Belfast Photos

Bob Murray of Root and Branch Irish Family Research supplied these pictures that are relevant to understanding the geneology of my branch of the Delaney family tree.

“Edward McIlroy had a grocery shop at 154 Manor Street from 1900 until 1904, when it became Erwin’s Grocers. Edward then moved his business to 155 Meadow Street Upper and carried on his trade there from 1905 until 1907. He moved yet again to 35 Springfield Road and is recorded there from 1908 until 1911, when number 35 becomes John Burrow’s Grocery.

Of the three premises that Edward McIlroy occupied, two are still standing, 155 Meadow Street Upper and 35 Springfield Road. Unfortunately, 154 Manor Street is no longer there.

I paid a visit to all three locations, and Manor Street is now divided by a large wall with Protestants on the one side, Old Park, where Edward’s shop once stood. In the street itself there are relatively new houses, many boarded up, with very few people around. The streets are an ugly, frightening, depressed area of gross dereliction and squallor. I spoke to a gentleman who remembered a grocery shop half way down the street, on the right hand side, where 154 was before it was demolished in the 1970′s, to build new houses and apartments. The only building still standing, that Edward would have been familiar with, The Carnegie Public Library is at the bottom of Manor Street on the Old Park Road.
The Catholic side of Manor Street still has most of its old houses with just a few new ones beside the dividing wall, and at the Cliftonville Road end of the street. I took a photograph of the only remaining grocery shop on Manor Street to give you some idea of what Edward’s shop might have looked like.

155 Meadow Street, which once was a spirit/grocers, is now a dwelling house with the old gable wall having been replaced. 35 Springfield Road, which was also a spirit/grocers, was situated directly across the road from the infamous Springfield Road R.U.C barracks, and is now Delaney’s wool and trim shop.”

Manor Street. (old Park Road end)

“The only building still standing, that Edward would have been familiar with, The Carnegie Public Library is at the bottom of Manor Street on the Old Park Road.”