In driving rain tens of thousands lined the roads from Stormont to Roselawn cemetary, countless others watched the live coverage on TV, as one of East Belfast’s favourites was laid to rest on 3rd December 2005.

George grew up kicking a football on the streets of the Cregagh Estate before becoming one of the greatest footballers of his, or any, generation and an icon of the 1960s.

Between 1963 and 1974 he played for Manchester United, and during this time Best lived up to his surname. He scored 178 goals for Manchester United, including six in one game, and Péle, football’s most illustrious of players, once stated that Best was indeed the best player he ever saw play.  Tall, handsome and charming, Best had the adoring attention of the media, but eventually his popularity led to a prodigal celebrity lifestyle, and he became a victim to gambling and alcoholism.

Nevertheless, it’s as a glorious young, rapier-thin footballer that Georgie will be remembered. In the often monochrome world of the 60s and 70s in Northern Ireland, he was a riotous blaze of colour.

[photo from here]

The future has unearthed the past with the discovery of an old graveyard under the current Church car park at East Belfast Mission.  Having examined the historical records it seems the graveyard was opened in 1826 in the then rural village of Ballymacarrett, just outside the rapidly growing town of Belfast.

The first burial took place in 1828 and it became the final resting place of many itinerant Methodist preachers, including one who had been commissioned by John Wesley himself on his last visit to Ireland. Legend tells of a church sexton (apparently in the late 19th century) who buried anyone for 30 shillings and ‘even dug up the footpath for burial purposes’. This means it is almost impossible to get accurate information on who is buried on the site. The last burial took place in 1914 and in 1918 an application was made to Belfast Corporation to close the site.

During the Blitz in 1941, most likely the Fire Raid on the night of 4-5 May, the church building was destroyed, thereby revealing the derelict state of the graveyard to its rear. In the following year there is evidence that many of the collapsed gravestones were taken by monumental sculptors and local householders, some of whom transformed them into window sills. The site was levelled around the late 1940s early 1950s and a new church was opened in 1952, replacing the building destroyed in the blitz.

Many local people still remember playing in the graveyard in their childhood and also the local superstitions associated with it.

Northern Archaological Consultancy won the tender to conduct the dig on the site and they commenced work on 1st June. It is impossible to say at this stage just how long they will be on site.

A press release on the dig can be found in the Downloads section on this site.

“But what does it all mean?” asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.
“It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know.  Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of Time.  But if she could have looked a little further back,
into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation.  She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.”

- from Lewis’ The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe

Clive Staples Lewis’s life began one day in late November of 1898, on an avenue called Dundela in East Belfast. It ended in November of 1963, and in the middle of these dates, he completed over thirty works of literature, taught as a professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature, found God, and became the most noteworthy Christian thinker and apologist of the 20th century.

His legacy continues; over fifteen additional written works have been published posthumously, and his books continue to convince readers all over the world of God’s presence in it.  All ages delight in his stories of Aslan, the awesome, mighty lion and the children who are fortunate to meet him when they are called magically into the land of Narnia.

For most of his life, he resided in England, but he drew inspiration from his childhood in Ulster, whose Mourne Mountains he remembered as magical, and his life is commemorated here.  A cast bronze statue of Lewis stands peering into a wardrobe outside of Holywood Arches Library on the corner of Newtownards and Holywood Roads, and blue plaques mark Lewis’ birthplace, Dundela Flats, and Little Lea, the Lewis’ childhood home built by his father in 1905.

Stories uncover the riches of history. Their tellers dig gems from the rough, the gems sparkle in the light, and they hold them up for our inspection.

…they are words placed playfully, with the tongue, into sentences that intrigue…we linger as the storyteller takes a careful pause, sips from his glass, demonstrably puts his glass back on the table, enjoying our rapture, enjoying his role…

A history of Ballymacarrett without a few gems would be poor indeed. And so for your amusement and enrichment, enjoy these, nicked with permission from James S. Patton’s narrative, Ballymacarrett.

CHILD’S PLAY
“Most of the games needed little or no equipment, and that easy to make. Churchy-one-man-coming…involved two teams, about six each, more or less. The team that was ‘in’ had to put their anchor-man leaning on a windowsill and the rest lead on his back each in turn. The opposition went across the street and their number one shouted “churchy, one man coming,” then he took a mad gallop and leapfrogged onto the backs confronting him. He had to reach as far as he could to leave room for the rest of his team. The other members did the same ‘til they were all clinging on like grim death. Now the underdogs had to support this load for the count of ten from the last one landing. If a weak number of holders cracked under the strain and caused his team to fall he was generally worst off in the scuffle that followed.

