Sandy Row

[7] To the north is the Boyne Bridge was built in 1935 to cross over the railway tracks leading to the nearby Great Victoria Street station.

With much development of the area, the redirection of the Blackstaff river and the construction of the Lagan Weir (1994), the sand lines of the row are long lost to history.

[6] 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.

[6] In the spring 1941 Belfast Blitz during the calamitous 15/16 April raid, the Luftwaffe dropped a parachute landmine at the top of Blythe Street, killing and fatally injuring over ten people including children.

Sandy Row is part of the UDA South Belfast Brigade, commanded for many years by the late John McMichael and currently by Jackie McDonald.

[12] 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.

[14] 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, Ann Ogilby, a 32-year-old Protestant single mother of four, was savagely beaten to death with bricks and sticks inside the disused Warwick's bakery in Hunter Street by two teenagers from the Sandy Row women's UDA unit, commanded by Elizabeth "Lily" Douglas.

[15] Ogilby's six-year-old daughter was outside the door and overheard her mother's screams inside whilst loud disco music played.

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.

[22] The Sandy Row Neighbourhood Renewal Area (NRA) was designated by the Department for Social Development in 2004, with boundaries extending along the Westlink, Donegall Road and Great Victoria Street.

Celebrated snooker champion Alex "Hurricane" Higgins was a native of Sandy Row, having been born in Abingdon Drive, off the Donegall Road.

[24] In the song "Madame George" on his album Astral Weeks, Van Morrison sings: Then you know you gotta go On that train from Dublin up to Sandy Row