Press Releases
Belfast Parish Register Published
On Thursday evening, 7 December 2006, in St Anne?s Cathedral Centre, the Dean of Belfast, Dr Houston McKelvey, will launch the publication of the Register of the Parish of Shankill, Belfast, 1745-1761 which is the tenth volume in the now well established Representative Church Body Library parish register series.
The old parish of Shankill encompassed the town of Belfast in the middle of the eighteenth century and its register records many of the residents of Belfast, both Church of Ireland and non-conformist, before the town developed into the great industrial centre for which it is best known. Some of the names are well known in the history and development of Belfast but for others this register is the only evidence of their existence. The church in which the register was compiled no longer survives. It was replaced in the late eighteenth century by a new parish church, itself subsequently demolished, on the site of the present St Anne?s Cathedral where the original register is still preserved. The register is the oldest surviving Church of Ireland parish register for Belfast.
The register contains some 7,000 names which are now indexed for the first time and so readily accessible to local historians and genealogists.
This register has been edited by Professor Raymond Gillespie from the History Department of NUI Maynooth, and Ms Alison O?Keefe, a former graduate assistant in the RCB Library, and is available from the Good Bookshop in Donegal Street, Belfast at £10, or direct from the RCB Library, Braemor Park, Churchtown, Dublin 14, at ?15 + postage.
Further information from: The Cathedral Office, Tel: + 44 (0)28 9032 8332 or RCB Library Tel: +353 (0)1 492 3979