Sandy Row is a Protestant working-class community in south Belfast, Northern Ireland. It has a population of about 3,000. It is a staunchly loyalist area of Belfast, being a traditional heartland for affiliation with the paramilitary Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and the Orange Order.
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Sandy Row is situated in south Belfast, beginning at the edge of the city centre, close to the Europa Hotel. The road runs south from the Boyne Bridge (formerly the Saltwater Bridge) over the old Dublin railway line into Great Victoria Street station, then crosses the Donegall Road and on to the bottom of the Lisburn Road. At one end of the road was the famous Murray's tobacco factory, which first opened in 1810[1], while at the other is a large Orange hall.
Also known as The Royal Mile, and formerly called Carr's Row, Sandy Row is one of the oldest residential areas of Belfast.[2] Its growth in population was in large part due to the expansion of the linen industry in Rowland Street.[3] The name Sandy Row derived from the sandbank which abutted the road that followed the high-water mark resulting from the flow off the tidal waters of the Lagan River estuary. For over two thousand years, the road along the sandbank was the principal thoroughfare leading south from Carrickfergus.[4]
In the 19th century Sandy Row became a bustling shopping district, and by the turn of the 20th-century, there were a total of 127 shops and merchants based in the road. It continued to draw shoppers from all over Belfast until the outbreak of the Troubles in the late 1960s.[3] The rows of 19th-century terraced houses in the streets branching off Sandy Row have been demolished and replaced with modern housing. Six of the houses which formerly lined Rowland Street have been rebuilt in the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum.
It is a traditionally Protestant, close-knit loyalist community, noted for its elaborate Orange Order parades on the Twelfth, with over 40 Arches erected in its streets and a marching band of teenaged girls known as the "Sandy Row Girl's Band".[5] In addition to the arches spanning the road, buildings and homes are decorated with flags, bunting and banners. The first Orange Arch was erected by Frank Reynolds in about 1921.[4] In 1690, on his way south to fight at the Battle of the Boyne, King William III of England and his troops travelled along Sandy Row.[4] Tradition holds that part of his army camped on the ground where the Orange Hall now stands. The Hall was opened in June 1910 by Lady Henderson, wife of former Lord Mayor of Belfast, James Henderson. By 1908, there were 34 Orange Lodges in the district.[4] In the 19th and 20th-centuries, there was much sectarian fighting and rioting between Sandy Row Protestants and Catholics from Pound Loney, in the Lower Falls Road.[4]
In the Belfast Blitz, the Luftwaffe dropped a bomb in Blythe Street, damaging a terrace of houses.
The Sandy Row redevelopment association which was founded in 1970, was one of the first loyalist community groups to open an advice centre.[6] In 1996, the Sandy Row Community Forum was established. It acts as an umbrella organisation for all the community groups in the area.
During The Troubles, the area had a strong Ulster Defence Association (UDA) presence. Sandy Row is part of the UDA South Belfast Brigade, commanded for many years by the late John McMichael and currently by Jackie McDonald.
In December 1972, senior UDA member Ernie Elliott was shot dead outside a Sandy Row club by a fellow UDA man after a drunken brawl.[7] On 7 February 1973, Brian Douglas, a Protestant fireman from Sailortown was shot to death by the UDA whilst fighting a fire caused by street disturbances in Bradbury Place.[8] Two Protestant civilian men were killed on 30 March 1974 in a no-warning bomb attack carried out by an unknown republican paramilitary group against the Crescent Bar. On 24 July 1974, Anne Ogilby, a 31-year-old Protestant single mother of four, was savagely beaten to death with bricks and sticks inside a disused bakery in Hunter Street by two teenagers from the Sandy Row women's UDA unit, commanded by Elizabeth "Lily" Douglas. Ogilby's six-year-old daughter listened to her mother's screams outside the door whilst loud disco music was playing inside. Ogilby had been "sentenced to death" at a kangaroo court presided over by eight UDA women after it was discovered she was having an affair with a UDA man, who was married to one of the unit's members. She had also made defamatory remarks about her lover's wife. On 30 January 1976, the Provisional IRA exploded a car bomb outside the Klondyke Bar on the corner of McAdam Street. John Smiley, a middle-aged Protestant civilian was killed outright in the blast. Many people inside the pub suffered serious injuries including a barmaid who lost an eye.[8][9] Less than two years before the attack, the Klondyke Bar was the subject of a photographic essay by Bill Kirk in a series of photographs taken in Sandy Row. The Klondyke had been built in 1872.
In the same year of the Klondyke bombing, an 18-year-old Catholic girl had her throat slit behind a Sandy Row pub by loyalist paramilitaries after she had been discovered drinking inside with Protestant friends.[10] Sandy Row UDA members also launched a series of attacks on nearby Durham Street, a mainly Catholic area between Sandy Row and the Falls Road, in the early 1970s with four Catholics killed in the area, including 16 year old Bernard McErlain, in late March-April 1973.[11]
The large UDA/Ulster Freedom Fighters mural is one of many loyalist murals found in Sandy Row; it can be seen from the northern end of the street. The mural is supposed to mirror the Republican mural in Derry. Sandy Row features a loyalist souvenir shop which sells UDA and Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) paraphernalia.
In October 2011, a bomb was discovered on a patch of ground at Bradbury Place, which caused a security alert resulting in the evacuation of homes, bars, and businesses in the area. Army bomb disposal experts carried out a controlled explosion on the device.
The Linfield F.C. was founded in Sandy Row in March 1886 by workers from the Ulster Spinning Company's Linfield Mill. Originally named the Linfield Athletic Club, its playing ground, "the Meadow", was situated behind the mill.[12] Linfield's first captain was Sam "Thaw" Torrans.
Celebrated snooker champion Alex "Hurricane" Higgins was a native of Sandy Row. He first started playing at the age of 11 in the Jampot club.
In the song "Madame George" on his album Astral Weeks, Van Morrison sings: "Then you know you gotta go On the train from Dublin up to Sandy Row"