The Shankill Road () is one of the main roads leading through West Belfast, in Northern Ireland. It runs through the working-class, predominantly loyalist, area known as the Shankill.
The road stretches westwards for about from central Belfast and is lined, to an extent, by shops. The residents live in the many streets which branch off the main road. The area along the Shankill Road forms part of the Court district electoral area.
In Ulster-Scots it is known as either Auld Kirk Gate ("Old Church Way"), or as Auld Kirk Raa ("Old Church Road"). In Irish, it is known as "" ("the road of the old church").
History The first Shankill residents lived at the bottom of what is now known as Glencairn: a small settlement of ancient people inhabited a ring fort, built where the Ballygomartin and Forth rivers meet.
A settlement around the point at which the Shankill Road becomes the Woodvale Road, at the junction with Cambrai Street, was known as Shankill from the Irish Seanchill meaning "old church". Believed to date back to 455 AD, it was known as the "Church of St Patrick of the White Ford" and in time had six smaller churches, known as "alterages", attached to it across the west bank of the River Lagan. The church was an important site of pilgrimage and it is likely that the ford of the River Farset, which later became the core of Belfast, was important because of its site on the pilgrimage route. It was in ruins by the 17th century and had disappeared entirely by the 19th, leaving only its graveyard. Its font, an ancient bullaun stone, resides at St Matthew's on Woodvale Road, and is said to hold the power to heal warts.
As a paved road the Shankill dates back to around the sixteenth century as at the time it was part of the main road to Antrim, a role now filled by the A6. The lower sections of the Shankill Road were in former times the edge of Belfast with both Boundary Street and Townsend Street in the lower Shankill taking their names from the fact that at the time they were built they marked the approximate end of Belfast.
The area expanded greatly in the mid to late 19th century with the growth of the linen industry. Many of the streets in the Shankill area, such as Leopold Street, Cambrai Street and Brussels Street, were named after places and people connected with Belgium or Flanders, where the flax from which the linen was woven was grown. The linen industry, along with others that had previously been successful in the area, declined in the mid-20th century leading to high unemployment levels. The Harland & Wolff shipyard was also a traditional employer for the area, and it too has seen its workforce numbers decline in recent years.
The area was also a regular scene of rioting in the nineteenth century, often of a sectarian nature after Irish Catholic areas on the Falls Road and Ardoyne emerged along with the city's prosperity. One such riot occurred on 9 June 1886 following the defeat of the Government of Ireland Bill 1886, when a crowd of around 2,000 locals clashed with the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) who were attempting to stop the mob from looting a liquor store. Local law enforcement officers had to barricade themselves in Bower's Hill barracks where a long siege followed. Bower's Hill was a name applied to the area of the road between Agnes Street and Crimea Street.The West Belfast Division of the original Ulster Volunteer Force organised on the Shankill and drilled in Glencairn and some of its members saw service in the First World War with the 36th (Ulster) Division. A garden of remembrance beside the Shankill Graveyard and a mural on Conway Street commemorate those who fought in the war. Recruitment was also high during the Second World War and that conflict saw damage occur to the Shankill Road as part of the Belfast Blitz when a Luftwaffe bomb hit a public air raid shelter on Percy Street, killing 30 people. The site of the destruction was visited by the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester soon after the attack.
The Troubles During the Troubles, the Shankill was a centre of loyalist activity. The modern Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) had its genesis on the Shankill and its first attack occurred on the road on 7 May 1966 when a group of UVF men led by Gusty Spence petrol bombed a Catholic-owned pub in Upper Charleville Street. Fire also engulfed the house next door, killing seventy-seven-year-old Protestant widow, Matilda Gould, who lived there. This was followed on 27 May by the murder of John Scullion, a Catholic, as he walked home from a pub in the Clonard area. On 26 June a Catholic civilian, Peter Ward, was killed and two others wounded as they left a pub on the Shankill's Malvern Street. Shortly after this attack, Spence and three others were arrested and later convicted. The UVF continued to be active on the Shankill throughout the Troubles, most notoriously with the Shankill Butchers led by Lenny Murphy, as well as the likes of William Marchant and Frankie Curry.
Similarly, the Ulster Defence Association, established in September 1971, began on the Shankill when vigilante groups such as John McKeague's Shankill Defence Association and the Woodvale Defence Association merged into a larger structure. Under the leadership of Charles Harding Smith and Andy Tyrie, the Shankill Road became a centre of UDA activity. Leading members such as James Craig, Davy Payne and Tommy Lyttle lived in the area. The Shankill was covered by the West Belfast Battalion of the UDA, which was divided into three companies: A (Glencairn and Highfield), B (middle Shankill), and C (lower Shankill). During the 1990s, C Company under Johnny Adair became one of the most active units in the UDA, with gunmen such as Stephen McKeag responsible for several murders. C Company would later feud with both the UVF and the rest of the UDA until 2003 when they were forced out. Following the exile of Adair and his supporters, as well as the murder of Alan McCullough, the lower Shankill UDA was once again brought into line with the rest of the movement under former Adair supporter Mo Courtney.
