Convent of Mercy. Both were established by the Sisters of Mercy who came from Dublin in 1854.

ST PATRICK’S SCHOOL Donegall St. 1828 (Thomas Duff) This school is the oldest surviving example of Gothic Revival architecture in Belfast. It was the first National School in the city, and until 1981 was run by the Christian Brothers. It was badly damaged by a fire in 1995, but has recently been restored as offices by the Belfast Buildings Preservation Trust.

Founded in 1833 by Bishop Crolly, St. Malachy's College is one of Ireland's oldest Roman Catholic grammar schools.

Education
46% of the population is under 30

More than 60% of our Secondary school graduates go onto college. Education facts

History
 Encyclopedia of Britain News Letter Ulster Covenant Larkspirit Irish History Intro: The History of Belfast as a settlement goes back to the Bronze Age, but its status as a major urban centre dates to the eighteenth century. Belfast today is the capital of Northern Ireland. Belfast was, throughout its modern history, a major commercial and industrial centre. It has suffered in recent years from a decline in its traditional industries. Another aspect of Belfast's history is recurrent outbreaks of sectarian conflict between Catholic and Protestant communities.

Early history
The site of Belfast has been occupied since the Bronze Age. The Giant's Ring, a 5000 year old henge, is located four miles from the city. An impressive 200m diameter sub-circular enclosure, surrounds an earlier Neolithic passage grave. The remains of Iron Age hill forts can also still be seen in the Belfast hills. In European terms, Belfast is a relatively modern settlement, first indicated on an old Norman map in the fourteenth century as “Le Ford”. This was in reference to the sandbar that gives the city its name. John de Courcy controlled east Ulster from the larger settlement of Carrickfergus, at the entrance of Belfast Lough, where he built Carrickfergus Castle in 1177.

At the beginning of the 16th century, Belfast was merely a fishing village within the lands of Conn O'Neill, 1st Earl of Tyrone. He was eventually succeeded by his grandson, Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone who initially struck a deal with the English giving him control over the castle at Carrickfergus, the town and fortress of Belfast, and all the surrounding lands. He served with the English against the rebel Gerald Fitzgerald including defending Belfast from two attacks in 1503 and 1512. Hugh O'Neill later formed an alliance with the other Irish chieftains and sought aid from Catholic Spain against Protestant England. The Nine Years War (1594-1603) (Irish: Cogadh na Naoi mBliana) was fought by the Ulster Gaelic chieftains Hugh O'Neill, Hugh Roe O'Donnell and their allies, against the Elizabethan English government of Ireland. It ended in defeat and exile to mainland Europe for the Irish chieftains in 1607, known as the “Flight of the Earls”. This left Ulster in the early 17th century without its Gaelic aristocracy and James I of England took this opportunity to colonise the land with English (and Scottish) protestant settlers. This process of colonisation achieved by removing Irish Catholics from their lands, became known as the Plantation of Ulster. Sir Arthur Chichester built a new castle in Belfast in 1611 and became Baron Chichester in 1612. The original Belfast Castle, near the site of the modern ‘Castle Place’ and ‘Castle Junction’ at the top of High Street, was burned down in 1708. Redesigned by John Lanyon and funded by the 3rd Marquis of Donegall, Belfast Castle was relocated to slopes of the Cavehill in 1870. Arthur Chichester was influential in encouraging the growth of the settlement, which officially became a town when it received its charter of incorporation from James I in 1613.

The ongoing settlement of Protestant farmers caused much tension with the existing Irish Catholic population in Belfast, and throughout Ulster. In 1641, a time of political crisis in England and Scotland, they rebelled and attacked Protestant settlers, killing nearly 12,000. This ‘slaughter’, which left lasting scars on Ulster Protestant folk memory, was the first in a series of uprisings against the English, known as the Irish Confederate Wars. These culminated in the re-conquest of Ireland by the English forces, led by Oliver Cromwell.

A Scottish army landed in Belfast to quell the rebellion and it was to here that many refugees fled arrived after being driven from their homes. Many Scots also settled in the city following the wars.

Belfast was later settled by a small number of French Huguenots fleeing persecution, who established a sizeable linen trade.

Belfast blossomed as a commercial and industrial centre in the 18th and 19th centuries and became Ireland's pre-eminent industrial city.Industries thrived, including linen, rope-making, tobacco, heavy engineering and shipbuilding, and at the end of the nineteenth century, Belfast briefly overtook Dublin as the largest and most industrialised city in Ireland. The Harland and Wolff shipyards became one of the largest shipbuilders in the world, employing up to 35,000 workers.[citation needed] The ill-fated RMS Titanic was built there in 1911.

