Shankill
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Shankill Road is to Unionist/Protestant West Belfast what the Falls Road is to the Republican/Catholic side. And like with its southern counterpart the street name is also used to refer to the whole district around it. The Shankill too was one of the hotspots of the “Troubles” (see Northern Ireland). The area is regularly part of both political walking tours of West Belfast as well as the legendary Black Taxi Tours. You can in theory explore the area independently as well, but having a guide does pay off for the historical explanations you’ll be given.
>Combinations with other dark destinations
More background info: for general historical background info about the “Troubles” see Northern Ireland and Belfast, and also cf. Falls Road and Derry/Londonderry.
Shankill is the district in the northern half of West Belfast that directly borders the Republican/Catholic district around Falls Road. It was in the Shankill that both the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force) and the UDA (Ulster Defence Association) were founded. In 1969 the friction between the two opposing communities erupted into open conflict, first with attacks by Unionists on Republican houses (esp. Bombay Street – see Falls Road), then it came under attack by the IRA itself. There were drive-by shootings, petrol bombings and proper explosive bombs. It was often pubs that were targeted (as “soft targets”). There were too many incidents to list them all exhaustively here, but a few of the most significant ones can be picked out:
In 1971 there were several bombings/attacks, including one on the Balmoral furniture showroom on 11 December in which four people were killed. Another major incident was the attack on the Bayardo Bar of August 1975 in which five people were killed, including one UVF member, and over 50 civilians were injured (apparently this was a revenge act for a massacre perpetrated by the UVF two weeks earlier).
One of the best-known atrocities during the later phase of the “Troubles” was the so-called Shankill Road bombing of 23 October 1993. After Unionist paramilitaries had stepped up their campaign against Catholic targets, the IRA saw itself pressed into another revenge act. This time the plan was to kill the UDA leadership at their local HQ above a fish shop. That plan went wrong, though, as the UDA meeting didn’t take place at the time of the attack. Instead the bomb taken into the busy fish shop on the ground floor detonated prematurely, killing the IRA member who was to plant the bomb – alongside nine civilians, including women and children as well as the shop owner. As the bomb was designed to blast upwards, the floor above came down on the people in the shop and reduced the building to a pile of rubble. Nearly 60 people were injured and had to be rescued from the rubble, including the other IRA man involved in the attack. The IRA later claimed that the intention of the attackers had been to evacuate the shop before the bomb went off. The Unionists, however, saw it as an indiscriminate act of terror against Protestant civilians. In the wake of the bombing, Unionists in turn went on a revenge murder spree of Catholics both in Belfast and in other parts of Northern Ireland.
The cycle of violence was ended only in the late 1990s with the Peace Process that culminated in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Yet many Unionists saw the subsequent amnesty of IRA members as a betrayal, and many a mural and plaque on the Shankill Road still make this clear, together with the reiterated goal of keeping Northern Ireland in the UK and resisting any idea of an Irish unification, which had always been the IRA’s ultimate goal. So the paramilitary actions may have ceased but the underlying issues have not actually gone away …
What there is to see: I’ve been to the Shankill on three occasions. First as part of a Black Taxi Tour I undertook in December 2012 – which is covered separately in this chapter. I returned in early April 2023, first walking independently through the Shankill district on my way from Crumlin Road Gaol to the meeting point of a three-hour political walking tour, which started on the Republican side. The first part was conducted by an ex-IRA man and covered the Republican Falls Road area (and is described separately here), before our group was handed over to a different guide from the Unionist side at the gates in the Peace Wall at Lanark Way.
Our Unionist guide was also an ex-political prisoner and he made hints that during the “Troubles” he had done things “just short of” landing him a life sentence. Nobody dared to ask for details about the nature of his deeds, for which he spent 14 years imprisoned in Crumlin Road Gaol. Yet he was a softly-spoken, kind man with a wry, occasionally somewhat sarcastic sense of humour.
He first took us to a stretch of the so-called Peace Wall on the Unionist/Protestant side. This long open stretch of the wall along the south side of Cupar Way is often a stop for coach tours and indeed we saw one such group (apparently a school group) just a few dozen yards away. Such tours routinely involve visitors leaving messages on the wall. Fortunately, our guide did not encourage anybody in our group to do so too (see also my comments about this aspect in the Black Taxi Tour chapter!).
We were then led up a side street towards Shankill Road itself. En route our guide pointed out the fact that the housing estates redeveloped during the time of the “Troubles” involve a lot of cul-de-sac access roads. Apparently this was a deliberate design decision to prevent drive-by shootings (which would not really be practical if you then have to make a three-point turn to get away from the scene).
