The River Farset today, which runs underneath Townsend Enterprise Park.
Industrial Heritage
The Soho Foundry, on which the Enterprise Park site is located, was just one of 7 major foundries in Townsend Street in the 19th century. The town ended at Townsend Street, with the rivers above this level being unable to drive a water wheel thus limiting industrial output. The revolutionary work of the MacAdam brothers at the foundry, which sat on the Farset River (which gave Belfast its name), was the innovative implementation and improvement of Lord Kelvin’s turbine designs to allow power to be generated from weak and uneven flowing rivers paving the way for significant expansion of Belfast’s industrial footprint. These were designed, fabricated and installed by workers on this site employed from both communities based on merit alone.
The busy entrance to the Soho Foundry can be seen in this background image, with the striking pyramidal cap of the scrabo stone pier of the Presbyterian church’s front gates still being visible seen today. Though little physical evidence of the Soho Foundry now remains, it left an indelible mark on the history of the industrialisation of Ireland as it paved the way for the expansion of what was fast becoming ‘Boomtown Belfast’, when it became Ireland’s biggest city at the dawn of the 20th century. Not only was the development of the turbine significant in opening up new areas in which industry could be located, without this industrial expansion there would have been no need for the substantial developments of the port, and without the developments at the port, industrial capacity and engineering expertise in the city the shipyards would not have flourished in the way they did.
In many ways, the Enterprise Park’s harnessing of the uniting influence on local communities of shared commercial and industrial enterprise echoes that of its historical forebears on the site.
The foundry’s founders left a similarly profound mark on Belfast’s social and cultural history through their contributions as can be seen below.
Ibraham Pasha, 1846. Portrait by Charles-Philippe Larivière.
Cultural Heritage
Robert Shipboy MacAdam (1808-1895) was a member of a remarkable generation of Presbyterian industrialists who embraced all branches of culture and saw no contradiction between the encouragement of Irish culture and loyalty to the Crown. At the age of 22 MacAdam founded the Ulster Gaelic society, the first of its kind in Ireland. This paved the way for the establishment in 1895 of the first branch of the Gaelic League in Belfast. Even in the wake of Gladstone’s Second Home Rule Bill such cultural initiatives were still capable of straddling the growing sectarian divide in the city; more than half of its inaugural committee were Protestants.
MacAdam’s dedication to the promotion of the Irish language was unwavering. He employed scribes to transcribe and publish native songs, poems, folklore and airs which they did in the building on which our offices sit today. In the latter stages of his life, Robert largely withdrew from public life, and in or around 1885, compiled a handwritten comparative lexicon of the Irish Language which, together with the also unpublished English-Irish Dictionary (22 volumes), represent a major contribution to the canon of Irish scholarship. According to the Linen Hall Library, “The historical and cultural significance of the Comparative Lexicon cannot be overstated; it is an inspiring and insightful work which has relevance and value to the use and understanding of the Irish Language in contemporary life.”
Triumphal Arch, erected by Robert “Shipboy” MacAdam to celebrate the visit of Queen Victoria to Belfast in 1849.
Remarkably, in addition to being a cultural luminary and world-renowned engineer and industrialist, Robert MacAdam was also a passionate archaeologist and antiquarian. He had a long association with the Belfast Literary Society, the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society, and the Linen Hall LIbrary, where both his father, his brother and he were all Governors. He co-founded and edited the Ulster Journal of Archaeology for many years and he and his brother played a pivotal role in the establishment and development of the Ulster Museum, Botanic Gardens and Queen’s College (later to become Queen’s University).
Social Heritage
Townsend Street Presbyterian Church played a hugely significant role in the development of education and a benevolent welfare system for the sick, poor and orphaned in the 19th and 20th centuries in Belfast. The church building itself (known by Presbyterians as the ‘meeting house’) was designed in the French Romanesque revival style by the Belfast architects, Young & MacKenzie, and has Grade 2* listing status. It has cathedralesque proportions with seating for nearly 1300 people and was often filled several times over on Sundays in its heyday. It also boasts a fine hunter pipe organ similar to that in the Ulster Hall, and has several world-class windows created by the renowned Irish stained-glass artist, Wilhelmina Geddes.
Townsend Street Presbyterian Church, Belfast,
with the Soho foundry represented to the left in shadow.
The church established 19 schools, with church members’ focus being on the alleviation of poverty through education rather than proselytising. These schools served the community without discriminating between children’s religious or cultural backgrounds. Nearly 6,000 children attended the schools at their peak, before educational and social reforms in the late Victorian era improved state-run provision. Today, two of these state schools still serve the local community: Edenbrooke and Malvern Primary Schools.
Its other main benevolent work was pioneered in the 1870s by its most famous minister, Rev William Johnston and his brother Dr Henry Martyn Johnston. This took the form of the establishment of a home nursing service and grants to those unable to pay their hospital bills or look after their families due to illness or poverty. There was a particular focus on supporting widows and orphans: a lifeline for many when preventable disease still caused many deaths and state welfare provision was very limited.
Brown Street National School – Brown Street, Belfast. 1912.
(National Museums Northern Ireland).
Though the church has ceased to meet as a worshipping congregation its legacy lives on through several projects it initiated, including the Townsend Social Outreach Centre, various benevolent charities established by the church and Townsend Enterprise Park.
Its buildings have been given to the Ulster Orchestra as a home for their community work, practice and administration. They are being well used to continue in the fine traditions of the church of inspiring minds and reaching out to all communities without distinction as to background.
Rev. William Johnston, aged 74. Courtesy of National Museums NI.