IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
BT7 3SR

This is a residential street with new housing developments.

This building now houses homeless families.

This sprawling brick built campus of Victorian buildings was erected as a convent for the Sisters of the Good Shepherd an order which in Belfast, as in the rest of Ireland, ran the infamous Magdalen Laundries. Here "fallen women" were used as cheap labour in laundering the dirty washing of Belfast's upper and middle classes. Belfast also had equally notorious Church of Ireland and Presbyterian Magdalen laundries which "cared" for Protestant unmarried mothers. The Magdalen Laundry at Belfast's Good Shepherd Convent remained in existence until 1977. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/patrick-corrigan/magdalene-laundries-north-irelands-shame_b_2712206.html

This another residential street, with good houses of late Victorian vintage.

This is located at the junction of Ardmore Avenue and the Upper Ormeau Road.

Part of a widespread campaign, this poster, on a bus shelter close to the corner of the Ormeau road and Ardmore Avenue, announces that the name “Northern Bank” will change to “Danske Bank” on 15 November [2012]. The Northern Image, Image and Image, started life as a partnership in 1809. It acquired the other local bank, the Belfast Image in 1970 being part of the Midland group until 1988 when bought by the National Australia Bank before being sold to the Danish Danske Bank in 2005.

This was formerly the chapel of the Convent of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd. Until 1977 this South Belfast convent operated one of Ireland's infamous Magdalene Laundries. With the closure of the laundry in 1977 and of a mother and child home in the 1990s, and faced with the deteriorating fabric of the Holy Rosary Parish Church opposite, the Diocese of Down and Connor decided to make the convent chapel the place of worship for the Parish of the Holy Rosary. Image Image

See Image (November 2005). The former Our lady of the Holy Rosary Roman Catholic church at 350 Ormeau Road, completed in 1898, in what then countryside, to a design JJ O’Shea. Listed as HB26/01/021 and also on the official “at risk” register. Vacant and now offered for sale (along with the former presbytery (348 Image). Described by the agents as follows: “The properties comprise a former Church building and an adjacent two and a half storey detached house which is now in derelict state. The church is graded as a B1 listed building while the detached house has no listed status whatsoever. The church is Grade B listed with effect from 19th August 1986. To the rear of the church is a former garden/orchard, which may be used as a car park for future development. Planning: The church has had planning permission for a change of use to a museum, art gallery, coffee shop, bistro, offices and small creche. Reference: Z/1997/0772”. This photograph appears as a matter of record only. I have no connection with any of the parties involved in the sale.

This derelict nunnery belongs to the Contemplative Sisters of the Good Shepherd, “Lys Marie”. For some 100 years up to 1977 the Good Shepherd Convent operated a Magdalene Laundry on the site. Image The eleven sisters of the nunnery now live in a smaller modern convent in the rear and are engaged in making altar cloths and small linens.

A late-19th century street, mainly of terrace houses, on the south western side of the Ormeau Road. There were three houses in 1890 and 21 in 1901. Previously seen in Image (February 2012). Many of the streets, locally, are notable for the number of tightly-parked cars.