A new volume about Belfast from the RIA details the emergence of this relatively 'youthful' city, writes Eileen Battersby.
Considering its central role in Irish history, particularly in the development of radical thought and the Dissenting tradition, Belfast is surprisingly young. This year marks only its 400th anniversary which, when placed in a European context, appears positively youthful. The regional capital of Northern Ireland is a settlement effectively dating from the late Elizabethan period, and then tentatively, which was to come vividly to life on the heightened energy of the Industrial Revolution.
Belfast was Ireland's first Industrial city, and in many ways remains closer to the British experience than to that of the Irish.
With the publication of Belfast, Part 1, to 1840, the twelfth fascicle in the Royal Irish Academy's Irish Historic Towns Atlas series, the evolution of the town on the River Lagan is well charted by Raymond Gillespie and Stephen A. Royle. Words may tell a story, but words and even pictures invariably must concede second place to the historical geographer's surest tool: the map.
This new atlas, presented in the standard series format, and further benefiting through Belfast City Council funding, offers more coloured maps than the previous fascicles. Some, such as that of the large-scale 'Belfast Circa 1830', and a reproduced image of an original ink-on-linen map, 'Belfast 1696', are particularly outstanding. Also included are high-quality reproductions of period watercolours of the riverside town Belfast once was.
In contrast to the 11 towns and cities already mapped - Dublin, Kilkenny, Bray, Downpatrick, Maynooth, Athlone, Mullingar, Kells, Bandon, Carrickfergus and Kildare - Belfast has no medieval story. Unlike Dublin, there was no Viking activity.
Indeed unique to this study - and which will be even clearer on the publication of Belfast, Part 2 in 2006 - is the emphasis on industry which quickly replaced the initial merchant and commercial activity.
Even by the 19th century, commentators were aware that Belfast was, as Raymond Gillespie remarks in the opening paragraph of his rather conversational essay, "a very untypical Irish town" with "an untypical history". Population figures reveal a great deal. By 1841, Belfast - a town initially shaped by one landlord family, the Chichesters, (after 1647, earls of Donegall, and later marquises) - had the third largest population on the island, exceeded only by those of Dublin and Cork.
Within a decade, Belfast's population had surpassed that of Cork and briefly, at the close of the 19th century, it overtook Dublin's. While about a third of Dublin and Cork's population were employed in manufacturing, more than half of Belfast's workers were engaged by industry. Belfast native Gillespie makes the point that, while the three cities were situated at crossing sites on major rivers, Dublin and Cork had been medieval settlements with strong monastic pasts and each had evolved slowly. Belfast, however, "was the product of landlord planning in the early 17th century". For much of Belfast's early history, the town is overshadowed by neighbouring Carrickfergus, which always remained important to generations of the Chichester family. By the late 18th century, the clan were the largest landowners in Ireland.
Long before Sir John Chichester seized Belfast Castle in 1597, a castle had been built in the early 13th century at the lowest fordable point across the Lagan. This "ford" was in fact a sandbar. As Gillespie writes, "Belfast seems an unpromising site for a town. It lies at the head of what, in the 16th century, was the poorly drained and densely wooded valley of the River Lagan. As a result the town is low-lying, in places being less than 6 metres above sea level." Flooding was always a threat.
That castle, later to be known as Belfast Castle, would be destroyed and rebuilt many times before being burnt out in 1708.
It was first completed in 1226 in order to protect the ford. By 1333, a small settlement described as "a borough" had established itself around the castle. Both were destroyed that same year on the murder of William de Burgh, earl of Ulster.
Successive plans to make Belfast more than a trading point came to little, and the O'Neills continued to hold the castle until the impact of the Nine Years' War saw Chichester being sent to Belfast. He took the castle with 100 men. Within two years of this, plans of building a town there had again come to nothing.
