“1798 – A Belfast Rebellion” is a 2 ½ hour walking tour within the city centre, uncovering Georgian Belfast and individuals who hoped for a better future.

Duration

2.5 Hours

About

The tour starts and finishes at the gates of City Hall and tells the story of the origins and formation of the United Irishmen in Belfast, through to the 1798 Rebellion and its suppression. We will lead you through the important sites that remain today and introduce you to those who fanned the flames of Rebellion. We use our Vox headsets, so you won’t miss out on anything and the route is less than two miles and is completely flat.

You will learn what life was like for the Presbyterians of early Belfast, who were successful merchants and yet excluded from political influence. Come and learn how these enlightened sparks lit a flame that set Ireland on fire. What you’ll do.

From the City Hall, we will take you back in time over two hundred years to imagine a Belfast that was beginning to expand through its shipping trade with the outside world. Linen, Cotton, Ship Building and Ropeworks were in their infancy and Belfast Citizens were attracted by the exotic imports of Tobacco, Rum, Sugar, Wine and Port. The citizens of the town began to improve their living conditions by contributing their money and energies to form commercial and cultural associations that would give Belfast every advantage.

The Society for Promoting Knowledge, later to become the Linen Hall Library, was one such cultural step forward in the form of a lending library. Former Soldier, leading United Irishman and Librarian, Thomas Russell was arrested on their premises in 1796 in an effort to prevent the Rebellion.

We will visit St Mary’s Church, Belfast’s first Roman Catholic Church, opened in May 1784, accompanied by a guard of honour from the mainly Presbyterian Belfast Volunteers.

From there it’s only a short distance to Rosemary Street where there used to be three large Presbyterian Meeting Houses as well as the family home of the McCracken family.

We will understand how the Presbyterian beliefs and democratic church structures contributed to their ability to reach out and support their fellow Roman Catholic Citizens.

Just a little further is the Exchange and Assembly Rooms, where important town meetings were held and few more important, than the court martial of Henry Joy McCracken, following the failure of the Battle of Antrim.

Having been found guilty, he would be hung later that day and we will explore the site of this grisly event in High Street.

Other highlights include the Muddlers Club, St George’s Church and Joy’s entry, an experience that will make it easier to imagine a busy and charged atmosphere of a bustling town.

We will return to City Hall and consider the impact that the Rebellion had on Irish History and its context in the most recent “Troubles”.

We will try to understand how it has become a story which is misremembered and shunned, almost with a sense of shame, and yet it offered hope for a future of equality, liberty and fraternity well ahead of our current expectations of fairness and Human Rights, now incorporated in the Good Friday Agreement.

Included

Whisper sets to hear your guide clearly at all times.