The full title/description for this shot was too long and confusing for use on a Monday morning so I summarised it slightly :) A Belfast scene with lots to view and plenty of life going on. It immediately brought to mind James Craigs poem about Belfast:
"Red brick in the suburbs, white horse on the wall,
Eyetalian marbles in the City Hall:
O stranger from England, why stand so aghast?
May the Lord in His mercy be kind to Belfast."

While we had a notion of location, today's contributors have helped refine the 25 year date range to perhaps a decade or so between the mid-1870s and the upper catalogue range of the mid-1880s. One of the more interesting features here (described in the catalogue entry as "iron feature, possibly a fountain") is the Jaffe Memorial Fountain. Seemingly built by Belfast's only Jewish mayor, Otto Jaffe, the "memorial" in question was to Jaffe's own father - who funded Belfast’s first synagogue. Vab2009 points out that, after 70 years in Belfast's botanic gardens, the fountain has since been moved back to this original location...


Photographers: Frederick Holland Mares, James Simonton

Contributor: John Fortune Lawrence

Collection: Stereo Pairs Photograph Collection

Date: ca. 1860-1883 (though likely later than mid-1870s per comments)

NLI Ref: STP_2495

You can also view this image, and many thousands of others, on the NLI’s catalogue at catalogue.nli.ie

Info:

Owner: National Library of Ireland on The Commons
Source: Flickr Commons
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