These incredible vintage photos capture street scenes, shipyards, life, and street styles of Belfast in 1955. The photographs were captured by documentary and press photographer, Bert Hardy.
The population of Belfast in 1955 was around 432,000, and the city was going through an economic downturn. It was the time when trolleybuses ran in the leisurely way through sparse traffic and lamplighters go about at night. Two years later, Tram 357 made its last journey from the Ardoyne Depot to Mountpottinger Depot on Saturday 27 February 1957. By the late-1950s poultry, sardine, and potato companies had set up processing plants along the waterfront. Belfast called itself the “Broiler Capital of the World” and each July thousands came to eat barbecued chicken on Broiler Day.
