Named after Hawthornden, a group of houses (3 houses?), which formerly stood on Hawthornden Road. There was another house nearby called Hawthornden Lodge. The road is recorded in the BPU Directory for the first time in 1899 but this may be because the scope of earlier editions had not extend this far from the city centre. Hawthornden was built c. 1886. The earliest recorded resident is William Jamieson.
It seems that this Belfast residence was named, in turn, after Hawthornden Castle, south of Edinburgh. In 1803 Dorothy Wordsworth recorded passing Hawthornden on foot when visiting Walter Scott at Lasswade. Subsequently Scott referred to 'cavern'd Hawthorn-den' in his poem The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805). This description alludes to caves situated in the cliff below the castle. In one cave, Robert the Bruce is said to have sheltered, and later Sir Alexander Ramsay of Dalhousie. Another is named Wallace's Cave after William Wallace. See also Roslyn Street.
Nowadays Hawthornden Castle is a writers' retreat, operated by the Hawthornden Foundation, which funds various literary programmes and awards the Hawthornden Prize, one of the oldest literary prizes. It has been won several times by Irish and Northern Irish writers: Seán O'Casey, Juno and the Paycock (1925); Kate O'Brien, Without My Cloak (1931); William Trevor, The Old Boys (1965); Michael Longley, The Weather In Japan (2000); Eamon Duffy, The Voices of Morebath (2002); Colm Tóibín (2015).
AN, PT, Mar 2025.