Tag: Shankill Road
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....
Albert Haslett
As a child, Albert grew up with his parents and 9 brothers and sisters in the Hammer, a poor neighbourhood of Belfast. The area was characterised by poor housing conditions. “The houses were just two up and two dow...
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...
WRDA Lectures – Baroness May Blood
The inaugural lecture of the Anna Eggert lecture series, organised by the WRDA. Baroness May Blood was the speaker for the afternoon and delivered a biographical lecture entitled “From the factory floor to the House ...
John Scott
“I was probably one of the first ones to bring platform shoes to Northern Ireland so that’s one of my claims to fame.” John who grew up in a family of nine on the Shankill Road, left school at the age of 15 in the ...
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 ...
Bobby Foster
“As a boy, Highfield was a fantastic place to grow up. We passed our time up the mountain doing the things that kids did. One of the highlights of the year was bonfire night, anything that grew on branches we were tak...
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...
Angela Ifonlaja
Born in Nigeria, Angela’s family moved to London when she was a child. She remembers many differences between London and her homeland, most notably the British education system. “In Nigeria you move through the school...
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...