LANYON PLACE BELFAST THE AREA NEAR THE RAILWAY STATION
As I had to check out of the hotel more than an hour before my train was due to depart I decided to explore the area near the station especially as the station itself is less than interesting.
Belfast Lanyon Place (formerly Belfast Central) is a railway station serving the city of Belfast in Northern Ireland. Located on Bridge Street in the Laganside area of central Belfast, it is one of four stations in the city centre, the others being Great Victoria Street, City Hospital and Botanic. Lanyon Place is the northern terminus of the cross-border Enterprise service to Dublin Connolly. It is also served by Northern Ireland Railways, which operates routes to other locations in Northern Ireland, including Derry, Bangor, Portadown and Larne.
I should mention Belfast’s new transport hub will be officially named Belfast Grand Central Station. Belfast’s new transport hub will be officially named Belfast Grand Central Station. Work on the south Belfast station began in February and is expected to open by 2025. When completed, it will become the largest integrated transport hub on the island of Ireland.
THE GASWORKS AND CROMAC PLACE IN BELFAST AND NEARBY
The area that I photographed included Cromac Street, Ormeau Road and Avenue and Donegall Pass.
The distinctive funnel and clock tower mark the place where the city’s gas-making industry began production in the 19th century. The Gasworks is a quiet place to escape from the bustle of the nearby city centre. It’s a starting point for a pleasant walk or cycle along the River Lagan.
The area at the start of the Ormeau Road is not known by a single name but contains a number of features. Close to the Markets area are the Belfast Gasworks, originally built in the 19th century and remaining open for its original purpose until 1988. The area has been substantially redeveloped under the Laganside Corporation and now includes a number of office buildings for companies such as Halifax. The Gasworks is also home to the Radisson Blu Hotel Belfast.
Donegall Pass faces the Gasworks and, for a short period in the 1970s and 1980s, represented a violent interface with the Markets area. Donegall Pass has a rich social history and has a plethora of Chinese shops and restaurants, Indian wholesalers, local cafe and sandwich bars, a pharmacy, churches, antique dealers and a newly opened auction house.
Gasworks was the site of Belfast’s gas-making industry since the 19th century. The site, built on ground owned by the Marquis of Donegall, opened in 1822 and supplied gas for street lighting and domestic and industrial use.
Belfast Corporation used their profits from the gas industry to pay for the construction of Belfast City Hall, which opened in 1906.
By the end of World War II in 1945, around 120,000 people were using gas from the Gasworks site. But by the 1960s, demand declined as new technologies began to emerge and production finally stopped altogether in 1985.
The council bought the Gasworks site together with central government and the Laganside Corporation, in the early 1990s. The land was considered unsuitable for most uses, due to contamination, but a major refurbishment programme, part-funded by the European Union, soon turned the area into a modern business park.
Tony Stallard (born 26 August 1958) is an English artist, best known for his large scale public artworks in the United Kingdom and abroad, which utilise bronze, steel and light sculptures for work in the public realm.
Stallard has worked for twenty-five years in public artworks within the public realm and his work has been exhibited widely from Canada to Ireland and the Czech Republic. This work has included research and development within architectural and engineering practices, as well as processing artworks with multiple stake holders for practical engineered concepts towards public artworks.
In 2009, Stallard was selected by the Titanic Quarter and Arts And Business Northern Ireland to create a sculpture to promote the regeneration of the Titanic Quarter. A scale model of an Airfix kit, the piece was a reference to Belfast’s industrial heritage and encourages a nostalgia for the area’s shipbuilding history.
The Kit is described by Tony as “a playful reference to kit forms and toy structures…also an attempt to bring the spirit of the ship back to the beginning of her journey”. Unlike many memorials in Belfast that commemorate the victims of the Titanic, Tony Stallard described the ‘Kit’ as a “dramatic work which commemorates the great achievement that was the construction of the ship.”
It is interesting to note that Harland and Wolff, were commissioned to construct the sculpture.