Merchant and industrial town
Belfast thrived in the 18th century as a merchant town, importing goods from Britain and exporting the produce of the Linen trade. Linen at time was made by small producers in rural areas. The town was also a centre of radical politics, largely because its predominantly Presbyterian population was discriminated against under the Penal Laws. Another factor in Belfast radicalism was the influence of the Scottish Enlightenment. Belfast saw the founding of the Irish Volunteers in 1778 and the Society of the United Irishmen in 1791 - both dedicated to democratic reform, an end to religious discrimination and greater independence for Ireland. As a result of intense repression however, Belfast radicals played little or no role in the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

In the 19th century, Belfast became Ireland's pre-eminent industrial city (gaining city status in 1888) with linen, heavy engineering, tobacco and shipbuilding dominating the economy, and Belfast briefly overtook Dublin in population at the end of the 19th century. Belfast's shipyards, dominated by the Harland and Wolff company who alone employed up to 35,000 workers and was one of the largest shipbuilders in the world. The ill-fated RMS Titanic was built there in 1911. Migrants to Belfast came from across Ireland, Scotland and England, but particularly from rural Ulster, where sectarian tensions ran deep. The same period saw the first outbreaks of sectarian riots, which have recurred regularly since. By 1901 Belfast was the largest city in Ireland. The city's importance was evidenced by the construction of the lavish Belfast City Hall, completed in 1906. Since around 1840 its population included many Catholics, who originally settled in the west of city, around the area of today's Barrack Street. West Belfast remains the centre of the city's Catholic population (in contrast with the east of the City which is almost exclusively Protestant). Other areas of Catholic settlement have included the north of the city, especially Ardoyne and the Antrim Road and the Markets area immediately to the south of the city centre.

Conditions for the new working-class were often squalid, with much of the population packed into overcrowded and unsanitary tenements, and the city suffered from repeated cholera outbreaks in the mid 19th century. Conditions improved somewhat after a wholesale slum clearance programme in the 1900s.

Belfast saw a bitter strike by dock workers organised by radical trade unionist Jim Larkin, in 1907. The dispute saw 10,000 workers on strike and a mutiny by the police, who refused to disperse the striker's pickets. Eventually the British Army had to be deployed to restore order. The strike was a rare instance of non-sectarian mobilisation in Ulster at the time.

Conflict, partition and World War
Belfast became the centre of Irish unionism, and in 1920 it was declared the capital of Northern Ireland under the Government of Ireland Act, in which Ireland was partitioned into Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State (later to become the Republic of Ireland, when it withdrew from the Commonwealth in 1949). The period immediately before after partition (the Irish War of Independence) was marked by vicious sectarian disturbances, and a dramatic hardening of the city's sectarian boundaries. The Irish Republican Army was weak in the city and what actions it did take - such as the killing of policemen- were responded to with attacks on the Catholic population by loyalists -sometimes covertly aided by state forces. About 450 people died in sectarian violence in Belfast between 1920 and 1922 - a period known to nationalists as the "Belfast Pogroms". Unionists argue that this is an inappropriate term as while most of the victims (58%) were Catholics there was never a state policy of wholesale killing or expulsions of Catholics. In response to this violence, southern nationalists imposed a boycott on goods produced in Belfast. The violence in the city broke out in June/July 1920 largely subsided by July 1922. See also Irish War of Independence in the north east

Many thousands of Catholics left the city, often permanently, after the creation of Northern Ireland saw a sustained campaign of violence and intimidation against them, such as the families of former Fianna Fáil Taoiseach Charles Haughey, and Canadian-born actors Martin Short and James Doohan.

In common with similar cities world-wide, Belfast suffered particularly during the Great Depression. Partly as a result of these economic tensions, in the 1930s, there was another round of sectarian rioting in the city, although the most significant unrest of the period, the Outdoor Relief Riots of 1932, were notable for their non-sectarian nature. 

During the Second World War, Belfast was one of the major cities in the United Kingdom bombed by German forces and virtually the only one intentionally bombed by the Luftwaffe on the isle of Ireland, most of which had remained neutral during the War. The Belfast Blitz occurred on Easter Tuesday, April 15 1941, when 200 German Luftwaffe bombers attacked the city, pounding working class areas of east Belfast around the shipyards. About 1,000 people died and many more were injured. Half of the houses in the city were damaged. Outside of London, this was the greatest loss of life in a night raid during the Battle of Britain. Roughly 100,000 of the population of 415,000 became homeless. Belfast was targeted due to its concentration of heavy shipbuilding and aerospace industries. Ironically, the same period saw the economy recover as the war economy saw great demand for the products of these industries.

The Troubles
Main article The Troubles

The post-war years were relatively placid in Belfast, but sectarian tensions and resentment among the Catholic population at the widespread discrimination festered below the surface, and the city erupted into violence in August 1969 when vicious sectarian rioting broke out in the city. Several people were killed, including two young children when a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) armoured car opened fire with a heavy machine gun in the Catholic Divis Flats area. Predominantly Catholic Bombay street was burned out by loyalists (see Northern Ireland riots of August 1969). The perceived one sidedness of the police and the failure of the IRA to defend Catholic neighbourhoods of the city was one of the main causes for the formation of the militant Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), who would subsequently launch an armed campaign against the state of Northern Ireland.

