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EVENING
HUES OF DUSK FLOOD BELFAST AS THE CITY TURNS ON ITS LIGHTS.
The city of Belfast sits in a saucer of green hills astride the mouth of the River Lagan. Look along any of its streets and, on three sides, green hills or heathered mountains dominate. On the fourth side, you look seaward towards Belfast Lough past ‘Samson and Goliath’ the great cranes of the old Harland and Wolff shipyard where the ill-fated Titanic was built. The name of the city is a corruption of the Irish Gae beal feirste which translates as ‘the approach to the sandbank’, and though archaeologists have found flint arrowheads in that great sandbank dating back to the Stone Age, the first written evidence of a settlement here dates only from the 15th century. That record notes the destruction of a castle, sadly not the last building in the city to meet with a violent end as those who experienced the turbulent 1970’s know. But this is now, once again, a city of cheerful pubs and extravagant churches which owes much of its character to two men of the mid 19th century; to the providence of one and the improvidence of the other. The former, an astute property developer, engineer, architect and politician named Charles Lanyon, prospered by marrying the boss’s daughter then built a legacy in stone, giving the city the Queen's Bridge, Queen's University and Assembly College behind it, the Northern Bank Building in Waring Street, the First Trust Bank Building, Queen's Square, as well as the Custom House plus Crumlin Road Gaol and the Court House (no longer active) opposite — an underground tunnel connecting the two buildings. The latter individual was the profligate second Marquis of Donegall, whose family once owned the whole town, but who ran up debts so large they could only be discharged by selling the whole estate, thereby opening up the Lagan's then green banks to speculative businessmen. Financial institutions in those days appeared and disappeared with alarming frequency and architects such as Lanyon were commissioned to give them a more trustworthy appearance. Lanyon came up with a new urban language that ensured that the good citizens of Belfast would never again have to wonder what the function of a building was. Banks became the solid castles of merchant princes, prisons sought to look foreboding and impregnable, court-houses intimidating, whilst the churches soared upward towards God, but kept, at the same time, their feet firmly planted in Ulster’s soil. To gain an understanding of this city’s soul take a tour of Lanyon’s buildings ending at his Sinclair Seamen’s Church in Corporation Square. The pulpit of this extraordinary building incorporates the bows, bowsprit and figurehead of the good ship Mizpah, the organ has port and starboard lights, the bell of the Second World War’s HMS Hood is on display and the collection plates are lifeboat shaped moneyboxes. Even the font is a ship’s binnacle. The church has been refurbished since a fire some years ago.
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