The Greater Shankill and its residents were also subjected to a number of bombings and shootings by Irish republican paramilitaries. During 1971 two pub bombings took place on the Shankill, one in May at the Mountainview Tavern, at which several people were injured, and a second at the Four Step Inn in September, which resulted in two deaths. A further bomb exploded at the Balmoral Furnishing Company on 11 December that same year, resulting in four deaths, including two infants. The Mountainview Tavern was attacked again by Republicans on 5 April 1975 in a gun and bomb attack which resulted in the deaths of four Protestant civilians and a UDA member, 60 people were injured in the attack. Another pub attack followed on 13 August 1975 when the IRA opened fire on patrons outside the Bayardo Bar and then left a bomb inside the crowded bar area, killing four civilians and one UVF member.
The Shankill Road bombing occurred on 23 October 1993. A bomb exploded in Frizzell's Fish Shop, below the UDA's Shankill headquarters. The bomb exploded prematurely as it was being planted. Nine people were killed in addition to one of the bombers, Thomas Begley. None of the loyalist paramilitaries targeted were hurt, as they had postponed a planned meeting. Begley's accomplice, Sean Kelly, survived and was imprisoned.
Eight months after the Fish Shop bombing, volunteers from the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), a Republican paramilitary group, shot and killed three UVF volunteers and injured a civilian outside the headquarters of the Progressive Unionist Party. UVF commander Trevor King was one of those killed.
Areas of the Shankill Road
Lower Shankill The Shankill Road begins at Peter's Hill, a road that flows from North Street in Belfast city centre and merges into the Shankill itself at Boundary Street. Peter's Hill separates the Brown Square neighbourhood from Carrick Hill, a small nationalist area to the north of the city centre. The area of housing on the lower Shankill around Agnes Street was known colloquially as "The Hammer", one of a number of nicknames applied to districts that included "the Nick". The Hammer name is recalled in the Hammer Sports Complex, the home ground of amateur football sides Lower Shankill F.C. and Shankill United F.C. The Lower Shankill has been redeveloped in recent years although during the 1960s the housing was ranked as the worst in Belfast. A Lower Shankill Community Association is active in the area whilst the Shankill Leisure Centre is also located here. The Shankill Women's Centre, a women's educational initiative established by May Blood (later Baroness Blood) in 1987, is also located on the lower Shankill. George McWhirter, a writer and first Poet Laureate of Vancouver, B.C., Canada, also came from the area originally.
Several streets link the Shankill Road to the neighbouring Crumlin Road with the area around North Boundary Street formerly the stronghold of Johnny Adair's C Company. Several members of C Company who have died are commemorated on murals around the area, notably Stephen McKeag, William McCullough, killed by the INLA in 1981 as part of a series of tit for tat murders between that group and the UDA and Jackie Coulter, killed by the UVF during a loyalist feud in 2000. The area links to the neighbouring Falls Road at Townsend Street and Northumberland Street where there are gates in the peace line that are opened in daytime.
The Lower Shankill is home to loyalist pubs such as the Diamond Jubilee, which became notorious as the main meeting place of the UDA's C Company during the early 1990s. The Long Bar and the Windsor Bar, both frequented by the UVF in the 1970s, have since been demolished. According to investigative journalist Martin Dillon, the latter was used a centre of operations for a UVF platoon led by Anthony Berry.
Mid Shankill
Although there is no precise dividing line between Lower and Mid Shankill locally it is usually said that the lower Shankill ends at Agnes Street. The area was redeveloped some time before the lower Shankill leading to feelings locally that those in the upper part of the road were better off compared to the "Apaches" of the lower Shankill as they were colloquially known. A number of churches are situated in this area including the West Kirk Presbyterian Church, the Shankill Methodist church, the independent Church of God and St Stephens Coptic Orthodox Church.
The West Belfast Orange Hall is located near the top of the road. This building, which houses the No. 9 District Orange Lodge, has been revamped by Belfast City Council. The same is true of the nearby Shankill Cemetery, a small graveyard that has received burials for around 1000 years. The graveyard is noted for a statue of Queen Victoria as well as the adjacent memorial to the members of the 36th Ulster Division who died at the Battle of the Somme. Amongst those buried in the Shankill Graveyard is Rev Isaac Nelson, a Presbyterian minister who was also active in nationalist politics. Nelson lived at Sugarfield House on the Shankill, which has since given its name to Sugarfield Street. Also buried here is 2nd Private W.A. Sterling who died on 5 November 1918 at the age of 14.
The area includes Lanark Way, one of the few direct links to the neighbouring nationalist areas, which leads directly to the Springfield Road (although the street is gated close to the Springfield Road end and these are locked at night). A regular route for UDA gunmen seeking access to the Falls during the Troubles, it was dubbed the "Yellow Brick Road" by Stephen McKeag and his men.