The ‘Kit’ takes the form of an over-sized ‘Airfix’ model kit. It measures nearly 14 metres in height and is approximately 4 metres wide. The ‘Kit’ is fabricated from steel and bronze.
The design of the sculpture should be familiar to model-makers in the UK and Ireland [not sure about the USA], and comprises the framework (or sprue) that secures the individual components of the kit. In the manufacture of injection moulded plastic model kits the sprue is formed when molten plastic is injected into a mould. When the mould is broken open the sprue is left in place securing the individual numbered components of the model kit.
The ‘Kit’ has a number of large components, which are recognisably parts of the Titanic. These include her hull split down the middle, forming two sections, three of her four funnels and two of her three propellers. The ‘Kit’ is designed to give the impression that a number of components have already been ‘snapped off’ the sprue framework, such as the missing funnel and propeller.
The uppermost funnel is painted in the White Star Line’s buff (yellow) and black band colour scheme and the bow is painted black, with red anti-fouling paint below the waterline. The rest of the hull sections and other components are left unpainted, distinguished by their bronze patina. At night the ‘Kit’, which stands on the quayside in front of The Arc Apartments, is illuminated by purple LED lighting.
Both the Church of Ireland and the Methodist Church in Ireland have appointed full time Chaplains to Queen’s University in Belfast for over half a century. In that time each has built up its profile and places of residency.
Opened in 1954, the Church of Ireland Chaplaincy grew to occupy Houses 16-22 on Elmwood Avenue, Belfast. Sitting adjacent to the residential and office space in House 22, the Church of the Resurrection and Oasis café offered a space for Anglican worship and ecumenical coffee over many years!
In 1974 the Methodist Chaplaincy, with residency for both the Chaplain and students, opened at Nr 24-26 Elmwood Avenue.
All Souls Church is also located on Elmwood Avenue. Travelling out of Belfast city, along University Road, turn left at the junction opposite the main Lanyon Building of Queen’s University. This is Elmwood Avenue and the Church is situated on the right hand side at the end of this road. Free parking available along Elmwood Avenue. Alternatively, the Church may be found from the Lisburn Road arterial route from Belfast city centre. Elmwood Avenue is opposite the City Hospital. The Church is on the left hand side of Elmwood Avenue in this approach.
ELMWOOD HALL ACROSS THE ROAD FROM QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY MAIN BUILDING
Elmwood Hall is a concert hall and former Presbyterian Church on University Road in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It is situated opposite Queen’s University Belfast.
Elmwood Hall was built originally as the Elmwood Presbyterian Church. It was designed in 1859 by amateur architect John Corry, but not actually erected until 1862.
The pulpit and other internal furnishings were removed, along with the stained glass windows. The stonework was restored and the golden weathercock was added by HA Patton & Partners in 1975. The polished granite pillars around the front courtyard had lost some of their elaborately carved sandstone capitals, but these were restored in 2000.
Queen’s University Belfast converted the church into a concert hall and renamed it Elmwood Hall. The building was deconsecrated and for a time became the home of the Ulster Orchestra.
Following the closure of the Queen’s University Student Union for redevelopment, the Mandela Hall team will be relocating many of their live concerts, comedies and student events to the Elmwood Hall until Mandela Hall re-opens in 2021-2022 within the new Student Centre.
The building has a mixture of styles, principally Italianate with a spire on top of a campanile. It has been described as one of Ulster’s best High Victorian church designs – a triumph of eclecticism, where the combination of apparently discordant elements such as a Renaissance arcade with chunky Venetian columns, mediaeval machicolations, a classical cornice and balustrade, a Moorish well canopy and a French needle spire are all absorbed into a coherent but very elaborate Irish version of a Lombard Gothic church (Irish Builder).
Behind the polychrome freestone façade, the interior is surprisingly large, having a great width uninterrupted by roof supports, and a deep gallery running back over both vestibule and loggia, reached by a winding staircase beneath the tower (which, while part of the 1859 design, was added in 1872).
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