Falls Road, Belfast
The Falls Road is the main road through West Belfast, Northern Ireland, running from Divis Street in Belfast City Centre to Andersonstown in the suburbs. The name has been synonymous for at least a century and a half with the Catholic community in the city. The road is usually referred to as the Falls Road, rather than as Falls Road. It is known in Irish as the Bóthar na bhFál and as the Faas Raa in Ulster-Scots.
Location
The Falls Road forms the first three miles of the A501 which starts in Belfast city centre and runs southwest through the city forking just after the Falls Park into the B102 which continues for a short distance to Andersonstown. The A501 continues as the Glen Road. The area is composed largely of residential housing, with more public sector housing in the lower sections of the road. There are many small shops lining the road as well as schools, churches, hospitals and leisure facilities. Employment in the area was originally dominated by the large linen mills but these have mostly closed. Today, local employment is in the service sector, health and education with additional employment in other parts of the city.The Falls Road district can be roughly divided into three sections. The Lower Falls which includes Divis Street starts near the city centre and continues to the junction with the Grosvenor Road. The middle Falls district centres on Beechmount. The Upper Falls starts about the Donegall Road and continues into Andersonstown.
The short stretch of the road from the city centre to the start of Divis Street at Millfield is known as Castle Street after the former Belfast Castle which was built nearby by the Normans in the 12th century. Castle Street begins at the junction with Royal Avenue and Donegall Place, the main shopping district of Belfast. Two large buildings flank either side of the entrance to the street. On one side is the Bank Buildings and on the other is the former home of the Anderson & McAuley department store.
Near the start of Castle Street is Chapel Lane on which St. Mary's Church is situated. This is the oldest Catholic church in Belfast and dates from 1784. Nearby on Bank Street is located the historic Kelly's Cellars bar which dates from 1720. Opposite was located St. Mary's Hall, a popular social venue which was constructed in 1875 but demolished in 1990. Bank Street begins at Royal Avenue. The ornate building at its entrance was the former home of the Provincial Bank of Ireland which was erected in 1869. When it closed in 1989, the building was occupied until 2021 by a Tesco store. It was then refurbished as a social facility by Belfast City Council.
History
The Falls Road derives its name from the Irish túath na bhFál, an Irish petty kingdom whose name means "territory of the enclosures". These enclosures resulted from the Plantation of Ulster which occurred from the seventeenth century. This territory was roughly the same as that of the ecclesiastical parish of the Shankill, which spanned a large portion of modern-day Belfast.The road was originally a country lane running east toward Belfast, increasingly populated on either side by Catholics from western districts. Refugees from a rural poverty that had been intensified by Belfast's mechanisation of what had been a cottage textile industry and, in the 1840s, by famine,they were drawn to the area by the prospects for women and children of employment in new linen mills. All of these mills have now closed or have been repurposed. This original area, which was centred on the junction of modern-day Millfield and College Avenue on what is now Divis Street, was known as Falls and lent its name to the road. which had previously been called The Pound. The housing in the area developed in the 19th century and was organised in narrow streets of small terraced housing. The Westlink linking the M1 and M2 motorways now cuts through this area.
Lower Falls
This section of the road stretches from the junction of Castle Street and Millfield to the Grosvenor Road/Springfield Road intersection. The lower part of the road is named Divis Street after the Divis mountain which overlooks much of West Belfast. The Falls Road proper begins at the junction with Northumberland Street and Albert Street. The area to the south of Divis Street/Lower Falls Road was considered the heart of the district and was initially composed of rows of small terraced houses which were constructed in the mid to late nineteenth century to house mill workers and their families. The area is detailed in the 1931 Ordnance Survey map of the area. Shortly after Millfield, the road crosses over the Westlink which links three motorways - the M1 to the southwest of the city, the M2 to the north and the M3 to the east. Running alongside the Westlink is Townsend Street which originally marked the end of Belfast. Townsend Street links Divis Street with Peter's Hill at the bottom of the Shankill Road.Housing
The housing in the area developed in the 19th century and was organised in narrow streets of small terraced housing. Many of the streets were named after local mill owners. Alexander Street West was named after John Alexander who was a local mill owner. He also named Milford Street after Milford Mills, County Carlow where he had a house. Ardmoulin Street was named after Ardmoulin House, the residence of John Chartres of Falls Flax and Weaving Company. Craig Street was called after the Craig family who owned the New Northern Mill at the corner of Northumberland Street.By the 1960s the buildings in the area had decayed considerably and the Belfast Corporation introduced a major development plan which involved wholescale demolition of much of the area. Many of the old street names were retained in the new housing development. In the Divis Street area, the housing was replaced with the Divis Flats complex which consisted of twelve blocks of flats built on top of the historic district formerly known as the Pound Loney. The high point of this redevelopment was Divis Tower. Because of its rapid deterioration, the whole complex, except for Divis Tower, was demolished thirty years later and replaced with blocks of terraced housing.
