Belfast

*This article is from Wikipedia*
Belfast (/ˈbɛlfɑːst/ BEL-fahst; from the Irish Béal Feirste) is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, a devolved region of the United Kingdom. With a population of 343,542 (2019), it follows Dublin as the second largest city on the island of Ireland.

Developed from the early 17th century at the head of Belfast Lough by English and Scottish settlers, in the 1780s the town emerged as an international centre for the production of linen and as Atlantic-trade port. By the time Belfast achieved city status, a century later, its mills and factories had drawn in a large Irish-Catholic population to its western outskirts. It had also established its reputation for sectarian conflict overlain by division on Ireland's future in the United Kingdom. At the beginning of the 1920s, the crisis induced by the secession of southern Ireland and the establishment in Belfast of a devolved government for the Protestant-majority north-east led to street fighting.

In the decades after the Second World War, the textile mills closed and Harland and Wolff, once the world's largest shipyard, shed employment. At the same time, the British Exchequer financed greatly expanded access to health care, education and housing. In these cross-currents of economic and social change, conflict revived over civil and political rights, and over the continued British connection.

In the late 1960s, Belfast entered into a thirty year period of political conflict in which assassination and bombing formed a backdrop to life in the city. A physical legacy of "the Troubles" remains in the "peace walls" separating loyalist from nationalist districts.

Since 1998 Belfast Agreement on a new "power-sharing" dispensation for Northern Ireland, public and private investment has promoted an uneven development of enterprise and employment in services. These have included tourism, back-office financial and business services, film and television production.

Belfast remains a port with commercial and industrial docks, with many businesses (including a much-reduced Harland and Wolff) still drawing on the engineering legacy of shipbuilding and related trades. Areas of the industrial harbour and Lough shoreline have been reclaimed for other purposes including the maritime-heritage Titanic Belfast attraction, and the George Best Belfast City Airport.

The Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC) has listed Belfast, on a measure of its "global network connectivities", in a secondary tier of thirty cities as diverse as Adelaide, Kolkata, and San Jose.

Name[edit]
The name Belfast derives from the Irish 'Béal Feirsde', later spelt 'Béal Feirste ( Irish pronunciation: [bʲeːlˠ ˈfʲɛɾˠ(ə)ʃtʲə].) The word 'béal' means "mouth" or "river-mouth" while 'feirsde/feirste' is the genitive singular of 'fearsaid and refers to a sandbar or tidal ford across a river's mouth. The name therefore translates literally as "(river) mouth of the sandbar" or "(river) mouth of the ford". The sandbar formed at the confluence (at present-day Donegall Quay) of two rivers: the Lagan, which flows into Belfast Lough, and the Lagan's tributary the Farset ("mouth of the Farset" might be an alternative interpretation) This area became the hub around which the original settlement developed.

The compilers of Ulster-Scots use various transcriptions of local pronunciations of "Belfast" (with which they sometimes also content) including  Bilfawst, Bilfaust or Baelfawst.

History[edit]
Main article: History of Belfast

The county borough of Belfast was created when it was granted city status by Queen Victoria in 1888, and the city continues to straddle County Antrim on the left bank of the Lagan and County Down on the right.

Origins[edit]
The site of Belfast has been occupied since the Bronze Age. The Giant's Ring, a 5,000-year-old henge, is located near the city, and the remains of Iron Age hill forts can still be seen in the surrounding hills. Belfast remained a small settlement of little importance during the Middle Ages. John de Courcy built a castle on what is now Castle Street but this was smaller and of less strategic importance than his fortress on the Lough shore at Carrickfergus built in 1177.

As lords of Clandeboye, the O'Neill dynasty were the local Irish power. In 1616, after the Nine Years War, the last of the local line, Conn O'Neill (remembered in Connswater River) was forced to sell their remaining stronghold, the Grey Castle or Castlereagh (An Caisleán Riabhach in Irish) in hills to the east of Belfast, together with surrounding lands, to English and Scottish adventurers.

The Early Town[edit]
A 1685 plan of Belfast by the military engineer Thomas Phillips, showing the town's ramparts and Lord Chichester's castle, which was destroyed in a fire in 1708

Volunteer Corps parade down High Street, Bastille Day, 1792

Belfast was established in 1613 as an English town by Sir Arthur Chichester. The inhabitants took Anglican communion at St George's on the quay-side end of High Street. But it was with Scottish Presbyterians that the town was to grow as an industrial port. Together with French Huguenot refugees, they introduced the production of linen, an industry that carried Belfast trade to the Americas.

