Peace Bridge

It is emblematic of division in Northern Irish society that an urban area the size of Londonderry should have only one bridge linking the city over its river. If an absence can be symbolic then the under-adorned Foyle says as much as Belfast’s Peace Walls. That will soon change. A new link has been created. Already some hardhat-wearing construction worker will have been the first to walk across the new bridge, perhaps they drew straws for the honour. The bridge aims to be emblematic of a new era, it has been named the Peace Bridge.


From a new map of Derry City.


Currently still displayed on Goggle Maps, the Peace Bridge early in its construction.

Above is a section from a new visitor map available in Derry. It’s done in a pictorial style, perhaps prettifying the city a tad more than the reality on the ground. The Peace Bridge is not open to use yet but has been included on the map. As far as I know this is the first appearance of the Peace Bridge in Ulster cartography. The bridge is just about as curvy as in this illustration. Swinging back and forth as it crosses the water, making you think of the letter S. If, as has often been the case, dividing a city is done with high straight walls, rigid verticals and right angles then it is pleasingly suitable that both the bridge and this image are all about curves, waves and fanning supports.

Ireland on the Spot

Looking at maps of Ireland in the collection of the New York Public Library, I notice that, whatever the year, a lot of them were published in the third week of March. This was because St Patrick’s Day was close and people’s interest in Ireland was piqued.


Overview

On 19 March 1941 the Sunday News published a map of “embattled Ireland.” They called it Ireland on the Spot.

… having only recently gained independence after more than seven centuries of struggle, [Ireland] is swept to the torture wrack again by the tide of events. She’s damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t aid England against Germany. As key to England’s back-door defence Ireland faces invasion in either event.

Along with current events those centuries of struggle get in on this map too. Rather like my own Map of Watchful Architecture, the map-maker here includes a few ancient sites with the contemporary, battle sites such as Blackwater Town (1598) and Newtownbutler (1698).


Air raid warning for Belfast


Some attacks on southern sites


This feature is a minefield across the north of Donegal. Its entire length is off the coast of the supposedly neutral Ireland.

It is the landscape of the war with Germany that make-up the major elements of this map. The graphic of a Swastika-baring airplane warns us that Belfast is only two hours and ten minutes from Nazi bases in Norway. Almost a thousand people would soon die and many more would be injured an attack on Belfast. Outside London, this was the greatest loss of life in a night raid during the Second World War. However when this map was published that raid against Belfast was still one month away. What had occurred at this stage were attacks on the Free State, more than I had realised. The fiery “Bombed by Nazis” label is to be seen around Dublin and in the counties of Carlow, Kildare, Wexford and Meath. In the case of Meath they are to be found just south of a label marking the site of the Battle of the Boyne (1690).

Special Strategic Map

I have temporarily relocated to New York City and have been examining some of the map collection in the New York Public Library. A few will appear on this blog during the oncoming weeks.


The top section of the map, click through for a closer look.

The particular map for today was produced by the U.S. Military in 1943. It is called “Ireland (Eire) & Northern Ireland - Special Strategic Map.” It was “for use by War and Navy Department Agencies only. Not for sale or distribution.”

It is disappointing that, upon examination, the map is not that special at all. Despite the hush, hush it focuses on generally available information, transportation links mainly. Concerns that stand-out as perhaps specific to this map are sheer amount of coastal features, islands and inlets, that are named and the oddly blunt attention given to mountains. Mountains are banded together in a style that also flattens their tops. This might be suitable for the Glens of Antrim but is not near accurate elsewhere. This illustrative style is not so different from how mountains were described on maps 200 years previously. Maybe the aim was not to describe the specifics of the mountains but rather just give an indication of whether a certain part of the country was mountainous or not so mountainous. They probably had more accurate maps for closer scales.


Detail.

It should not be surprising that during the Second World War maps of Ireland were produced by the U.S. Army. In early 1942 an Infantry Regiment of the 34th Infantry Division was the first American unit sent to Europe. They arrived in Belfast. These units were designated as U.S. Army Northern Ireland Forces. They trained in the boglands and even patrolled the border.

Ulster Canals

Back in August 2008 I wrote about walking along the abandoned Ulster Canal where it constitutes the border between northern and southern Ireland. Some day I might need a boat to repeat the journey. This canal was abandoned in 1931 but now there is increasing interest, both north and south, in re-opening the waterway. If the aspiration of this Belfast City Council map comes true, you will be able to boat from Coleraine to Waterford.


Map taken from Belfast City Council’s Lagan Gateway report, published lately.

