about town: roaring hannah 2000

article in cartography, the city, published by catalyst arts
distributed throughout belfast

Roaring Hannah 1 / 6 / 00
The roundabout at Carlisle Circus still hosts the plinth of the Reverend Hannah Statue. Reverend Hannah was a vocal Presbyterian minister in the late 19th Century. His conservative outspokenness on secular issues of the time earned him the nickname Roaring Hannah. After his death committee of parishioners from St Enoch's Church (of which he was the founder) formed especially to raise funds and commission a statue to commemorate him. The figurative statue enjoyed a fine view up North Belfast's former main industrial arteries.

The IRA blew his statue off its plinth in 1971. When the police came to move it and find its owner no one came forth to claim it. It is now in the charge of the City Council and has been repaired but not reinstated. Roaring Hannah's current location also affords him a view of Belfast's industrial life. He is currently wrapped anonymously in cling film and lying crated up in a storage unit somewhere on the Duncrue Industrial Estate. .

'About Town' consists of a series of incidental stories from around Belfast gathered over the period of two months. These stories are used to attempt to map the city in a verenacular personalised way.

Belfast is a city frequently represented in the printed media but the representations of the city in newspapers are often restricted to familiar cliches of an unlivable place. This article takes the form of a map, acknoweledging it as an editorial document where select information is included or left out according to the maps function.