Reluctant to let valuable crop go to seed, flax growers and linen merchants benefited from a three-way exchange. Fortunes were made carrying rough linen clothing and salted provisions to the slave plantations of the West Indies; sugar and rum to Baltimore and New York; and for the return to Belfast flaxseed from the colonies where the relative scarcity of labour made unprofitable the processing of the flax into linen fibre. Profits from the trade financed improvements in the town's commercial infrastructure, including the Lagan Canal, new docks and quays, and the construction of the White Linen Hall which together attracted to Belfast the linen trade that had formerly gone through Dublin. Public outrage, however, defeated the proposal of the greatest of the merchant houses, Cunningham and Greg, to commission ships for the Middle Passage.

As "Dissenters" from the established Church, the Presbyterians were conscious of sharing, if only in part, the disabilities of Ireland's dispossessed Roman Catholic majority; and of being denied representation in the Irish Parliament. Belfast's two MPs Belfast remained nominees of the Chichesters (Marquesses of Donegall). With their American kinsmen, the the region's Presbyterians were to share a growing disaffection from the Crown.

When early in the American War of Independence, Belfast Lough was raided by the privateer, John Paul Jones, the townspeople assembled their own Volunteer militia. Formed ostensibly for defence of the Kingdom, the Volunteers were soon pressing their own protest against "taxation without representation". Further emboldened by the French Revolution, a more radical element in the town, the United Irishmen, called for Catholic emancipation and an independent representative government for the country. In hopes of French assistance, in 1798 the Society organised a republican insurrection. The rebel tradesmen and tenant farmers were defeated north of the town at the Battle of Antrim and to the south at the Battle of Ballynahinch.

Among surviving elements of the early town are the Belfast Entries, 17th-century alleyways off High Street, including, in Winecellar's Entry, White's Tavern (rebuilt 1790); the First Presbyterian (Non-Subscribing) Church (1781-83) in Rosemary Street; and the oldest public building in Belfast, Clifden House (1771-74), the Belfast Charitable Society poorhouse on North Queen Street.

The Industrial City[edit]
High Street, c. 1906 Rapid industrial growth in the nineteenth century drew in landless Catholics from outlying rural and western districts, most settling to the west of the town. The plentiful supply of cheap labour helped attract the English and Scottish capital to Belfast, but it was also a cause of insecurity. Protestant workers organised to secure their access to jobs and housing, gave a new lease of life in the town to the once largely rural Orange Order. Sectarian tensions were heightened by movements to repeal the Acts of Union (which followed the 1798 rebellion) and to restore a Parliament in Dublin. Given the progressive enlargement of the British electoral franchise, this would have had an overwhelming Catholic majority and, it was widely believed, interests inimical to the Protestant and industrial north. In 1864 and 1886 the issue had helped trigger deadly sectarian riots.

Sectarian tension was not in itself unique to Belfast: it was shared with Liverpool and Glasgow, cities that following the Great Famine had also experienced large scale Irish Catholic immigration. But also common to this "industrial triangle" were traditions of labour militancy. In 1919, workers in all three cities struck for a ten-hour reduction in the working week. In Belfast—notwithstanding the political friction caused by Sinn Féin's electoral triumph in the south—this involved some 60,000 workers, Protestant and Catholic, in a four-week walk-out.

In a demonstration of their resolve not to submit to a Dublin parliament, in 1912 Belfast City Hall unionists presented the Ulster Covenant, which, with an associated Declaration for women, was to accumulate over 470,000 signatures. This was followed by the drilling and eventual arming of a 100,000 strong Ulster Volunteer Force. The crisis was abated by the onset of the Great War, the sacrifices of the UVF in which continue to be commemorated in the city (Somme Day) by unionist and loyalist organisations.

