A Wee Walk with Queen Victoria
- weewalksbelfast
- Jul 6
- 3 min read
I sometimes think that one of the favourite women in Belfast is Queen Victoria. I always start my walking tours at the Queen Victoria statue at the front of the City Hall as she’s the first prominent woman see whenever visitors come to Belfast and she also has the largest statue in the grounds of the City Hall. She did visit here in 1849, but did she take a wee walk and if so where? The short answer is yes, and one of the few places she walked was probably where her statue stands today.
She visited here on the 11th August 1849. Belfast was in the middle of a year long cholera epidemic which finally ended in October of 1849 and resulted in over 1100 deaths. (epidemic-belfast). The city was also suffering from the effects of the Great Famine.
She arrived into the Victoria Channel which was named after her and had only been officially opened a month before on July 10th 1849. Along with her husband Prince Albert, Queen Victoria was greeted by well wishers and decorations. The first place she set foot in Belfast was Custom House Quay where she was greeted by the Mayor of Belfast, William Gillilan Johnson. A ceremonial pavilion had been erected and she knighted William Johnson on the spot. She then got into the Royal carriage and went up High Street passing under a thirty two foot high arch which had been erected and had the greeting ‘Cead Mile Failte’ (‘a hundred thousand welcomes’) and journeyed up to the White Linen Hall. The White Linen Hall stood where the City Hall is now and on the way in she passed under another arch (what is it with Belfast and arches?!) which had been erected by the Royal Flax Society.
This one was made of green flax, interwoven with flowers and had a harp and crown made from flowers on it. Here she was met by dignitaries including the Marquis of Donegall and also about seventeen hundred ladies who waved linen handkerchiefs at the the passing Queen. Queen Victoria then walked around the White Linen Hall passing through a series of exhibitions from flax seeds and plants into a room containing dresses. Here she chose two dresses, a pink one with flowers and a white one with blue flowers (Prince Albert was with her so this is before her black era). She was also given some handkerchiefs, a cape and a pair of cuffs. After leaving the Linen Hall she went through Wellington Place into College Square East where both Inst and the railway terminus were decorated with flags. The Royal carriage continued up through the turnpike at the bottom of the Lisburn Road and past the Union Workhouse which also had an arch over the entrance. She went into Botanic Gardens, although she seems to have been driven around the walks there, before going into Queens College where the architect Charles Lanyon was one of the people who showed her around. She then got back into the carriage and presumably followed the same route back into Belfast although she ended her journey by coming down through Bridge Street and into Donegall Street before getting back on the boat.
And that was it! She records the visit in her diary saying the people of Belfast ‘were a mixture of nations and the Irish shriek was no longer to be heard and the female beauty has disappeared” (cheek!) She gives Belfast city status in April 1888 and all she records in her diary for that day is how cold the weather is. So she spent about four hours in Belfast. We’ve named all these things after her; the Victoria Channel, Victoria Street, Royal Victoria Hospital to name a few, so I think it's safe to say we liked her more than she liked us!
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