A resource for the history of Bloomfield through the farm and the 'big house', the village, housing development and suburb -- including the 1851 mill disaster (16 workmen killed, six injured).
Welcome
This website, including its digressions, offers a detailed timeline of information about the locality of Bloomfield in the townland of Ballyhackamore, the parish of Holywood, the city of Belfast and the county of Down. Very much a work in slow progress!Bloomfield is contained within the
area bounded by the North Road, the Knock River, Connswater River, the
top of the Newtownards Road and the Upper Newtownards Road.
Up to 2014, modern-day Bloomfield was a ward within Pottinger, one of Belfast City Council's then nine district electoral areas. See PDF map:
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Map of the six Wards in Pottinger.pdf Size : 69.095 Kb Type : pdf |
Since 2014, Bloomfield, along with Ballymacarrett, Beersbridge, Connswater, Sydenham and Woodstock, is part of Titanic, one of Belfast’s ten council district electoral areas.
Bloomfield is part of the Belfast East Assembly and Parliamentary constituency, though this is not a website about contemporary politics. If you want facts and figures about Bloomfield today, try here instead.
Please contact me if you'd like to correct anything, update information or provide new insights or updates.
The website's Privacy Policy is availabe here.
Hover over the framed thumbnail photos (as below) for a label; click on each thumbnail to see a full-sized version.
Finding your way around the site: Please click on the specific periods at
the top and bottom of each page.
NEW: I've added a page entitled Bloomfield Collegiate School as the home for a panoramic photograph of the school's pupils and staff, almost certainly from June 1963. To make it accessible I've divided it into eight separate sections and presented them as expandable thumbnails (as with the pics above).
I acknowledge with thanks the assistance of the East Belfast Historical Society and Wesley Thompson. The Society's DVD, The Past in Pictures, grant-aided by the Heritage Lottery Fund, along with John Auld's comprehensive article on Bloomfield in the Society's Journal, Vol.3 No.2, 1994, provided a treasure trove of historic photographs and a rich source of information. It was John Auld's drawing of Bloomfield House as he remembered it which set this website project in motion.
Site last updated 16 June 2023.
See new information about David Hunter, who built the first Orangefield House and who became the Deputy Governor of St Helena.
Read about the Tragedy of Negrais, Burma (Myanmar) for which he was blamed. Guilty or not?
See here.
N.B. These electronic pages may not be reproduced in any format for profit or commercial use. If you use information from this website elsewhere, please credit the source.
All the information here, to the best of my knowledge, is in the public domain.
Where possible I have credited my sources. I apologise to anyone whose copyright has been infringed or considers that an essential credit is lacking.
I will do my best to amend any such omissions in the future.
I am not responsible for the content of external sites.
© David Byers 2024, Belfast.
All the information here, to the best of my knowledge, is in the public domain.
Where possible I have credited my sources. I apologise to anyone whose copyright has been infringed or considers that an essential credit is lacking.
I will do my best to amend any such omissions in the future.
I am not responsible for the content of external sites.
© David Byers 2024, Belfast.
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