In 1603, the castle by then in ruins, another Chichester, Sir Arthur - a former adventurer, but by then governor of Carrickfergus - offered to rebuild it in exchange for "a grant of the castle and the surrounding property". A king's letter secured the deal for Sir Arthur, a patent was issued by November 1603 and Sir Arthur "thus became the landlord of what would be Belfast". During the next six years, it developed as a planned town. It is interesting to note that, despite the known defensive importance of the site, Chichester did not wall Belfast as he had Carrickfergus. He appears to have deliberately redirected the site away from the original ford, and closer to the mouth of the River Farset, in order to facilitate ships. Clearly, trading was his motivation, and markets and fairs took place.
Sir Arthur also replaced the medieval castle in 1611 with a brick structure. However, when in Ulster, he preferred to reside at Carrickfergus, itself dominated by Carrickfergus Castle. Believed to have been built by John De Courcy after 1177, it remains among Ireland's finest surviving Norman fortifications.
While the Chichesters had absolute control, the town's corporation - acquired in 1613 - was powerless; the family also had no money. The development of the town depended on a process known as building lease, by which a tenant leased a site and built a house on it. Such a method required enforced conditions regarding a uniform style and design. Belfast had no local stone, so timber was a common material - but increased the risk of fire.
Rebellion in 1641 saw little impact on Belfast. However, events did bring a Scots garrison to the city. With it arrived Presbyterianism and the beginnings of Belfast's merchant community. The expansion of trade is well documented, as is that of fledging manufacturing, such as tanning, sugar and pottery. By 1693, an observer would describe Belfast as "a very large town". Land reclamation was another factor. Successful merchants began building themselves fine brick houses.
Running parallel to the town's development is the story of the Chichester family, by then the Donegalls, who were living off a growing rental income. The family's presence was never benevolent. In 1708, the castle was destroyed by fire. Three Donegall women and one of the fourth earl's servants died in it. The family abandoned the town for almost a century. The castle remained in ruins, although the old castle and garden are referred to in 1715 and the court and garden are referenced as late as 1790.
Linen is another important element. By 1771, there were 300 looms in operation, weavers having moved into town from the countryside. But with merchants not involving themselves in manufacture, the Ulster linen trade looked towards Dublin.
By the mid 18th century, the Donegalls were enjoying higher rents. It is also interesting to see that, among the four main lease types by then available, the building lease insisted houses should be built of brick with slated roofs, and that sash windows were mandatory. A new merchant class emerged, replacing the original settlers who had died out "or moved to landed estates outside the city". Successive rises, falls and re-emergences of various industries are well plotted, none more so than that of linen and its rival - cotton. In 1806, there were 629 cotton looms, but only four linen looms. "Cotton," writes Gillespie, "was the most spectacular example of Belfast's industrial growth in the late 18th century." In retrospect, shipbuilding, engineering and shoemaking based on the tanneries could also be included.
Alongside such industrial expansion came the expected social problems in a city where the landlord was absentee. In the space of 50 years, starting from 1750, Belfast was transformed. Although essentially a topographical study with the emphasis on economic development, the fascicle essay also refers to the impact of the Charitable Society, the rise of the Freemasons, the growing US dimension - following the War of Independence in 1776 and emigration - as well as, of course, the growth of the Volunteer movement and political thought.
This fascicle should inspire a Belfast version of Colin Rynne's superb study The Industrial Archaeology of Cork City and Its Environs (Duchas, 1999).
The beginning of the 19th century also marked the start of the decline of the Donegall family. By 1850, they were no longer the landlords of Belfast.
Shipbuilding and engineering ensured that Belfast, the commercial centre, was by 1840 - one year after the opening of its first railway - an industrial city. Class divisions had also emerged. Presbyterian evangelicalism was confronted with a growing phenomenon: the rapid growth of a Catholic urban poor and, with them, enduring religious and cultural tensions.
Belfast Part 1, to 1840 by Raymond Gillespie and Stephen A. Royle, part 12 of the Royal Irish Academy's Irish Historic Towns Atlas, edited by Anngret Simms, H. B. Clarke and Raymond Gillespie, is published by the Royal Irish Academy in association with Belfast City Council, price €30.