“Little White Horse: Getting victims for this one was not always easy, so we usually ended up with a boy who was visiting. It required the proverbial sucker… as he had to be convinced that we were going to play at horses. He was going to be the ‘white’ one and after a rope was tied, harness fashion around his shoulders we galloped off. What he didn’t know was that the rope was well knotted in a position he could not reach. After a few minutes we stopped, for a rest, and as you know when you stop you hitch your horse to a post. Having no post we had to make do with somebody’s doorknocker. So there was the little white horse securely tied to someone’s front door, which was then severely kicked and this was the signal for the other horses to run away as fast as they could. The poor victim was lucky to get a way with a cuff on the ear.”

“The kids living nearby used to have great fun playing around the tombstones that stood crookedly among the trees and bushes, many of the stones having been moved by the usual vandals. Many a frightened boy was tossed into the open grave as part of the initiation into a gang. A favorite prank of the boys was to lie in the graveyard and wait for groups of girls coming from late dances and as they approached there would come from the darkness moaning and wailing noises. Then everyone would lie back and laugh uproariously at the poor girls trying to run in their dance shoes.”

Christmas Parties on Dee Street: “Upon entering St. Patrick’s church hall in Dee St., the noise was unbelievable. Hundreds of screaming kids were milling around as the organizers tried to get everybody a seat and counted. It was like trying to count a bag of ferrets.”

SPOOKS
“The Newtownards Road was built around 1870…and…during the building of some of the streets they used tombstones from the burying ground as window sills or windy stools as the old ones called them, owing to the fact that they were used as seats at times. Now the point here is that some few years ago there was quite a panic when someone claimed that they saw a ghost, in Derwent St., in the shape of a little old lady dressed in a crinoline. Crowds came from miles around to see this phenomenon and got so large that the police had to be alerted. An attempt was made to ridicule the story by putting out all the streetlights and screens were put around the spot on the wall where the apparition was to be seen. All to no avail, the figure remained and the sightseers increased to alarming proportions. The street was so tightly packed that it was almost impossible to leave ones home. Somehow they panicked and the crowd spilled onto the main just as a taxi was coming a long and the result was a few killed. But, the most interesting thing about this event was, the spot where the ghost was, was right next to a window-sill made from a gravestone from the old church yard.”

FOLK MEDICINE
“The long strand had a holy well somewhere near its head at a spot called Harry’s strand. This well was said to have curative properties if the afflicted person washed the part of his body with a rag, which was then hung on a nearby thorn bush. Probably a fairy-thorn. As the rag disintegrated the ailment slowly drifted away. Truth or fiction? That’s what makes it all so interesting.”

Even in Belfast, sneering critics disparage Marie Jones’s work, often classifying it as low art. They complain that it’s too cheesy, cliché or simplistic, while the rest of us sit rapt in our seats resting from the times Jones has us giggling uproariously. We ponder the ways in which her work reflects the hopes, dreams and thoughts of our own lives. Jones wonders, “What’s wrong with being popular? I sometimes feel that people want to keep the theater as some kind of special preserve for people like them, educated, cultured people; they don’t like it when a play packs out the theatre with ordinary people having a good time.” Jones can withstand the artistic criticism because her identity as a writer and artist has been questioned before. Growing up in a working-class Protestant neighbourhood, Jones remembers that “culture was for Catholics…. Anything that was at all connected with the arts was seen as subversive.”

Her publicly acclaimed play, Stones in His Pockets, carries the message that dreaming ones own dreams instead of buying out into the fantasies of others is absolutely vital. In it, two men play umpteen characters, altering their voices, intonations, accents, expressions, statures and gaits every moment.
Jones’s style is greatly influenced by her memories of her mother and aunt who would tell and retell stories of stories of hopes and dreams and sadnesses every week, and her approach springs from the type of storytelling where the speaker doesn’t simply relate what the characters say but impersonates the characters. In Stones Jones is a genial storyteller; at times she loops back to fill in needed detail.

Like many of her neighbours, the bard of Belfast left school at age 15. Unlike her neighbours, Jones has an honorary doctorate from Queen’s University. Her accomplishments are a great credit to the community.

Exceptional storytellers then and today, the people of East Belfast recognize their industrial achievements by different standards than the amount of ships built or rope exported. Instead, the workers of the past two centuries have made important literary contributions, for, as one chairman of Workman Clark writes, “without shipbuilding, no one would have had stories of the sea to tell or read.”

