Knockdene Gate, Belfast
Knockdene Gate is a short cul-de-sac directly off the Upper Newtownards Road in the Knock district of east Belfast, consisting of a single spur of housing set back from the main thoroughfare.
Documentary origin
The name Knockdene Gate was formally approved by Belfast City Council on 6 September 2004 under the Building Control street-naming procedure. The minute of the Health and Environmental Services Committee records:
“The Committee approved the undernoted applications for the naming of streets in the City which did not conflict with the existing approved street names and to which the Royal Mail had no objections.”
Proposed name: Knockdene Gate
Location: Off Upper Newtownards Road
Applicant: Mr P. Simpson
Historical context
Although the street itself is modern, the name Knockdene is long established in this part of Belfast. Knockdene Park appears in The Belfast and Province of Ulster Directory in 1895 and belongs to the late nineteenth-century phase of suburban expansion in the Knock district.
In 1925, following an application by residents, Belfast Corporation resolved:
“that the main thoroughfare should be named Knockdene Park and the branch roads Knockdene Park South and Knockdene Park North.”
(29 December 1925)
The name Knockdene therefore predates Knockdene Gate by more than a century and forms part of an established local toponymic family rooted in the Knock area and its proximity to the Knock Road.
Knockdene Gate represents a twenty-first-century extension of that inherited naming landscape. Rather than introducing a new or unrelated name, it deliberately draws upon an existing local identity.
Name significance
The name performs two related functions:
It preserves continuity with the established Knockdene streets, maintaining a recognisable local identity.
It employs the modern term “Gate” to denote a short access street, distinguishing it from the longer, earlier streets while remaining within the same naming tradition.
Knockdene Gate is therefore modern in form but traditional in substance. It does not invent a new identity for the area; instead, it extends a name already embedded in local memory, allowing a contemporary street to remain genealogically connected to the older landscape of Knock.
Sources
Belfast City Council, Health and Environmental Services Committee Minutes,
6 September 2004, “Street Naming / Building Control”
(Approval of Knockdene Gate, off Upper Newtownards Road; applicant: Mr P. Simpson.)
The Belfast and Province of Ulster Directory (1895)
(Early documentary appearance of Knockdene Park.)
Belfast Corporation Improvement Committee Minutes,
29 December 1925
(Resolution naming Knockdene Park and the branch roads Knockdene Park South and Knockdene Park North.)
Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland, historical mapping
(Shows Knockdene Park prior to the creation of Knockdene Gate.)
OSNI modern digital mapping / gazetteer
(Confirms the present-day layout of Knockdene Gate directly off the Upper Newtownards Road.)