Belfast's very own north side has some of the best-value property in Ireland and, though there are visible and invisible peace lines everywhere, the area is experiencing a gradual gentrification. Fionola Meredith meets some of the residents
North Belfast is a place apart. The very name immediately evokes the area's dark and bloody past; its present febrile tensions. A quarter of all deaths in the Troubles occurred in north Belfast, and it's often said that if the conflict was ever to begin again, it would re-ignite in this small, fiercely contested space. Half-remembered atrocities haunt the public imagination, with the result that many Belfast citizens have never even set foot on the Antrim Road, the main arterial route to north Belfast from the city centre. As long time north Belfast resident Katy Radford puts it: "Anything past Carlisle Circus [ at the bottom of the Antrim Road], is seen as 'here be dragons'."
In many ways, the north side of the city is Belfast in microcosm. It's a mismatched jumble of loyalist and republican enclaves, post-war council estates and leafy avenues, dereliction and prosperity. Yet the dirty charms of north Belfast have long held an allure for those members of the artistic and literary community prepared to endure the harsh sectarian weather of the place.
Writer and north Belfast resident Ciaran Carson once rather improbably compared 21st-century north Belfast to 14th-century Florence. Working on his translation of Dante Alighieri's Inferno, he described how he would "head for the old Belfast Waterworks, a few hundred yards away from where I live. The north end of the Waterworks happens to lie on one of Belfast's sectarian fault lines. Situated on a rise above the embankment is the Westland housing estate, a loyalist enclave which, by a squint of the imagination, you can see as an Italian hill-town . . . 'Rings of ditches, moats, trenches, fosses/ military barriers on every side': I see a map of north Belfast, its no-go zones and tattered flags, the blackened side-streets, cul-de-sacs and bits of wasteland stitched together by dividing walls and fences. For all the blank abandoned spaces, it feels claustrophobic, cramped and medieval. Not as beautiful as Florence, perhaps, but then Florence is 'the most damned of Italian cities, wherein there is place neither to sit, stand, or walk'."
But north Belfast is changing. New apartments and office blocks are springing up incongruously among the old fish shops and hardware stores. And in recent years there's been an noticeable influx of younger artists, writers, photographers and musicians moving in to the area. Many are refugees from the university area of south Belfast, traditionally seen as the city's cultural quarter. Sick of the high rents and disillusioned by the self-conscious cosmopolitanism of the south city, they're snapping up large northside Victorian terraces for a song. As a result, north Belfast is turning into the city's new bohemian quarter, south Belfast's seamier, grittier alter-ego.
Latest figures from the University of Ulster show that north Belfast is still the lowest priced city location in which to buy a house, with an average house price of £85,184 (€124,481). South Belfast is at the top of the property pile, with an average house costing £145,479 (€212,584). While north city residents report that the value of their homes is rapidly increasing, moving here comes at a price for the middle classes. You may have the airy spaces and decaying grandeur of your Victorian terrace to call home, but where are the bookshops, the galleries, the delicatessens, the coffee shops? There's nowhere to sip a cappuccino and discuss the finer points of existentialism; and if you want to buy hummous or sun-dried tomatoes, it's a long walk back to the south side.
"I really miss that aspect of city life," muses artist Miriam de Burca, who moved three years ago from the university area into Glandore Avenue, a tree-lined terraced street off the Antrim Road. "We moved mainly for economic reasons, and we got a great house for so little money. But there's just nothing up here. You're really scraping the bottom of the barrel." De Burca has found that living in this part of the city has had a profound effect on her work as a video artist. "I use my work to try and gain an understanding of the implicit and the explicit interfaces. A lot of it is based on incredulity - I can't believe what people consider to be normal here. I want to look at the human ecology of it all."
Photographer John Duncan who, like de Burca, used to rent in south Belfast, moved to the north of the city five years ago, first renting on the Limestone Road and then buying a house on Ponsonby Avenue. He has no regrets. "The architecture of this part of the city attracted me. You get more space for your money. It's a friendly place, too. Yesterday, my window was put in by kids playing football in the street, and it was replaced and paid for in two hours." But doesn't he miss the chi-chi coffee bars of the university area? "Even that is starting to change, too. There's a new coffee shop at the top of my street." Ah, but is it achingly trendy, in true south Belfast style? "Well, it does have laminate flooring."
Katy Radford, an academic at the Irish School of Ecumenics on the Antrim Road, was a self-confessed "university brat", brought up in the affluent south side of the city. Now she wouldn't live anywhere else but north Belfast. "You're more likely to be offered a soda bap than a cappuccino here," she admits. "And yes, there are pockets of sectarianism, and there are visible and invisible peace lines everywhere. But there are so many bits of Irish history and tradition encapsulated in where we live. We have a bird's eye view of it all. And one of the nicest things about this part of the city is the relative lack of racism. There's the Jewish Synagogue, the Sikh Temple and the Indian Community Centre, and we all groove along together."