On the Shankill Road we saw a rather martial mural glorifying the UVF that contrasts quite jarringly with the couple of “Welcome to Shankill Road” murals. There was also a mural commemorating Hugh Smyth, a prominent Unionist politician and one-time Lord Mayor of Belfast, who was from the Shankill district. Perhaps more surprising at first glance may be the flashy celebration of the Glasgow Rangers football club. Yet you have to know about the sectarian rivalry between Protestant Rangers with their local Catholic rival club Celtic Glasgow to see the Shankill’s connection to this Scottish club Rangers.
Also very present on Shankill Road are murals and monuments commemorating Ulster’s role in World War One (always referred to as the “Great War” here), in particular in the Somme. One mural was a depiction of the Ulster Tower in that region, as well as an image of the grand Thiepval monument.
A particularly Royalist mural was a huge portrait of the late Queen Elizabeth II. There were quite a few references to the Royal Family to be seen here, in fact. And obviously, Union Jack flags are pretty omnipresent along Shankill Road as well.
A large permanent memorial complex is the Shankill Road Memorial Garden on the south side of that street on the corner with the street Wilton Gardens. This memorial complex is primarily dedicated to those men from the Shankill area who lost their lives in WW1 and WWII, in particular in the Battle of the Somme when out of 760 Shankill men in the Ulster divisions only one in ten lived to return home. The garden also has little memorials for individuals, either in the form of stylized poppies (as is typical for British commemoration of WW1) or even in the form of little grave-like patches. A major part of the gardens is also the memorial commemorating the 1993 Shankill Road bombing (see above).
Another memorial complex with yet another Somme monument can be found a bit further down the road on its north side between the Rex Bar and a whole wall with text and images commemorating the Ulster Volunteer Force Scottish Brigade.
The most drastic Troubles-related memorial is that at the site of the Bayardo Bar bombing of 1975 (see above). The main part is a more formal monument featuring portrait photos of the five people killed in the attack and a black marble slab stating their names and ages plus a few more extra plaques and a cross of poppies. There’s a rather weird link with WW1 again, as this memorial was erected by the Bayardo Somme Association. Hence the memorial uses the well-worn line “lest we forget” in Gothic script at the top of the structure. Behind this monument is a whole cluster of more informal-looking plaques and panels. Most of these chronicle various atrocities committed by the IRA during the “Troubles” both in Northern Ireland and in England, such as the Birmingham pub bombings of 1974, but also depicted are the Islamist terrorist attacks in London in 2005 and in Paris in 2015, and a rather hyperbolic line underneath reads “IRA, Sinn Féin, ISIS – no difference”. In addition there’s a panel demonizing ex-prime minister Tony Blair (calling him “Phoney Tony” for his lies in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war) and several of his contemporaries and successors, such as Ken Livingston and Peter Mandelson. A particular target for abuse is also Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour PM candidate, namely for his links with Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams. The latter’s family is even accused of paedophilia. It’s all very heavy-handed and anti-reconciliatory. The livid anger that must have been behind the creation of all these panels also shines through in the often faulty punctuation and an almost social-media like unedited general writing style. This was easily the most drastic element of Troubles-related sights/sites I encountered anywhere in West Belfast!
Not far behind, though, is a large mural commemorating the Balmoral furniture showroom attack of 1971 (see above), which is called a “slaughter” here and the “provisional Sinn Féin” is accused of “genocide”. Such a drastic exaggeration (and it is of course an exaggeration, not a legitimate use of that term genocide) also reflects how deep the anger about these dark chapters in local history still runs.
Anyway, the guided walking tour ended on Shankill Road and from there I made my way back to the city centre.
However, as briefly noted already above, I had earlier that day walked independently, i.e. unguided, through other parts of the Shankill district, in particular through a part with numerous full-size murals, many of which I had already seen on my Black Taxi Tour in 2012. Some are also depicted in the photo gallery for that chapter, in addition to the one represented below here.
Some of these murals around Hopewell Crescent, located between Crumlin Road Gaol and Shankill Road, glorify “controversial” figures such as Stevie “Top Gun” McKeag, a commander of the most notorious “brigade” of the paramilitary organization UDA that had one of its strongholds here. Another one was Jackie Coulter, also of the UDA, who has a commemorative mural in this area too. Both were actually killed in violent feuds with the UVF! But there are also more reconciliatory murals, such as the “Women’s Quilt” mural nearby that features such nice words as “hope”, “love”, “family”, “kind” and “inspire”.
