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.
The air in Belfast must contain a lot of pollution because every time I visit I have problems with dust on the camera sensor.
Occupying 28 acres (110,000 m2) of south Belfast, the gardens are popular with office workers, students and tourists. They are located on Stranmillis Road in Queen’s Quarter, with Queen’s University nearby. The Ulster Museum is located at the main entrance.
The gardens opened in 1828 as the private Royal Belfast Botanical Gardens. It continued as a private park for many years, only opening to members of the public on Sundays prior to 1895. Then it became a public park in 1895 when the Belfast Corporation bought the gardens from the Belfast Botanical and Horticultural Society. The Belfast Corporation was the predecessor of Belfast City Council, the present owner.
The gardens’ most notable feature is the Palm House conservatory. The foundation stone was laid by the Marquess of Donegall in 1839 and work was completed in 1840. It is one of the earliest examples of a curvilinear cast iron glasshouses in the world. Designed by Charles Lanyon and built by Richard Turner, Belfast’s Palm House predates the glasshouses at Kew and the Irish National Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin, both of which Turner went on to build. The Palm House consists of two wings, the cool wing and the tropical wing. Lanyon altered his original plans to increase the height of the latter wing’s dome, allowing for much taller plants. In the past these have included an 11 metre tall globe spear lily. The lily, which is native to Australia, finally bloomed in March 2005 after a 23-year wait. The Palm House also features a 400-year-old Xanthorrhoea.
The gardens contain another glasshouse, the Tropical Ravine House. Built by head gardener Charles McKimm in 1889, it features a unique design. A sunken ravine runs the length of the building, with a balcony at each side for viewing. The most popular attraction is the Dombeya, which flowers every February.
The Palm House and the Tropical Ravine House were symbols of Belfast’s growing industrial might and prosperity in the Victorian era and attracted over 10,000 visitors a day. The gardens also feature one of the longest herbaceous borders in the UK and Ireland. There is also a rose garden built in 1932 and various species of tree, including the hornbeam-oak. A statue of Lord Kelvin stands at the Stranmillis Road entrance.
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