Fountains and Fonts CROW (City Right of Way) Thursday 27th Jan 2011


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The first walk of 2011, another city centre walk, took in some of Belfast’s fountains. We started from Writers Square making our way firstly to the buoys outside the Art College (UU Belfast campus). There was a collective memory of the buoys as a water feature but no one was sure when it stopped working as the site was re landscaped recently. The plaque declares that ‘ these buoys are in pre 1979 Lateral Systems Buoyancy Colours’, but they have been repainted other colours more recently.


We then moved onto Castlecourt to check out another half recollected water feature, which transpired not to be there any more. Everyone had a vague memory of a low walled, blue tiled water feature under the entrance escalator. There is now a perfume counter at the former site.

We then moved onto the more promising sounding Fountain St, which was named after a spring diverted from Muny’s well in Sandy Row to provide the poor of the city with water. The existence of the previous spring sparked the DSD to commission a piece of Public Artwork called The Magic Jug, which after a series of debates about the ownership and nature of public space did not go ahead. See http://placeni.blogspot.com/2010/05/debate-goes-on.html and http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=110495205642651


However Fountain St still sports one water feature on the 1st floor of the Fountain Centre, a kitsch pool tile lined with bronze toddlers. None of us, by then with the shivering cold, could manage to flick a penny into the pool. Given the bracing weather we moved with a nod to the fountain outside the BBC and the water feature in the oyster cleansed pond at the gasworks, both of which we came across on out attempt to divine the Blackstaff, before heading to Jaffa’s Fountain. The yellow cast iron Victorian structure was bequeathed as a gift top the city by the Jaffa family and was returned, repainted to its original site on Victoria St (the entrance to new Victoria Centre) after a stint of neglect in the Ormeau Park. The structure doesn’t operate as a water feature any more but sadly does appear to have served as a urinal in its new home.


The Victoria Centre, in all its brassy lavishness seemed the type of location where we might find a water feature but like Castlecourt it’s offering was also short lived. A tiled wall leading to the car park had once water cascading down it to a pool below where any gathered pennies would be given to the children’s charity, Bernardos. The feature looked like it had been dry for some time.

Not content to leave the centre without something spectacular we when up the lift to the top floor to take in the panoramic view of the city and see if we could spot any other or far flung fountains that we might have missed, such as the fountain in Custom House Square or the one in Dunville in the west of the city. We descended via the spiral staircase giving ourselves an unexpected dose of vertigo. Mac noted that we had yet to do the highs and lows of Belfast.


Fountains and Fonts CROW Walk Thursday 27th Jan meet 1pm Writers Square

Happy New Year CROWers

The next CROW Walk will look at Fountains and Water Fonts around the city based on an idea by Paula Campbell. Meet Thursday 26th Jan 1pm Writers Square. Bring an empty drinking bottle and lets see if there are water fonts to fill up on free water in the city. Also if everyone can think of any fountains or fonts located in the city we can work out a route when me meet.

The Facilities

I joined C.R.O.W.’s 16th of December walk. We examined some of central Belfast’s public toilets. It brought us all places we had never been before. I had never even been aware of the City Council maintained toilets on Church Lane. One detail I liked there was the kid’s area where everything was at a lower height. It might be more fun for the youngsters if the council resisted the urge to put a sign on it, declaring what it is. In my experience kid’s eyes are automatically drawn to what is compatible to them. Perhaps they should be left to discover the kid’s area.


Church Lane, child's area


City Hall cubicle

I thought the most beautiful toilets were those in City Hall, a theme of semi-circularity, burgundy and patterned tiles. No fussy signage.

The space-age toilet, 20p a visit, outside the Dublin Road Moviehouse cinema is high-tech capsule. A recorded voice tells explains the experience to you as you are having it. The toilet has pressure sensitive floor. The door will not close if there is more than one person inside.



During the day, it rests

We finished the tour at this mysterious manhole Shaftsbury Square. A manhole is exactly what it is, though of a different sort. During the busiest drinking hours of Friday and Saturday night it rises, revealing a men-only open urinal.

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.