FORENSICS

The West Link is one of biggest hidden barriers in Belfast. On one side of the West Link there is the main road which is Clifton Street which accomadates some historic buildings aswell as modern ones while hidden behind the buildings is Regent Street. Over the years Regent Street has lost its purpose as a road and has become off street parking for many people in the area. It has been adapted over the years as most of the main buildings have become vacant while others are still used for different purposes. We wanted to explore different aspects of the area so each of us took different important sections to investigate, to give a more in-depth explanation to the area using different resources such as maps, photos, sound recordings, and reports to help us gather an understanding of this area.

Elise Sandes, a devout Christian woman opened her home to local soldiers as a welcome break from the hardships of life in the barracks, offering reading rooms and games rooms. However, the home, and the local recruitment bases were demolished to make way for the Westlink.

Clifton Street United Presbyterian Church

Clifton Street United Presbyterian Church was completed in September 1881. However, in 1982, just over 100 years later the church was decommissioned due to the dwindling religious population as the troubles raged around the church, with the interior striped and sold to another Church before being demolished.

Millar and Co

Millar and Co, a Jams and Jellies manufacture, selling products throat the UK. Millar and Co grew from strength to strength before meeting their demise in May 1922 when the factory was destroyed beyond repair by an IRA bomb. Part of the site is now occupied by filling station whilst the remainder has been left derelict.

St Enoch’s Church

St Enoch’s Church was built in the 1872 to serve Rev Hugh Hanna’s Presbyterian congregation. On the 7th May 1982, the Church was irrevocably damaged by an accidental fire, set ablaze by children, the boys charged with the fire were on drugs at the time; ‘This is a most serious offence brought about by glue sniffing’ described judge, Lord Justice O’Donnell.

Clifton Street Orange Hall

Clifton Street Orange Hall opened in January 1885 as a central meeting point for the increasingly politicised Unionist population of Belfast. The building narrowly missed demolition in the development of the Westlink, where today the road narrowly skims its outlying wall.

ST Enoch’s Shops

ST ENOCH’S SHOPS, constructed in the 1890s, located beside St Enoch’s Church. The retail space has seen many business come and go, including a post office, which was heavily targeted during the troubles.

Regent Street, split by the westlink severing the north end of the street off from the city centre. I have catalogued the different defence mechanisms that have helped segregate the street and mechanisms that have been added after due to anti-social behaviour and necessity due to violence in the area.

Tall fences towering over back gardens with just a glimpse of the other side of regent street.

5 lanes of constant traffic flowing on and off the westlink with pedestrians having to make an uneasy journey from one end of Regent Street to the other.

Pedestrian waiting over 5 minutes to cross over the bridge of the westlink.

Cyclist forced onto the narrow footpath with the pedestrians as it is too busy and unsafe to cycle on the road.

View from the lower end of Clifton Street, the car dominates the scene further into the city centre.

Reminants of violence and intimidation on the back of a church on Regent Street. The barb wire double in height to stop intruders.

The Orange Hall on Regend Street has added a large ‘screening box’ onto the rear so that it can survail its clientel before entry, it is ordained with several cameras around the box also.

Reassuring potential vandals that the razor wire is, in-fact, in place.

A security gate to the rear of the largest chruch along Regent Street. Potentially to survail clientel and stop unwanted entry. A bit more refined than the other ‘survailance box’ on the Orange Hall.

A triple entry threshold, combined of two gates and a door entry. I believe that the Orange Hall has been lying in disuse for over 5 years.

I wonder if the security is still necessary?

Large corrigated fencing surrounds the main church on Clifton street making for a large eyesore which often gets painted over for various events. The passageway narrows the footpath and makes for uneasy walking.

Bridge looking over the Westlink

Entrance onto Stanhope Street

Regent Street off Stanhope Street

Undeveloped land at the end of Regent Street near Westlink

While investigating the noise within the site along the Westlink, at the junction of the Westlink and Clifton Street / Carlisle Circus, I was able to record the noise levels in different areas of the site to document where the noise disturbance was at its highest and its lowest.

You can tell that within the outer streets the noise is less than the ones closer to the Westlink. Starting at Regent Street behind the Orange Hall, you can see that the sound waves of the noise levels get higher the closer we get to the westlink and then it fades out heading onto Stanhope Street.

The loudest recorded was on the bridge of the Westlink.

The A12 westlink is an important road that connects the M1 to the south of belfast to the M2 and M3 to the north. it is one of the busiest roads in northern ireland. users have a love hate relationship with it as it is chronically congested since the day it opened in 1981 on saturday the 16th of Augus 2008t it was completetly filled with water due to several hours of heavy rainfall this is the surface water that affects belfast, on clifton street unerpass we can see that there is a flooding issue of surface water under that bridge

The westlink had a 104 million pound upgrade to widen the roads and remove roundabouts was launched in 2006 which would carry out until 2009, the roundabout would be replaced by a 6 lan underpass that will carry the motorway under the junction. the project finished 9 months early in july 2008.

Much of Belfast lies below sea level and the area around the Westlink, In years gone by, bog land would have helped slowly absorb rain water and provide drainage overflow from local rivers however belfast lacks green area and is slowly becoming a concrete jungle there was talk of constructing a flyover however due to enviornmental concerns, the inspector recommended an underpass and roads service accepted that recommendation the clowney water and a few metres west and the blackstaff adjacent to the east. the problem is that these rivers are underground and that they were at full capacoty afte the heavy rainfall, despite the construction of the large overfloe chmaber. as a preventative mechanisim that were dirveted the tunneld for the two rivered and gave surrounding areas more green space which will help water from the lagan and surface water get absorded

“There are always people who will come to inhabit the difficult spaces of the wall.”

“They are the people of crisis, pushed usually unwillingly to confrontation with limits, borderline cases of every sort, adventurers, criminals, inventors, con-artists, opportunists, people who cannot, or have not been allowed to, fit in elsewhere.”

“They are nomads of the body, refugees of the mind, restless, itinerant, looking without much chance of finding a sure way either forward or back.”

“Instead, they turn the situation to an advantage, making uncertainty a virtue, and strangeness an ally.”

“Within the degraded layers of urban fabric there is another intimate scale of complexity that can become the point of origin for a new urban fabric.”

“In the spaces voided by destruction, new structures can be injected.” These new structures contain freespaces, which require effort and creativity to occupy.

“The freespaces are, at their inception, useless and meaningless spaces. They become useful and aquire meaning only as they are inhabited.”

“Within them, people assume the benefits and burdens of self-organisation.”

“In the spaces voided by destruction, new structures can be injected. Complete in themselves, they do not fit exactly into the voids, but exist as spaces within spaces, making no attempt to reconcile the gaps between what is new and old, between two radically different systems of spatial order and of thought. These gaps can only be filled in time.”