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History of BelfastAuthor(s): Patricia CraigSource: Irish Pages, Vol. 4, No. 2, The Sea (2007), pp. 159-161Published by: Irish Pages LTDStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25469764 .

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HISTORY OF BELFAST

Patricia Craig

Benn's civic masterpiece.

Come allye dry-land sailors and listen to my son

'Tis onlyforty verses so I won't detainyis long.

The opening lines of the famous Belfast song "The Cruise of the Calabar" were probably not known to George Benn - I doubt if the song was current in his day - but certainly he was familiar with every view of Belfast and every detail of Belfast life in the period he set out to document: that is, from the earliest times to the opening years of the nineteenth century. Taking a cue from "The Calabar" I don't intend to detain yis long here, though Benn's monumental history is certainly equivalent to the forty verses specified, and more. It is also, as Jonathan Bardon has put it, indispensable: "One of the most impressive local histories written in the nineteenth century". Indeed, virtually every commentator on any aspect of Belfast's history has paid tribute to the invaluable and indefatigable Benn. Robert Johnstone, for instance, refers in one of his books to "George Benn's great work . . . the three-inch-thick door-stopper of a tome he laboured for a lifetime to produce". Ciaran Carson opens his "Question Time", in Belfast Confetti, by quoting Benn. And even D.J. Owen, whose own History of Belfast, published in 1921, is sometimes referred to as the book people have to make do with when they can't get hold of a copy of the Benn - even he declares himself to be "indebted" to his great predecessor "for a good deal of our knowledge of the early history of the town".

Who was George Benn? A biographical note at the back of Owen's History gives us a few of the facts. Benn was born in Tandragee in 1801 but grew up in Belfast from the age of eight and was educated, like many another literary luminary of the nineteenth century, at Inst - where we stand at this moment. He was only 22 when his first History of Belfast was published in 1823; but his more exhaustive masterwork took him another forty-odd years to complete. It came out in 1877 and was followed three years later by a supplementary volume taking us up to the year 1810

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(published just two years before Benn's death in 1882). It was truly a lifetime's work, and it was helped by a collection of manuscripts amassed by a William Pinkerton which felicitously came into Benn's possession. Pinkerton had intended to write a history of Belfast himself, but he never got around to it - and we should be grateful that the task eventually fell to George Benn, who brings not only a scholarly inquisitiveness and density, but an occasionally idiosyncratic informality to bear on the subject.

You have to give him full marks for comprehensiveness, but he makes it clear, for instance, that he isn't riveted by statistics relating to the water supply of Belfast in 1678, though dutifulness obliges him to put these in.

What's more to his liking is the occasional intriguing snippet such as the report concerning a respectable bookseller from North Street, and a Chaplain of the American Navy, who were found lying dead drunk in Rosemary Street in 1816 - and this in the vicinity of Roger Mulholland's beautiful elliptical church to boot, no doubt causing affront to a lot of Belfast Presbyterians going about their religious duties. "Why the bookseller allowed himself to be overcome in Rosemary Street with the American Chaplain", says Benn, "is rather inexplicable." And, when he comes to the topic of "Literary Persons of Belfast of the Eighteenth Century", he's forced to conclude that "it is unsatisfactory to mention that this branch of the subject is much more scanty than could be wished for". It would be pleasant to envisage George Benn sitting on a cloud somewhere in the stratosphere and observing the vast improvement in this area that has come about in the century and more since his death.

The first part of Benn's History of Befast is exactly what it says, a general history, more or less beginning with the Elizabethan era, when Belfast consisted of nothing more than "a solitary castle among the desolate wastes". It grew slowly and was not for some time considered very desirable as a place of residence - even as late as 1690, Benn tells us, Belfast did not rank very high as a "healthful" spot, and King William of Orange was urged not to linger in it in case he might catch some indigenous infection. He had lately come from Carrickfergus where, according to one report, a chair was brought to the quayside on which the king sat down for a long rest before mustering his forces and dashing off to the Boyne, taking in Belfast along the way. (The chair was supposed to have found its way to St George's Church in Belfast, where for all I know it still is.)

Chapter Eleven moves on from general to social history with the Old

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HISTORY OF BELFAST

Town Book of Belfast - the seventeenth-century records. This section also includes an ecclesiastical history of Belfast, which I have to say I have not read with due care and attention. More to my taste is the "Description of the Old Streets of Belfast", though I'm nearly driven to tearing my hair when I read about "the fine old houses which run from Castle Place to Fountain Street", not to mention the Old White Linen Hall with its pleasant walks and shady groves. Alas, all these were destined for annihilation - "the ruthless builder", Benn says, "was preparing to mar all these beauties" - including the beauties of Peter's Hill, distinguished in the distant past for its gardens and orchards. Architectural outrage is not a phenomenon of the present; it simply changes its focus with the particular destructiveness inflicted on every generation.

Even if it's hard now to imagine grazing herds in Bedford Street, or women gathering violets in Ye Fields beyond Sandy Row in the 1680s, it's wonderful to have, in a reasonably compact form, the means to conjure up such fragments of bygone Belfast, along with all its complexities of ancient and modern history. This unique and enticing book has long been unavailable, except to scholars browsing in the recesses of libraries, or mad collectors with unlimited funds; and it is immensely to the credit of Belfast City Council and Blackstaff Press that it is once again in circulation among the general public. With its wealth of detail, its scholarly expertise, its readability, and its value to local and general historians, it is something that no home should be without - certainly no Belfast home. I'm sure that all of you can't wait to get your hands on a copy, if you haven't already done so, so I'll stop here.

These remarks were delivered at the launch of afacsimile edition of George Benn's A History of the Town of Belfast (Blackstaff Press, 2008) at the Royal Befast Academical Institution ("Inst) on 21 October 2008.

A critic, anthologist and non-fiction writer, Patricia Craig was born in Belfast and livedfor many years in London. Her most recent books are The Ulster Anthology (2006) and Asking for Trouble (2008), both from Blackstaff Press. She now lives in Antrim with her husband, the painter and wood-engraver Jeffrey Morgan.

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