But the Lagan Canal will be first to get attention. This canal is actually a set of canals creating a straighter and traversable route along side the meandering Lagan. This infrastructure was also called the Lagan Navigation and it was created in the 18th Century. Records show that in 1838 about 45,000 tonnes of coal, tiles, flour, wheat, manure and turf came to Belfast this way. The rise of motorised transportation eventually brought an end to this form of haulage. The canal was closed in 1956. It is perhaps not so much ironic as grimly logical that the M1 motorway now covers a stretch of the original Lagan Canal. However some of the basic infrastructure of the canal remains in other sections, waiting. A 2006 reported highlighted many possible benefits of refurbishment and now Belfast City Council plans that around 17 kilometres of the Lagan Navigation, from Belfast to Lisburn, be reopened. Hopefully that will just be the beginning.


The Lagan Canal once upon a time.

There’s information about the project on Belfast City Council’s site.

Belfast Facilities

Lately I partook in a C.R.O.W. walk through the centre of Belfast. The name stands of City Wight Of Way and the project aims to bring some insights into ignored or unseen parts of Belfast. On the day I joined them we did a walking tour of Belfast public toilets, examining the facilities.


Beginning with St Anne’s Cathedral and ending at Shaftsbury Square.

A tour of toilets may seem an odd way to spend an afternoon but, in the end, it was a surprisingly interesting and even refreshing way of looking at the city. It brought us all places we had never been before. For example, some of our party had never previously entered St Anne’s Cathedral. Spend a consistent few hours comparing toilets, or perhaps any other thing, and a sense of mild connoisseurship can develop in you. By the end of the walk I thought I had developed a bit of an eye for loos. I wrote a few words about the walk and posted some photos on C.R.O.W.’s own blog. Click here to visit.


We finished the tour at this mysterious manhole Shaftsbury Square. Actually, a manhole is a good description for it. During the busiest drinking hours of Friday and Saturday night it rises, revealing a men-only open urinal.

Long Sheelah

The tide must have been low when a Google-sponsored satellite passed over Strangford Lough and took this photo. There is Long Sheelah, a pebbly island that is indeed long, and narrow. Even when viewed from outer space it is easy to intuit that there is not a blade of grass on this island. It looks pale and almost ghostly. Soon it will be under the tide again. Presumably, as Long Sheelah is a delicate piece of geology, it would not take a major shift in Strangford Lough’s rhythms to dissolve the island entirely. Yet on Google Maps Long Sheelah does appear substantial enough with its straightness and its gleam that contrasts the water.


From Google Maps, Long Sheelah is the white dash close to dead centre of this image. Click through for a closer look.


From the Ordnance Survey Northern Ireland. Click through for a closer look.

The Ordnance Survey’s Discoverer map of Strangford portrays Long Sheelah with a tone from halfway along the greyscale. It is indicated as half with us and half not, a part-time member of the landscape. Like King Cross’s platform 9¾, it seems intangible.

Long Sheelah is above water most of the time. In his book The Blue Cabin Michael Faulkner has given it some tangibility. He has walked it, he is probably one of the only people to do so regularly. Long Sheelah is “a thin sliver of shells and polished pebbles the length of a football field and the width, a mean high-water, of a medium-sized boat” (page 136). By describing the island Faulkner has played the avant-garde, opening up a space to the rest of us. A place that was right under our noses all the time. On his blog he mentions that since he wrote about Long Sheelah other locals have taken to sailing there and using it as a picnic spot. Like many explorers Faulkner likes to come home with treasure. He tells us that Long Sheelah is the best place on the lough to find the eroded remains of limpet shells. The crowns of the shells have been worn away leaving rings that his wife, the artist Lynn McGregor, strings up into wind chimes to decorate their veranda.

Weathered Map

People who have visited Ulster’s outer edge at Glencolumcille may recognise this map. It is in the car park by the beach and has been getting hit by salty wind, sunlight and hard rain for at least fifteen years. Over that time the map has faded. It once charted sites of archaeological significance throughout county Donegal. The words ‘Discover Donegal’s Archaeological Heritage’ can still be discerned in the upper left. Practically every other word on the map has worn away completely. Routes and sites are still visible on the chart but the key has vanished, leaving the sites unexplained and mysterious.


Donegal’s Archaeological Heritage

No one maintains this map but it remains on site, no longer able to do its original job. I do not consider this a problem. Seeing just such relaxed inattentions is one nice thing about visiting these remote spots. This map is far from maintenance teams, far from impact assessments. It does not strive for consistency. But there is nothing wrong with it. The map has merely retired. It has moved into a new phase.


The key


Detail

There are about fifty archaeological sites labelled on the map but, as there is no key, we have no way of knowing what they are. We see only that they exist and the map now tells us, in the broadest possible sense, that we are travelling in an antique land. The map has faded and become impressionist. It is no longer just about archaeology, it has itself become archaeology. We peer at it and wonder what exactly it meant to those people, now long gone, who first erected it. We may be able to detect in its foundations the optimism of an early 1990’s tourist infrastructure initiative. And now, stepping back, we can see how such grand plans fell to the endless drive of the elements. The light, the wind and the rain. All of which combined, especially on the Atlantic seaboard, defeat everything in the end.