Belfast

Belfast lies on the Lagan where the river enters Belfast Lough at the head of the North Channel. A low-water crossing at the Farset joined the road country of eastern Ulster. Soft estuarine mud limited building, while basalt hills rose behind the settlement and the lough offered a sheltered approach from the Irish Sea.

The town was chartered in 1613 and attracted English, Manx and especially Scottish Presbyterian settlers. Linen brought Belfast merchants into trade with the Americas, and profits financed quays, the Lagan Canal and early docks. By the eighteenth century the small port had become the commercial center of Ulster’s linen country.

Shipbuilding, ropeworks and engineering grew from the river port and immigrant neighborhoods. Rope and sail, provisions and linen connected Belfast to Atlantic shipping. Its identity rests on the Lagan crossing, the lough and the commercial union of Scottish settlement, flax country and overseas trade. Flax growers and linen merchants tied town to hinterland. Flax spinning linked farms to overseas markets. Quays and warehouses rose along the Lagan as linen exports expanded. Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods formed around separate streets and institutions.