The violence intensififed in the early 1970s, with rival paramilitary groups being formed on both sides. Bombing, assassination and street violence formed a backdrop to life throughout The Troubles. The PIRA detonated 22 bombs, all in a confined area in the city centre in 1972, on what is known as "Bloody Friday", killing 9 people. Loyalists paramilitaries, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Ulster Defence Association (UDA) retaliated to the PIRA campaign by killing Catholics at random. A particularly notorious group, based on the Shankill Road in the mid 1970s became known as the Shankill Butchers.

The British army, first deployed in 1969 to restore order, became a feature of Belfast life, with huge fortified barracks being constructed, predominantly in nationalist west Belfast. Initially the British Army was welcomed by the minority nationalist community, but the relationship soured after such incidents as the Lower Falls Curfew of July 1970, when the Army fought a three day gun battle with the IRA in the Falls Road Area, killing four people. Major confrontation continued between the Army and Republican paramilitaries throughout the 1970s, notably in Operation Motorman in 1972, when thousands of British soldiers re-took nationalist "no go areas" in Belfast and elsewhere.

In the early 1970s, there were huge forced population movements as families, mostly but not exclusively Roman Catholic, living in areas dominated by the other community were intimidated from their homes. The general decline in European manufacturing industry of the early 1980s, exacerbated by political violence, devastated the City's economy. As recently as 1971 the city was overwhelmingly Protestant, but today is almost evenly balanced due to higher Catholic birth rates and rising prosperity, together with Protestant emigration (both internal, e.g., to North Down and external) have fundamentally changed the balance.

In 1981, Bobby Sands a native of Greater Belfast, was the first of ten Republican prisoners to die on hunger strike, in pursuit of political status. The event provoked major rioting in nationalist areas of the city. During the 1980s, the most notorious series of incidents in the city took place within a week in 1988. Firstly, a Republican funeral was attacked by loyalist Michael Stone (see Milltown Cemetery attack), then, the following week at the funerals of Stone's victims, two off duty British soldiers were lynched in the "Corporals killings".

In the early 1990s, loyalist and republican paramilitaries in the city stepped up their killings of each other and "enemy" civilians. A cycle of killing continued right up to the PIRA ceasefire in August 1994 and the Combined Loyalist Military Command cessation six weeks later. The most horrific single attack of this period came in October 1993, when the PIRA, in retaliation for the UDA's killing of Catholics, bombed a fish shop on the Shankill Road in an attempt to kill the UDA leadership. The Shankill Road bombing instead killed 9 Protestant civilans as well as the bomber himself.

Despite the paramilitary ceasefires of 1994, today the city still remains scarred by the conflict between the two communities. In all, nearly 1,500 people have been killed in political violence in the city from 1969 until the present. Most of Belfast is highly segregated with enclaves of one community surrounded by another (e.g., Protestant Glenbryn estate in North Belfast, and the Catholic Short Strand in East Belfast) feeling, and often being, under siege. Fitfull paramilitary activity continues, often directed inwards as in the loyalist feuds and the killing of Catholic Robert McCartney by PIRA members in December 2004.

In 1997, unionists lost control of Belfast City Council for the first time in its history, with the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland gaining the balance of power between nationalists and unionists. This position was confirmed in the council elections of 2001 and 2005. Since then it has had two Catholic mayors, one from the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and one from Sinn Féin.

Recent history
The city in general has seen significant redevelopment and investment since the Belfast Agreement. The formation of the Laganside Corporation in 1989 heralded the start of the regeneration of the River Lagan and its surrounding areas. Other areas that have been transformed include the Cathedral Quarter and the Victoria Square area. However communal segregation has continued since then, with occasional low level street violence in isolated flashpoints and the construction of new Peace Lines.

It became a substantial settlement in the 17th century after being settled by English and Scottish settlers during the Plantation of Ulster. Belfast blossomed as a commercial and industrial centre in the 18th and 19th centuries and became Ireland's pre-eminent industrial city. Industries thrived, including linen, rope-making, tobacco, heavy engineering and shipbuilding, and at the end of the nineteenth century, Belfast briefly overtook Dublin as the largest and most industrialised city in Ireland. The Harland and Wolff shipyards became one of the largest shipbuilders in the world, employing up to 35,000 workers.

Belfast has been the capital of Northern Ireland since its creation in 1920 by the Government of Ireland Act. Since it began to emerge as a major city, it has been the scene of much sectarian conflict between its Roman Catholic and Protestant populations. These opposing groups in this conflict are now often termed 'nationalist' and 'unionist' respectively. The most recent example of this is known as the Troubles - a civil conflict that raged from c.1969 to the late 1990s.

Belfast was heavily bombed during World War II. In one raid, in 1941, German bombers killed around one thousand people and left tens of thousands more homeless. Outside of London, this was the greatest loss of life in a night raid during the Battle of Britain.

Belfast saw the worst of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.



Maps of Belfast
Street Map of Belfast Religious Distribution in Belfast Distribution of churches in Belfast

Media
Papers TV Radio

Infrastructure
Utilities - Electricity and water

Geography
Location Elevation Weather Cityscape Laganside City limits