Tag: Redevelopment
Helen Bell
Born in 1947 in Hopewell Street at the bottom of the Shankill Road, Helen remembers the late 1960s and the first time that real “trouble” started on the Shankill Road, with rioting and flares being shot into the air....
Annie Armstrong
Annie grew up in the lower Springfield area of west Belfast, a working class area of factories and mills, one of which was James Mackie & Sons or Mackies as they were known locally, a textile machinery and enginee...
May Blood
May was born during World War Two and grew up in Roden Street, a mixed area of Belfast with her mother and sister. He family was separated due to the evacuations during the war. “For the first six years of my life I t...
Joe Baker
Joe grew up on the New Lodge estate in north Belfast. “When we moved into it, it was a construction site, everything was brand new and spic and span. It was a lot of adventure and a lot of fun playing on the buildi...
Mina Wardle
Mina’s father was an engineer on RMS Queen Mary, her mother suffered from arthritis. Mina passed her 11+ and was awarded a place at Grammar School but at 15 years, her parents could no longer afford to keep her at the...
Tommy Wilson
Tommy Wilson grew up on the Donegall Road in the Village area of Belfast. “We had nowhere to go, we had to run the streets. The place where I lived was just housing and there were no green spots whatsoever to play gam...
Kathleen Kelly
The ten years, Kathleen spent as a teacher in the primary school in North Queen Street, brought home to her the poverty in which the children she taught, lived. Originally from east Belfast, where her father was a ...
Dale Harrison
Dale remembers the beginning of the Troubles. “From memory the Troubles in the Woodvale were rife. To this day some people would say that’s originally where it all started. I do remember one evening. There was a full ...
The Rape and Plunder of the Shankill Revisited
Traumatic change came to the inner city communities of Belfast in the 1970s with large scale redevelopment, ring roads planned to encircle the city and whole communities being wiped away by the bulldozer. One of those...
Father Desmond Wilson
Father Wilson grew up in the mixed community Ormeau Road area in south Belfast. “Belfast, to us, was an amazing place. When I was growing up I was very fortunate, I was able to go to Saint Malachys Grammar School a...
Jackie Redpath
Jackie Redpath grew up in the Woodvale area of the upper Shankill Road, a child of Evangelical Christian parents, his early life was dominated by the Shankill Baptist Church. “It was a very strict evangelical, fundame...
Helen Holland
Helen’s interest in getting involved in her local community came soon after she married. “Betty Rice was organising these meetings about new houses, so, I was quite interested in that. My husband used to say ‘why do y...