Another newer mural quotes the line “Nothing without us about us is for us ...” indicating a wish for the involvement of the local community in social and political change. As an info panel explains, this was actually a commissioned work of art that replaced an earlier, much more martial mural depicting UDA guerrilla fighters with machine guns. So there’s a certain degree of “sanitization” going on in the district. The really divisive and aggressive political murals are being replaced by more “positive” sentiments.
Despite such developments, it’s certainly still an interesting part to explore, as it feels much “edgier” than e.g. the Solidarity Wall on the Falls Road.
Also in this part of the Lower Shankill district is a monument consisting of three metal poles with the inscriptions “remember”, “respect” and “resolution” on them.
Another part of the Shankill district that wasn’t part of the guided walking tour are the murals just north of the gate in the Peace Wall on Northumberland Street and round the corner on Beverly Street. Many of these are references not to the “Troubles” but to WW1 and WWII. Interestingly, though, there was also one in solidarity with Israel and in open reverence for Benjamin Netanyahu. This contrasts starkly with the many expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian side on the nearby Solidarity Wall in the Falls Road Republican district. In fact, this solidarity is widely shared in the Republic of Ireland too, which has long been one of the strongest critics within the EU of Israeli politics towards Palestine. So this difference in political positioning is yet another facet of the Protestant/Unionist vs. Catholic/Republican divide.
All in all, exploring the Shankill area and/or going on a guided walking tour to this and the Republican equivalent to the south along and around the Falls Road, is certainly well worth any dark tourist’s while. Generally, the Republican side manages to get its perspective across a bit better than the Unionist side, so the Shankill feels slightly “rougher” than the Falls Road, but in a way that adds a little extra in the feeling of authenticity, perhaps. But in some places (especially at the Bayardo monument) the rhetoric on the open-air panels gets quite heavy-handed and unbalanced. On the one hand that means you have to take it with more than just a pinch of salt, on the other hand it gives the outsider visitor an intense feeling for how deep the divide between the Unionist vs. Republican communities still is.
Location(s): north of the Republican Falls Road and the Peace Wall in West Belfast. With various noteworthy locations on and around Shankill Road.
Google Maps locators:
Gate in the Peace Wall on Lanark Way: [54.6016, -5.9612]
Peace Wall on Cupar Way: between [54.6017, -5.9586] and [54.6002, -5.9497]
Shankill Road Memorial Garden: [54.6041, -5.9518]
Bayardo bombing memorial: [54.6039, -5.9483]
Balmoral furniture showroom bombing mural: [54.6039, -5.9475]
Murals around Hopewell Crescent: [54.606, -5.942]
Murals north of the Northumberland Street gate in the Peace Wall: [54.6015, -5.9471]
Access and costs: freely accessible or by guided tours, which naturally cost some money, but not too much.
Details: in theory you can simply explore Belfast's Shankill area independently on your own and for free at any time (though only daylight hours make sense), going by the descriptions and locators above.
But in order to get a deeper understanding of the history and the meanings of and backgrounds to the various murals to be seen here, joining a guided tour is recommended. There are political walking tours that take in both sides of the divide, and one half of these takes visitors around the Shankill area – see under Falls Road for more practical details.
Another, popular, way of seeing the Shankill district (and Falls Road) is by one of those well-known Black Taxi Tours – see this separate chapter for a report of one I undertook in 2012.
In any case, arrangements should ideally be made in advance online. Costs for tours vary, but are mostly within a reasonable range (typically around 20 GBP – more for longer tours by taxi).
Time required: The guided walking tour I went on in April 2023 took three hours in total, roughly half of which was spent in the Shankill area, the other on and around Falls Road. By Black Taxi Tours you cover more ground faster, naturally, but it’s also worth considering wandering through the district independently, which can take another couple of hours or so.
Combinations with other dark destinations: The guided political walking tour of West Belfast that I went on in April 2023 already came with its natural combination of the Shankill with its Republican/Catholic counterpart to the south along and around Falls Road. The same combination applies to those Black Taxi Tours and should also apply to independently exploring West Belfast.
A major dark site also linked to the “Troubles” and located north of Lower Shankill is Crumlin Road Gaol, which is now an impressive tourist sight.
For more see also under Belfast and Northern Ireland in general.
Combinations with non-dark destinations: The Shankill is even less of mainstream tourist interest than the Falls Road area. If it wasn’t for “Troubles” tourism, I doubt the area would see many outside visitors at all. Those interested in “proper” tourist attractions should stick to the city centre of Belfast and maybe go on mainstream excursions from there (e.g. to the Giant’s Causeway) – see under Northern Ireland in general.
