Clowney Street / Sráid Chluanaí
BT12
Clowney Street is located off the Falls Road in west Belfast, in the Beechmount area. The street was formally named in 1898 as part of a wider residential development on lands historically associated with the Clowney district.
The Belfast Town Improvement Committee minutes of 16 March 1898 record the naming of the street as follows:
“That on application of the owners The Executors of Riddell [space in minutes] five new streets situate off Falls Road be named Ballymurphy Street, Beechmount Avenue, Clowney Street, Felspar Street and Mica Street.”
The name Clowney was not newly created in 1898 but derived from a long-established local place-name. Historically, Clowney referred to a small river or stream — the Clowney Water — which formed part of the upper reaches of what later became known as the Forth River, a tributary of the Blackstaff. The Clowney Water flowed through the Beechmount and Falls Road area before being progressively culverted during urban development.
Primary newspaper sources confirm that the Clowney Water was crossed by Clowney Bridge on the Falls Road at Willowbank. An eighteenth-century report refers to events “between the old Paper Mill and the Clowney-bridge, on the Fall road” (1784), while a nineteenth-century property notice describes land “situate contiguous to the Clowney Bridge, on the Falls” (1843). Early twentieth-century reports continue to refer to Clowney Bridge in connection with Willowbank, demonstrating sustained use of the name over more than a century.
The name Clowney is of Irish origin, from Cluanaigh (later An Chluanaí), meaning “meadowy place” or “the meadows.” It also appears as a townland name in early seventeenth-century records, including the 1621 Chichester (Donegall) land grants, confirming that it was an established landscape name long before the urbanisation of west Belfast.
By the late nineteenth century, although the Clowney Water itself was largely underground, the name remained embedded in local geography and memory. Its adoption as a street name in 1898 reflects a common Belfast practice of preserving earlier rivers, bridges, and topographical features in the naming of new streets. Subsequent development in the area continued this pattern, including the naming of Whiterock Street off Clowney Street in 1899.
Clowney Street therefore preserves the memory of a pre-urban landscape feature — a stream and bridge at Willowbank on the Falls Road — linking the modern street layout with the older natural, linguistic, and topographical history of west Belfast.
Sources:
Belfast Town Improvement Committee Minutes (16 March 1898; 8 November 1899)
Belfast News-Letter, 23 March 1784
Northern Whig, 15 July 1843
Belfast Telegraph, 4 May 1921
Seventeenth-century Donegall estate grants (Chichester grants, 1621)
William Pinkerton, Historical Notices of Old Belfast
Ordnance Survey maps and town plans (nineteenth century)
Belfast street directories (nineteenth and early twentieth centuries)
Patrick McKay, A Dictionary of Ulster Place-Names
Placenames NI / Queen’s University Belfast survey material
"That on the application of the owners, a new street on their property situate off Clowney Street be named Whiterock Street". (8th November 1899).