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Belfast Charitable Society Board Member, Captain John McCracken was enchanted by all things French. He spent considerable time travelling between Belfast and Bordeaux, transporting wine for his employer, the Black family. He had been held prisoner in France in the mid-1700s, but it did not diminish his admiration for the French people. When French prisoners were quartered in Belfast, Captain McCracken, his brother-in-law Robert Joy and other prominent businessmen of the town suggested to the government in London that a committee of townspeople should be appointed to look after the welfare of the prisoners of war. John also sought the services [...]

The year 1847 was a dark one in Irish history, known as Black '47, due to the number of famine related deaths. It wasn't just the labouring classes who were impacted - many doctors, minsters and priests died due to contracting various diseases which fell under the ubiquitous term of 'famine fever', when helping the poor. One such example was Dr James McCleery, surgeon to the male side of the Poor House for 12 years, who died on this day (10th July) 1847. He had contracted famine fever from his patients. Surgeon McCleery, as he was referred to in our minute books, was [...]

Belfast Charitable Society always viewed the education of the children within its care as paramount to helping them develop and gain employment in adulthood. On this day, 10th July 1819 Belfast Charitable Society unanimously supported the introduction of the Lancastrian mode of teaching for the Poor House Girls School. This model of education, named after Joseph Lancaster, was based on the concept of the more advanced pupils being used as 'helpers' to the teacher, passing on the information they had learned to other students.

THE Belfast Charitable Society has launched an updated version of ‘The Life and Times of Mary Ann McCracken – A Belfast Panorama’, which was first published by its author Mary McNeill in 1960. Most of us can only hope to achieve something of note within an entire lifetime. Some manage many accomplishments and triumph over challenges – and a very small number lead a life that is still worthy of note many years after they have passed away. It is one such life that of Mary Ann McCracken, which the Belfast Charitable Society invites us to celebrate and reimagine in today’s [...]

John Delaney was a 17 year old resident in the Belfast Poor House when he was offered the opportunity of travelling to Canada with Thomas Alexander Stewart as an apprentice to learn how to farm. T.A. Stewart was the son of Belfast Charitable Society founder, William Stewart, and lived with his family at Wilmont, Drumbeg. T.A. Stewart went bankrupt and decided to seek a new life in Canada, and offered the opportunity for an apprentice to go with him. John Delaney accepted this offer and sailed with Stewart to a new life in Upper Canada. The Stewart family, along with John Delaney [...]

THE tourism industry in Northern Ireland is set to get a boost as 15 White Badge accredited tour guides graduated at Clifton House for the Belfast Charitable Society on Wednesday 26th June, 2019. The Belfast Charitable Society has been named as the first heritage site in Northern Ireland to receive this prestigious qualification and enables them to offer a culturally rich and informative experience for those visiting Belfast’s oldest public building, Clifton House. This has been made possible through the support of the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Clifton House is now on a parallel to Tower Bridge, St Paul’s Cathedral and [...]

June 25th is 'Day of the Seafarer' and we thought it was appropriate to look at some of our connections to those who made their livelihoods on the open sea. Belfast in the 18th and 19th centuries was a thriving port. Ships docked from across the globe bringing everything from rum and sugar, to wool and exotic woods. Some of those foreign sailors who docked at Belfast would never return to their ships. Within the Belfast Charitable Society Archive, the burial registers shine a light on those sailors from foreign lands, who today rest in the shadow of the Poor House. [...]

BELFAST Charitable Society at Clifton House recently played host to Days for Girls (DfG), an international enterprise set up to remove barriers to education in the developing world. Education and feminine hygiene are two things taken for granted in the developed world, but in countries like South Sudan and Kenya, thousands of young girls are missing days of education each month as well as suffering isolation, indignity, shame, infection and even put at risk of exploitation due to the lack of understanding and access to affordable, dependable feminine hygiene during their menses. Diane Graham, NI Chapter Lead explains, “Missing long periods of [...]

Today staff at Clifton House had the pleasure of assisting Barbara Reagan from Perth, Australia,to locate her 3x Great Grandparent's final resting place in Clifton Street Cemetery. Barbara is attending the Ulster Historical Foundation's Family History Conference and we were contacted to see if we could find her family grave by one of their researchers. Our Archive & Heritage Development Officer was able to find the burials and grave reference in the Belfast Charitable Society archive. And here is what we were able to uncover about the Williams family. Samuel Williams was a comb-maker in Smithfield at the time of his death from [...]

Volunteers Week (1st-7th June) is a chance to celebrate and say thank you for the fantastic contribution millions of volunteers make across the UK. This year Belfast Charitable Society and Clifton House would like to celebrate their long standing volunteers, as well as our more recent cohort of White Badge Tour Guide Volunteers. Our volunteers undertake a number of different activities from researching and designing new tour offerings to delivering talks and tours. Beginning in January 2019, Belfast Charitable Society in association with the Institute for Tourist Guiding, and financial support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, have just completed Northern Ireland's first White [...]