Foreign Perspectives

Part of the European Heritage weekend was a trip round the architectural highlights of Belfast. Not much was said about it in the little writeup other than naming four or five places which looked interesting enough. Many freebie events are abbreviated in some way and as this was a one-off bus trip we were expecting something like 40 minutes or so but it ran for a relatively packed two hours of sightseeing or rather site-seeing which is more than a tenners worth of value these days so we’re off to a good start for the weekend.

It started with a couple of orbits around the city hall which highlighted just how historic many of those buildings are. The City Hall itself dates back to 1898 and it built on the site of the Linen Hall, many of the major buildings surrounding it being former linen warehouses. There’s a duplicate of it in Durham, South Africa. In those days linen along with shipbuilding were the major industries of the city. Starting from the city hall many of the public buildings continue to use the Portland stone (from Dorset) which it does. Amongst all the white stone there are a number of sandstone buildings and those two materials are still used in many of the landmark projects to the present.

From there we were off towards the Falls Road passing the former Poor House (now a retirement community) and a little collection of unique buildings around Clifton Street including the heritage listed former Methodist church. Round the corner from that is St Peters cathedral which, despite its age, looks quite modern from the outside. We’ll have a return visit to a number of buildings in that area later on.

Along the way we went past Queen’s University which was the only building that Queen Victoria was brave enough to visit as it was felt safe from the cholera epidemic that was sweeping the city at the time. The plague pit in the Friar’s Bush cemetery is still not considered safe and is the reason why the road narrows at that point.

Heading on out of the city took us past the shipyard and, of course, the newest addition to the city: Titanic Quarter which is adding around 1/3rd to the overall built space of the city so should have quite a major impact once the project is completed. That leg took us to Parliament Buildings which has a lot more symbolism than I imagined: 365 feet wide for the days of the year, 7 stories for the days of the week and six columns for the six counties.

We were getting a little bit overdosed on architecture by then but on the way back into the town picked out a number of unexpectedly unique buildings eg the catholic church close to the halls of residence, the remains of the oldest house in Belfast and, of course, the many Victorian and Georgian buildings that you generally ignore as you pass them.

Definitely a worthwhile trip.