IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Ardoyne Road, BELFAST, BT14 7AW

Flush bracket bench mark on the front of the former Everton Public Elementary school on the Crumlin Road in Belfast (now part of a large Health and Social Care complex). The number on the bracket is OSNIBM 1018. Placed here in the 1930s, the mark only seems to appear on the 1938 plan of Belfast, levelled to 233.8 feet above sea level - unusually, I can't see it on any later maps.

Crumlin Road. Tom Burns (Independent).

Crumlin Road. Fiona Ferguson (People Before Profit Alliance).

This mural which has been painted by the Ardoyne community sets to portray this area, which is synonymous with violence, as one which is making a new start - full credit to them. It replaced this Civil Rights themes mural: https://goo.gl/maps/fXPXjjmgJvK1VMF59

At the start of Ardoyne Road.

This is one of the most sudden and certainly one of the most contentious religious divides in Northern Ireland. In the 1960s the whole Ardoyne was a mixed area which was viewed as one step above the slums and terraces of the Shankill. Although Protestants and Roman Catholics lived side by side as neighbours - everyone knew who was on whose side. When the conflict fired up in 1969 - suspicion arose and Protestants moved towards the northern end of the Ardoyne, towards Ballysillan which was established as Protestant. Roman Catholics, on the contrary, moved towards the Ardoyne roundabout and the Holy Cross Chapel. This shift eventually caused an imaginary line between Alliance Avenue and Glenbryn Park. The continual violence here prompted the construction of a Peace Wall. Thankfully there has been a marked decrease in sectarian violence here since the 2001 Holy Cross dispute. This is taken from the Protestant 'Upper Ardoyne' looking towards the Roman Catholic area - which begins roughly where the Peugeot 106 is emerging.

Before the street was split, this was all Farringdon Gardens.

Crumlin Road. Nelson McCausland, Paula Bradley and William Humphrey (Democratic Unionist Party).

The Ardoyne is a small Roman Catholic enclave surrounded by two larger Protestant areas (Ballysillan and Shankill/Woodvale) - the violence that has been seen here since the early days of the conflict has led to it being regarded as one of the best known 'interfaces' in Belfast.

Links Ardoyne Road with Berwick Road.