Past Albert Street, more mills were built on the northern side and more streets of small terraced houses on the southern side. The old streets were named after characters and events in the Crimean War which was occurring at that time. These include Raglan Street, Garnet Street, Alma Street, Balaklava Street, Inkerman Street, Sevastopol Street, Plevna Street, Varna Street as well as Omar Street and Osman Street. There were also streets named after Balkan places such as Bosnia Street, Balkan Street, Roumania Street and Servia Street. Other streets were named after contemporary political and royal figures such as Peel Street and Albert Street. Marchioness Street and Lady Street are probably named after Lady Dufferin, the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, originally from Killyleagh, who had been the Vicereine of India. These street names are recalled in the collection of poetry The Irish for No by Ciaran Carson. In one of the poems entitled "The Exiles' Club", Carson imagines a group of Belfast exiles:
All of these houses have now been demolished and replaced with modern terraced houses.
At the foot of Divis Street is located the Morning Star House. This is a hostel which provides temporary accommodation for homeless people. It is run by the Legion of Mary and was originally located at the corner of Percy Street. Additional accommodation for homeless people is provided nearby by First Housing at Ardmoulin Mews, off Ardmoulin Street.
Schools
At the foot of Divis Street is located the Millfield campus of Belfast Metropolitan College, the largest further and higher education college in Northern Ireland. Nearby was located the original St. Mary's Christian Brothers' Grammar School. In the 1960s, this school transferred to a greenfield site on the Glen Road in the upper Falls. The original school building is now the home of the Edmund Rice Schools Trust. Opposite is St. Mary's Primary School. Nearby is the location of the Árd Scoil which was historically the centre for Irish language and culture in the area. Just past it was located the Hastings Street RUC station.There are currently two other primary schools in the Lower Falls district. These are St. Peter's on Ross Road and St. Joseph's on Slate Street. In addition, there is the Irish language Gaelscoil an Lonnáin which occupies the site of St Finian's Primary School at the top end of Leeson Street. St Finian's School and the nearby St. Gall's Primary School closed in the late twentieth century due to declining student numbers. These schools were run by the De La Salle Christian Brothers. The name of the latter school survives in the name of St. Galls' Avenue. St Comgall's Public Elementary School, in Divis Street, opened in 1932 but closed in 1988. It has been transformed into a community hub for a range of community and business activities and is involved in the development of a Visitor Heritage Interpretation Space for the area. The centre is named Ionad Eileen Howell after a local community activist. The Falls Community Council is based in the centre. It provides a range of local services and is committed to the regeneration of the area. St. Brendan's Primary School on nearby Milford Street closed in the 1960s but for two years housed some pupils from St. Mary's Christian Brothers' Grammar School which at that time had exceeded its capacity in its Barrack Street premises.
The Dunlewey Centre is located near Gaelscoil an Lonnáin. The building was originally the home of the Bon Secours Sisters and also housed St. Vincent's Primary School for Girls. It is a now the home of a community education centre. Dunlewey Street on which it is located is named after the residence of a local mill owner, William Ross, who owned a house in Dunlewey, County Donegal. The nearby Ross Road is also named after William Ross.