In 1921, as the greater part of Ireland seceded as the Irish Free State, Belfast became the capital of the six counties remaining as Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom. In 1932 the devolved parliament for the region was housed in new buildings at Stormont on the eastern edge of the city. In 1920–21, as the two parts of Ireland drew apart, up to 500 people were killed in disturbances in Belfast, the bloodiest period of strife in the city until the Troubles of the late 1960s onwards. Aftermath of the Blitz in May 1941 Belfast was heavily bombed during World War II. Initial raids were a surprise as the city was believed to be outside of the range of German bomber planes. In one raid, in 1941, German bombers killed around one thousand people and left tens of thousands homeless. Apart from London, this was the greatest loss of life in a night raid during the Blitz.

The Troubles[edit]
Main article: The Troubles

Belfast has been the capital of Northern Ireland since its establishment in 1921 following the Government of Ireland Act 1920. It had been the scene of various episodes of sectarian conflict between its Catholic and Protestant populations. These opposing groups in this conflict are now often termed republican and loyalist respectively, although they are also loosely referred to as 'nationalist' and 'unionist'. The most recent example of this conflict was known as the Troubles – a civil conflict that raged from around 1969 to 1998. Shankill Road during the Troubles, 1970s Belfast saw some of the worst of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, particularly in the 1970s, with rival paramilitary groups formed on both sides. Bombing, assassination and street violence formed a backdrop to life throughout the Troubles. In December 1971, 15 people, including two children, were killed when the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) bombed McGurk's Bar, the greatest loss of life in a single incident in Belfast. Loyalist paramilitaries including the UVF and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) said that the killings they carried out were in retaliation for the IRA campaign. Most of their victims were Catholics with no links to the Provisional IRA. A particularly notorious group, based on the Shankill Road in the mid-1970s, became known as the Shankill Butchers. The Provisional IRA detonated 22 bombs within the confines of Belfast city centre on 21 July 1972, on what is known as Bloody Friday, killing nine people.

During the Troubles the Europa Hotel suffered 36 bomb attacks becoming known as "the most bombed hotel in the world". In all, over 1,600 people were killed in political violence in the city between 1969 and 2001.

21st century[edit]
Belfast city centre has undergone expansion and regeneration since the late 1990s, notably around Victoria Square. In late 2018, it was announced that Belfast would undergo a £500 million urban regeneration project known as "Tribeca" on a large city centre site. However, tensions and civil disturbances still occur despite the 1998 peace agreement, including sectarian riots and paramilitary attacks.

Belfast and the Causeway Coast were together named the best place to visit in 2018 by Lonely Planet. Tourist numbers have increased since the end of The Troubles, boosted in part by newer attractions such as Titanic Belfast and tours of locations used in the HBO television series Game of Thrones.

Governance[edit]
Belfast was granted borough status by James VI and I in 1613 and official city status by Queen Victoria in 1888. Since 1973 it has been a local government district under local administration by Belfast City Council. Belfast is represented in both the British House of Commons and in the Northern Ireland Assembly. For elections to the European Parliament, Belfast was within the Northern Ireland constituency.

Local government[edit]
Further information: Belfast City Council

Belfast City Council is the local council with responsibility for the city. The city's elected officials are the Lord Mayor of Belfast, Deputy Lord Mayor and High Sheriff who are elected from among 60 councillors. The first Lord Mayor of Belfast was Daniel Dixon, who was elected in 1892. The Lord Mayor for 2019–20 is John Finucane Sinn Féin, while the Deputy Lord Mayor is an Alliance Party of Northern Ireland councillor. The Lord Mayor's duties include presiding over meetings of the council, receiving distinguished visitors to the city, representing and promoting the city on the national and international stage. Belfast City Hall In 1997, unionists lost overall control of Belfast City Council for the first time in its history, with the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland gaining the balance of power between nationalists and unionists. This position was confirmed in four subsequent council elections, with mayors from Sinn Féin and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), both of whom are nationalist parties, and the cross-community Alliance Party regularly elected since. The first nationalist Lord Mayor of Belfast was Alban Maginness of the SDLP, in 1997.