Many seasoned north-Belfast residents hold their lily-livered counterparts in the south of the city in affectionate contempt. "Oh, there's definitely a rivalry," laughs English-born Pauline Hadaway, director of city centre photography gallery, Belfast Exposed. "South Belfast is so ready-made, with its neat but boring houses. It's a bit like Slough or some godforsaken arterial route into London. I had the misfortune to stay in south Belfast recently, and I pity people who live there."
John Gray, librarian of the Linen Hall Library in Belfast, and another Glandore Avenue resident, shares a similarly cynical approach. "The favourite north Belfast description for south Belfast people is "flat earthers" - they think they'll fall off the edge of the world if they venture too close to this side of town. There really is a profound division between the two parts of the city. Students and lecturers coming to Queen's University for the first time used to be advised that they would stay safe if they didn't go outside of the city centre." Hadaway also appreciates the fact that, unlike other parts of the city, north Belfast is not explicitly associated with one or other of the two communities. "It's anonymous, not locked into any political agenda. It's just ordinary, run-down city living. Actually, north Belfast reminds me of London in the 1980s. You could be in Hornsey or Hackney."
John Gray has had plenty of opportunity to observe the changes that have taken place in north Belfast over the years. He has cut a distinctive figure riding his bicycle to work in the city centre and back since 1972. "There used to be absolutely no danger of being run over in the early days. There was no traffic at all. I worked late on Mondays and Thursdays in the mid-1970s, the time of the Shankill Butchers, and I wouldn't pass a car or a pedestrian. Now, the prosperity of the Antrim Road is palpable. The most marked difference is that the people on the lower Antrim Road all have cars now. That's why there will never be another riot in that part of town - that community owns the best cars." Belfast is known for its black humour, but people from the north side seem to take a special pride in dark mockery.
Like Ciaran Carson, many north Belfast dwellers have a particular affection for the Waterworks Park - a former reservoir built in the 1840s to provide water for the growing Belfast population - despite its position on an interface and its reputation as a seedy, public drinking den.
Recently, two local men, Stephen Kelly and Andrew Doherty, established a fishing club at the park with the aim of distracting local youths from anti-social behaviour and providing a way of returning the Waterworks to the people of the area. The profits from their first cross-community fishing competition were used to stock the park's upper pond with several hundred rainbow trout. The club members believe that their daily presence at the Waterworks deters troublemakers and drug dealers. Members report that families have started to use the park once again, and the PSNI has confirmed that crime is down in the area - particularly when the fishing club holds a competition. John Gray recalls how it used to be: "Up until 1967, the Waterworks was a locked park, paid for by the local rate payer. You would get brass bands playing on Sundays, and people raced model yachts there. In fact, Belfast City Council described the park as 'Belfast's inland seaside resort'. But with the start of the Troubles, the place immediately became Beirut-on-Sea."
In common with Pauline Hadaway, his neighbour in Glandore Avenue, Gray is keen to enumerate the hidden benefits and pleasures of north Belfast life. "We live among a very supportive and friendly community, to whom one can turn when things go wrong. And the shopping and the schools are brilliant. With Hazelwood College, integrated education is flourishing in this area, the most divided community in the north of Ireland". Hadaway is wary of the consequences of enthusing too much about the place. "We feel like people who have found some wonderful holiday destination. Perhaps we should keep quiet about it"
But can north Belfast really be as wonderful as all that? Ruth Graham, an artist and community worker with the Golden Thread Gallery (itself located on an interface) has lived in the north of the city for the last 15 years. She takes a more sceptical approach. "It's a weird place. You have these really nice views of the Cave Hill, then you turn a corner and you're in a horrible street. I'm reasonably comfortable here, but there have been irritations in the past. For instance, if I was in the pub with friends and I suggested going back to my house for a party, people would suddenly find something else to do." Times of inter-community tension in the area produce their own particular problems. "If you happen to be in the city centre, it can be hard to get back up home without crossing an interface. And sometimes the taxis won't go up. I have always tended to go away in the summer, especially when my son was younger. I didn't want him to see kids setting fire to things. But, generally, things are fine. I do have an affection for the place."
Pauline Hadaway insists that she has always felt comfortable living in the north of the city. "Yes, you learn how to dodge the bricks, or work out the best route home during July [ the marching season]," she laughs. "But cities should have a slight edge. If you want safety and conformity, move to the suburbs. I don't mind hearing the odd police siren."
Squalid and beautiful by turns, north Belfast offers its new community of artists, writers, academics and political activists a unique space in which to live and work. John Gray has seen the area evolve out of all recognition - but some things haven't changed. "In 1971, north Belfast was hell on earth. It suffered more than any other area. While there are still awful rifts and flaws, north Belfast is staggering back. But there's always been space here for people who didn't fit in. And I have always felt at home, living under Cave Hill."