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Erskine Street, BELFAST, BT5 4HW

Belvoir Street displays an interesting mix of terrace architecture. There are traditional terrace houses (middle right) similar to its near neighbour McMaster Street Image (although Belvoir Street was built some 25 years earlier). In the background are the modern houses from the late 20th century. On the left and on the right (nearest the camera) are the type built by Belfast Corporation to replace houses destroyed during by the Luftwaffe during WWII.

The T-junction with Belvoir Street can be seen in the background. These back to back houses were built to house the workers of the Harland and Wolff Yard.

The entrance to the Skainos Centre Image

Rebuilt street, running from the Albertbridge Road (behind me) through to Belvoir Street and the Newtownards Road.

Plaque commemorating Sam Thompson, a local playwright http://www.ulsterhistory.co.uk/Thompsonsam.html, at Vicarage Street/Montrose Street South off the Albertbridge Road.

The Skainos Centre http://www.ebm.org.uk/skainos/, 239 Newtownards Road, part of the East Belfast Mission, opened in November 2012. Built (if my memory is correct) on a site which included the old Holmes Cash and Carry. The architects were Donnelly O’Neill http://www.d-on.co.uk/.

This is a former Presbyterian church which was declared redundant and was taken over by the Church of the Nazarene in 1991. The Church of the Nazareen originated in America and is closely akin in its Arminian theology to the Wesleyan Methodism.

A street of terrace houses (built at the very end of the 19th century) running from the Newtownards Road to Major Street (background). One of the few streets not redeveloped, it is now listed but some of the houses are on the “at risk” register. Note for genealogists – this is not the same place as McMaster’s Court. It was off Millfield, on the other side of the Lagan.

This has been erected besides the site of the house No2 Montrose Street South in which Sam Thompson (1916-1965) was born. A ship yard worker Sam Thompson was a Socialist. His most famous play is "Over the Bridge" (1960) a controversial anti-sectarian play which was staged in Belfast against much opposition by the late Jimmy Ellis. During its six-week run in the city it attracted a greater audience number than any other play staged in Belfast before or since. http://www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk/productions/2013/over-the-bridge.php