Northern Ireland Assembly and Westminster[edit]
Stormont is home to the Northern Ireland Assembly. Further information: Northern Ireland Assembly and Parliament of the United Kingdom

See also: Belfast (Northern Ireland Parliament constituencies) and Belfast (UK Parliament constituency)

As Northern Ireland's capital city, Belfast is host to the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont, the site of the devolved legislature for Northern Ireland. Belfast is divided into four Northern Ireland Assembly and UK parliamentary constituencies: Belfast North, Belfast West, Belfast South and Belfast East. All four extend beyond the city boundaries to include parts of Castlereagh, Lisburn and Newtownabbey districts. In the Northern Ireland Assembly Elections in 2017, Belfast elected 20 Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs), 5 from each constituency. Belfast elected 7 Sinn Féin, 5 DUP, 2 SDLP, 3 Alliance Party, 1 UUP, 1 Green and 1 PBPA MLAs.In the 2017 UK general election, Belfast elected one Member of Parliament (MP) from each constituency to the House of Commons at Westminster, London. This comprised 3 DUP and 1 Sinn Féin. In the 2019 UK general election, the DUP lost two of their seats in Belfast; to Sinn Féin in North Belfast and to the SDLP in South Belfast.

Geography[edit]
Aerial view of Belfast. Satellite image of Belfast with Lough

Belfast is at the western end of Belfast Lough and at the mouth of the River Lagan giving it the ideal location for the shipbuilding industry that once made it famous. When the Titanic was built in Belfast in 1911–1912, Harland and Wolff had the largest shipyard in the world. Belfast is situated on Northern Ireland's eastern coast at 54°35′49″N 05°55′45″W. A consequence of this northern latitude is that it both endures short winter days and enjoys long summer evenings. During the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, local sunset is before 16:00 while sunrise is around 08:45. This is balanced by the summer solstice in June, when the sun sets after 22:00 and rises before 05:00.

In 1994, a weir was built across the river by the Laganside Corporation to raise the average water level so that it would cover the unseemly mud flats which gave Belfast its name (from Irish Béal Feirste 'The sandy ford at the river mouth'). The area of Belfast Local Government District is 42.31 square miles (109.6 km2).

The River Farset is also named after this silt deposit (from the Irish feirste meaning "sand spit"). Originally a more significant river than it is today, the Farset formed a dock on High Street until the mid 19th century. Bank Street in the city centre referred to the river bank and Bridge Street was named for the site of an early Farset bridge.Superseded by the River Lagan as the more important river in the city, the Farset now languishes in obscurity, under High Street. There are no less than twelve other minor rivers in and around Belfast, namely the Blackstaff, the Colin, the Connswater, the Cregagh, the Derriaghy, the Forth, the Knock, the Legoniel, the Loop, the Milewater, the Purdysburn and the Ravernet. Cavehill, a basaltic hill overlooking the city The city is flanked on the north and northwest by a series of hills, including Divis Mountain, Black Mountain and Cavehill, thought to be the inspiration for Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. When Swift was living at Lilliput Cottage near the bottom of Belfast's Limestone Road, he imagined that the Cavehill resembled the shape of a sleeping giant safeguarding the city. The shape of the giant's nose, known locally as Napoleon's Nose, is officially called McArt's Fort probably named after Art O'Neill, a 17th-century chieftain who controlled the area at that time.The Castlereagh Hills overlook the city on the southeast.

Climate[edit]
As with the vast majority of the rest of Ireland, Belfast has a temperate oceanic climate (Cfb in the Köppen climate classification), with a narrow range of temperatures and rainfall throughout the year. The climate of Belfast is significantly milder than most other locations in the world at a similar latitude, due to the warming influence of the Gulf Stream. There are currently five weather observing stations in the Belfast area: Helen's Bay, Stormont, Newforge, Castlereagh, and Ravenhill Road. Slightly further afield is Aldergrove Airport. The highest temperature recorded at any official weather station in the Belfast area was 30.8 °C (87.4 °F) at Shaw's Bridge on 12 July 1983.

The city gets significant precipitation (greater than 1mm) on 157 days in an average year with an average annual rainfall of 846 millimetres (33.3 in), less than areas of northern England or most of Scotland, but higher than Dublin or the south-east coast of Ireland. As an urban and coastal area, Belfast typically gets snow on fewer than 10 days per year. The absolute maximum temperature at the weather station at Stormont is 29.7 °C (85.5 °F), set during July 1983. In an average year the warmest day will rise to a temperature of 25.0 °C (77.0 °F) with a day of 25.1 °C (77.2 °F) or above occurring roughly once every two in three years. The absolute minimum temperature at Stormont is −9.9 °C (14 °F), during January 1982, although in an average year the coldest night will fall no lower than −4.5 °C (23.9 °F) with air frost being recorded on just 26 nights. The lowest temperature to occur in recent years was −8.8 °C (16.2 °F) on 22 December 2010.

