"North Street received its name from its direction northward. It is an old street and an old name, but the original length was only from Bridge Street to John Street. In 1668 these words are in the Corporate Records: "John Bigger sells 3¼ acres in the fields next Gill's Land, and also the plot of land without North Gate Street and next adjoining to the grass of the Rampier situate on the north side of the high way leading from the Town to Pettrs Hill, called Goose Lane." This highway in 1668 we may conclude was but a rough way by which the geese of the town were driven to feed on the waste ground between the rampart and the settlement on Peter's Hill and other elevated places. It proves how old both names are" (George Benn, A History of the Town of Belfast, vol. i, 1877, p. 528).
"May have got its name from running northwards from the open space known as the Four Corners. From this centre radiated Rosemary Lane, Broad Street (now Waring Street), Bridge Street, and North Street. To these streets was later added Donegall Street. Originally the present North Street, Upper and Lower, was known, as "Goose lane" when Belfast was but a village. Then as the town grew and. expanded, Lower North Street became built up and "Goose Lane" as we have seen in modern cases, became too undignified an appellation, and the street up to the North Gate, which here pierced the town, rampart, became North Street. The name may have arisen from the geographical direction of the street but it would seem more probable that it got it from the fact that it ran up to the North Gate which stood at the junction of the present Royal Avenue and Lower North Street. North Street in the eighteenth century was the nursery of many o the leading Belfast merchants, and a large amount of wealth, was amassed in it" (John J Marshall, Belfast Telegraph, 03/02/1941).