The Cliftonville Road area originally was to be named as “Cliftonville Garden Village“. According to Carson, the architect Thomas Jackson is reported to be have been so impressed by the residential area of Bristol called Clifton, that he decided to introduce the name to Belfast. In the Belfast Street Directory of 1839 there is an entry that says: “William Herdman, Esq residence, Cliftonville”. Besides designing individual buildings, Jackson was responsible for two ambitious suburban developments in Belfast. The Cliftonville development, begun in the 1830s and based on the Clifton suburb of Bristol, was only partly carried out as Jackson planned. Later, from circa 1861,(8) he created a development of large houses in spacious grounds to the east and west of Old Holywood Road on the north-eastern edge of the city.
Cliftonville Road is first recorded in Martin's Directory for 1839. The name Cliftonville was widely adopted and is found in addresses in several different British cities.
In 1879 Cliftonville Football and Athletic Club was founded. Since 1890 the Reds have played their home games at Solitude. This ground is named after a house marked on the 1st edition of the Ordnance Survey six inch to the mile map in the 1840s. Solitude stood on land that was flooded shortly afterwards for the construction of Belfast Waterworks.