Date of naming: c. 1855–1856
Earliest record:
Hurst Street is first mentioned in the Belfast Mercury on 16 October 1856, listed among “new streets” recently laid out or about to be built.
Mapping evidence:
The street appears on the Ordnance Survey Second Edition map (surveyed late 1850s, published 1858–62), shown just south of Mill Lane and beside the Saltwater Bridge. This confirms that it had been laid out and named by the time of that survey, making it one of the newest additions to the expanding Sandy Row district at the end of the 1850s.
Development context:
Hurst Street was created during the rapid mid-Victorian growth of the Sandy Row and Linfield area, when small terraces and courts were being added on former rope-walk and mill lands. Its neat rectangular plan reflects speculative working-class housing typical of the period.
Name origin:
While no local “Hurst” family is known, the name likely followed the fashion of the day for short, solid English surnames that conveyed respectability. Belfast builders of the 1850s often borrowed such names from the wider British civic milieu to lend character and status to new developments.
Summary:
Hurst Street was planned around 1855–56, first mapped by 1858–60, and fully established by the early 1860s — a product of Sandy Row’s late-industrial expansion and of the mid-Victorian trend for respectable, English-sounding street names in Protestant working-class districts.