Even apart from the yarns, what has been manufactured in East Belfast is impressive. A local historian writes, “Ballymacarrett was a 19th c. microcosm and symbol of the staggering industrial and commercial advancement of the age. Companies such as the Lagan Foundry of Victor Coates, Harland and Wolffe, Sirrocco Works and the Belfast Ropework Company were not merely employers of thousands of individuals but the largest of their kind, both in the UK and indeed the world.”

By and large, the men behind the industrial renaissance in East Belfast were versatile, intuitive, and creative with minds open for the reception of new ideas.

Harland and Wolff was formed by Edward Harland and Gustav Wilhelm Wolff in 1861. Harland achieved commercial business success by innovating wooden upper decks, replacing them with stronger iron ones, and increasing the capacity of ships by constructing them with flatter bottoms.
Between Harland’s death in 1894 and his own in 1924, William James Pirrie was the chairman of Harland and Wolff. It was under his leadership that the doomed RMS Titanic and her sisterships, the RMS Olympic and HMHS Britannic, were built by Harland and Wolff between 1909 and 1914. Today you can see the dry-dock where the Titanic was constructed, and the forthcoming Titanic Quarter development will reconstruct the area into a tourist destination.

Very active during WWII, the shipyard built six aircraft carriers, two cruisers and 131 other naval ships, and repaired over 22,000 vessels. At this time, H&W employed around 35,000 people. The shipyard incurred substantial damage in April and May 1941 as the Luftwaffe heavily bombed Queen’s island and East Belfast.

Workman Clark have been dubbed “the forgotten shipbuilders of Belfast” as next to the shipyard of H & W, theirs was only a ‘wee yard.’ Still, this company, opened by young entrepreneurs nearing the end of the 19th century, employed 9,000 people in 1909.

Also present in the area were the operations of the Short Brothers. Horace Leonard Short and Albert Eustace Short, along with their youngest brother, began a successful aircraft company around the turn of the century.

Horace had sustained a head injury as a child, making him more susceptible to meningitis, which he contracted later on. As a result of the virus and injury, his head swelled to abnormal proportions. In his teens he went to work his way to Australia where he actually had an unbelievable adventure complete with a capture and subsequent escape from cannibals. He ended up in Mexico and became the manager of a silver mine. The wheels inside his immense, misshapen head were constantly turning, and at a very young age he invented the Auxetophone, a device that amplified spoken sound. He had an interest in ballooning, so upon his return to the British Isles he began to employ himself in balloon manufacture and design.

His brother, Albert Eustace was quick to adapt to the times. Soon after the Shorts began their balloon company, the Wright brothers constructed their biplane. Eustace traveled to France to see and fly in it. Soon after, the Short brothers received their first order for a plane, and it was designed by Horace. Their first aircraft was unsuccessful in flight, but biplane number 2 flew on 27 Sept. 1909. A week after its first flight, it was co-piloted by a piglet.

The year 1936 brought a partnership between H & W and the Short Brothers called Short and Harland Limited. The newly formed company built 189 Handley Page Hereford bombers for the RAF, and specialized in flying boats and seaplanes.

The industrial decline of East Belfast was inevitable. Workman Clark closed in 1935 following financial troubles brought on by the Depression. The Short aircraft factory was completely destroyed by Hitler’s air force. The rise of the jet-powered airliner squashed demand for ocean liners—the last built by H &W was in 1960. The British government started advancing loans and subsidies to shipyards to preserve jobs during the 1960s, and eventually H&W was nationalized in 1975. It was privatised again in 1989, but the number of employees had fallen to around 3,000. H & W now constructs bridges and vessels for the offshore oil and gas industry.

Samson and Goliath are the names of H & W’s massive yellow cranes that still dominate the Belfast skyline. Once symbols of industrial strength and fortitude, today the cranes are operational but hardly in use. Samson and Goliath creak and groan like two old men lamenting the loss of their glorious youth. Their persistence seems sad and pathetic. However, the Skainos Project hopes to bring new life to the skyline in East Belfast. A vibrant new structure will accompany Samson and Goliath, rejuvenating the spirits of the community and creating new jobs and new hope.

A view of the Harland and Wolffe cranes from the north of the city.

Some days it seems like the whole of Belfast is suspended from cranes.

This is a view across the Lagan River, from the city side into the Harland & Wolffe shipyard, famous for being the yard that built the Titanic.