View, January 2012


Page 16


New chapter unfolds in the story of White City


T


Elliott. Professor Elliott, whose previous works, include,


he story of the creation of the White City in north Belfast is to be retold in a new book by historian and author Professor Marianne


Wolfe Tone and The Catholics of Ulster, said: “I don’t want to concentrate on the Troubles. I want to try and analyse what went wrong with this so- cial housing experiment.” The leading academic and OBE recipient, who holds the post of director at the Institute of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool, said: “I want to tell a story of what it was like to live in a post- war mixed housing estate.” The author can draw on personal experience as she moved into the estate as a child in 1949 and lived there until her family left for a new home in 1963. “As one of the first Housing Trust estates to be constructed in1947-1949, it embodied all the ideals set out in the trust's mission statements. And although houses were allocated on a needs basis, an unspoken convention ensured a religious bal- ance.” Professor Elliott said that she is still in con- tact with residents and former residents. “An


‘An insider’s knowledge will inform my approach as much as scholarly research’


insider's knowledge will inform my approach as much as scholarly research. “The importance and identification with the sur-


rounding environment has emerged in pilot inter- views with former residents. North Belfast had historically been the most integrated part of Belfast. The keen sense of place noted above made people very reluctant to move far, when they were intimidated out of estates, hence the many sectar- ian interfaces in this area. Yet in north Belfast I have found the memory of living in a mixed community being kept alive by the older and middle-aged members of families. “I have also found much evidence of cross-com-


munity family friendships being continued. How- ever, as these residents with memories of mixed communities become older, the tradition is fading. It is time to tell our story before that happens. “One of the aims of the book is to try and give people a sense of pride in their locality – I believe that the White City used to have that sense of pride.”


• If any former/current White City resi- dents would like to share their experi- ences and memories with Professor Elliott, confidentiality can be guaranteed if they wish. She can be contacted by phone: 0151-794-3831 or email: melliott@liv.ac.uk.


New book on White City: Professor Marianne Elliott ‘Our memories are important’


“It was a happy childhood,” says Pro- fessor Elliott, and I still remember with regret the day we left the White City in 1963. My parents were moving to the first house they had ever owned, in Glengormley. But for me the White City was home, and, nostalgically, it still is. “We lived at the top of Portmore Hill. Our street was the last built on the estate and seemed more like coun- try than urban living. There were fields and a forest adjacent, a big patch of greenery separating the two sides of the street, and, it seemed, a never- ending back garden. “The steep hill was the children’s


Belfast Lough, the back looked out on the Cave Hill – that talismanic feature of the north Belfast landscape, which exercises a peculiar local bond over


race-track: ‘guiders’ made from old pram wheels, heavy ball-bearing skates with no safety features, icy-slides in winter using pieces of card-board, or, all-too-often, wearing holes in our shoe-leather. “The front bedrooms overlooked


everyone who has lived there. “I do not recall inter-communal ten- sions. Quite the contrary, I remember crowds of children playing at marbles (and making them, little balls of mud baked in the sunshine), competing at skipping, hopscotch and rounders. “This project is about such experi- ences and it suggests that there was another way of living before the Trou- bles. Although now north Belfast con- tains many frontier zones, and one of the most recently-erected 'peace walls' went up in the now almost exclusively Protestant White City, it had been a mixed area and, like me, many born before the early 1960s will have similar memories. “Perhaps my memories are too rosy. But I would suggest that people in this area were able to retain their national- ist and unionist identities, without the high levels of sectarian fear which po- larised living incurs, and that our memories are as important a resource in mapping an alternative as the more studied accounts of those who took the road which led to the Troubles.”


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