The nearest weather station for which sunshine data and longer term observations are available is Belfast International Airport (Aldergrove). Temperature extremes here have slightly more variability due to the more inland location. The average warmest day at Aldergrove for example will reach a temperature of 25.4 °C (77.7 °F), (1.0 °C [1.8 °F] higher than Stormont) and 2.1 days should attain a temperature of 25.1 °C (77.2 °F) or above in total. Conversely the coldest night of the year averages −6.9 °C (19.6 °F) (or 1.9 °C [3.4 °F] lower than Stormont) and 39 nights should register an air frost. Some 13 more frosty nights than Stormont. The minimum temperature at Aldergrove was −14.9 °C (5.2 °F), during December 2010.

Areas and districts[edit]
Main article: Subdivisions of Belfast

Further information on City Layout: Transport in Belfast § City layout Royal Avenue The townlands of Belfast are its oldest surviving land divisions and most pre-date the city. Belfast expanded very rapidly from being a market town to becoming an industrial city during the course of the 19th century. Because of this, it is less an agglomeration of villages and towns which have expanded into each other, than other comparable cities, such as Manchester or Birmingham. The city expanded to the natural barrier of the hills that surround it, overwhelming other settlements. Consequently, the arterial roads along which this expansion took place (such as the Falls Road or the Newtownards Road) are more significant in defining the districts of the city than nucleated settlements. Parts of Belfast are segregated by walls, commonly known as "peace lines", erected by the British Army after August 1969, and which still divide 14 districts in the inner city. In 2008 a process was proposed for the removal of the 'peace walls'. In June 2007, a £16 million programme was announced which will transform and redevelop streets and public spaces in the city centre. Major arterial roads (quality bus corridor) into the city include the Antrim Road, Shore Road, Holywood Road, Newtownards Road, Castlereagh Road, Cregagh Road, Ormeau Road, Malone Road, Lisburn Road, Falls Road, Springfield Road, Shankill Road, and Crumlin Road, Four Winds. St Anne's Cathedral Belfast city centre is divided into two postcode districts, BT1 for the area lying north of the City Hall, and BT2 for the area to its south. The industrial estate and docklands BT3. The rest of the Belfast post town is divided in a broadly clockwise system from BT3 in the north-east round to BT15, with BT16 and BT17 further out to the east and west respectively. Although BT derives from Belfast, the BT postcode area extends across the whole of Northern Ireland.

Since 2001, boosted by increasing numbers of tourists, the city council has developed a number of cultural quarters. The Cathedral Quarter takes its name from St Anne's Cathedral (Church of Ireland) and has taken on the mantle of the city's key cultural locality. It hosts a yearly visual and performing arts festival.

Custom House Square is one of the city's main outdoor venues for free concerts and street entertainment. The Gaeltacht Quarter is an area around the Falls Road in west Belfast which promotes and encourages the use of the Irish language. The Queen's Quarter in south Belfast is named after Queen's University. The area has a large student population and hosts the annual Belfast International Arts Festival each autumn. It is home to Botanic Gardens and the Ulster Museum, which was reopened in 2009 after major redevelopment. The Golden Mile is the name given to the mile between Belfast City Hall and Queen's University. Taking in Dublin Road, Great Victoria Street, Shaftesbury Square and Bradbury Place, it contains some of the best bars and restaurants in the city. Since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the nearby Lisburn Road has developed into the city's most exclusive shopping strip. Finally, the Titanic Quarter covers 0.75 km2 (185 acres) of reclaimed land adjacent to Belfast Harbour, formerly known as Queen's Island. Named after  RMS Titanic, which was built here in 1912, work has begun which promises to transform some former shipyard land into "one of the largest waterfront developments in Europe". Plans include apartments, a riverside entertainment district, and a major Titanic-themed museum.

In its 2018 report on Best Places to Live in Britain, The Sunday Times named Ballyhackamore, "the brunch capital of Belfast", as the best place in Northern Ireland. The district of Ballyhackamore has even acquired the name "Ballysnackamore" due to the preponderance of dining establishments in the area.