Among the Belfast goods “exported around the world from York Street by rail and sea” were Gallaher’s Blues (cigarettes), Irish linens, Davidson & Co (Samuel Davidson, born in County Down to an Ulster-Scots family, was the inventor of the Sirocco centrifugal fan “for mine ventilation, dust removal, induced draft, forge fires”), and linen carpet thread from York Street (Threads) Ltd. Robinson & Cleaver’s department store is now out of business. Gallaher’s is now the multinational Gallaher Group, but its factories in Belfast and Ballymena have closed. And Davidson’s company was bought by Howden UK in 1988.

Previously in the series: Shipbuilding | London, Midland and Scottish | Workman Clark’s

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Workman & Clark’s (in the centre panel above) was a Belfast shipyard existing from 1880 to 1935. During the first world war it took over the construction of two monitor ships (specifically, M29 and M31) for the Royal Navy that H&W did not have space to build. For more, see Grace’s Guide | BBC audio on monitor ships and their construction, including a record for number of rivets hammered in by one John Moore at Workman Clark’s.

These are panels 6, 7, and 8 from the new boards along York Street on the outer wall of the NI Railways mechanical engineering workshop.

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A history of shipbuilding and its role in Belfast’s industrial life is told in the first five panels of a 13-panel installation along York Road (“The harbour made York Street Belfast’s global gateway”) and in particular its connection with Scotland. (It is sponsored by Discover Ulster Scots.) Two Scots, William Ritchie (whose 1802 portrait by Thomas Robinson is shown) and Charles Connell (who oversaw the construction of the first wooden steamboat in Belfast – Aurora, pictured below) along with another Scot, Alexander MacLaine, were the leading shipbuilders in Belfast from 1791 until the 1860s, when Englishman Edward Harland (soon joined by German Gustav Wolff, and then in 1874 by William Pirrie and Wilson brothers Walter and Alexander) took over the rival Hickson yard (which included land on Queen’s Island and on the south side of the Lagan) and became dominant. Their connection to York Street is that all of them except Pirrie lived on or near York Street.

For potted histories (and a larger picture of Aurora) see LibraryIreland and Ulster-Scots.com.

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