Location:
Runs between Kenbella Avenue and Cavehill Road in the Chichester Park area of North Belfast.
Official approval:
The street name was formally sanctioned when Belfast Corporation recorded:
“Resolved that owing to the property being a residential one, and laid out as such, the application of the owners to name a new street, 30 feet wide, situate off Kenbella Avenue and Hughenden Avenue, ‘Evelyn Gardens’ be approved of.” (24th January 1894).
Development:
Evelyn Gardens appears in the 1901 Belfast street directory with named villas and professional residents, indicating that it had been fully laid out and built up by the turn of the century.
Namesake:
Almost certainly named for Lady Evelyn Harriet Ashley-Cooper (1865–1931), granddaughter of the 3rd Marquess of Donegall. This follows the Donegall estate’s established pattern of commemorating family members in local street names.
Irish name:
Garraithe Éibhlín — “Evelyn’s Gardens.”
Evelyn Gardens forms part of the Donegall/Chichester estate’s late-Victorian suburban expansion into North Belfast. An 1894 advertisement for building sites on Princess Anne Avenue and Evelyn Gardens shows that the street was being set out in the early 1890s. By 1896, the Belfast News-Letter reported that four houses were to be erected there for Margaret J. Cull, confirming early development activity.
By 1901 the street was firmly established and appears in the Belfast directory with substantial villas such as Rosebery Villas, Marsville, and Victoria Villas. Its early inhabitants—merchants, commercial agents, clergy, and other professional-class residents—reflect the area’s intended status as a respectable, well-planned suburban address.
The name Evelyn Gardens aligns with the Donegall estate’s broader naming tradition, which drew heavily on family connections such as Donegall Place, Arthur Street, and Letitia Hill. Lady Evelyn Harriet Ashley-Cooper, linked to both the Chichester and Ashley-Cooper families, provides a highly plausible namesake. This distinguishes the Belfast street from the unrelated London street of the same name.
lennonwylie.co.uk
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landedfamilies.blogspot.com
landedfamilies.blogspot.com
libraryireland.com
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org