Wauchope Court recalls the earlier Wauchope Street, which was in the same neighbourhood before redevelopment.
Wauchope is a place-name found in at least three locations in the lowlands of Scotland. It is also a Scottish surname, which has several variants such as Walkup. It is likely that the original Wauchope is the hamlet in the Scottish Borders near Southdean. Wauchope House was demolished in 1932. Wauchope Forest is an extensive area of forestry in this area. Wauchope in Dumfries and Galloway and Wauchope in Midlothian may have been so named because they were on lands belonging to the Wauchope family. Wauchope is also a town in New South Wales in Australia.
However, the date of the street name points very strongly to the commemoration of Major-General Andrew Gilbert Wauchope (1846–1899), a Scottish-born British Army officer and commander of the Highland Brigade during the Second Boer War.
Wauchope was killed in action on 11 December 1899 at the Battle of Magersfontein, one of the most serious British defeats of the war. Leading his men forward at dawn, he was fatally wounded in the opening moments of the engagement. His death was widely reported across the United Kingdom and Ireland, where newspapers portrayed him as a brave and gallant officer, and it came to symbolise the human cost of the conflict.
The Battle of Magersfontein, together with the defeats at Stormberg and Colenso, formed what became known as “Black Week” (10–15 December 1899), a period of acute national shock. Belfast newspapers followed these events closely, and public awareness of the war was intense.
By January 1900, when Wauchope Street was named, it is likely that:
• Wauchope’s death was recent, dramatic, and widely known
• Belfast had strong military and imperial connections, with local regiments actively serving in South Africa
• Street naming provided a permanent, everyday form of commemoration
The naming of Wauchope Street alongside nearby Symons Street — almost certainly commemorating General Sir William Penn Symons, killed at Talana Hill in October 1899 — strongly suggests a deliberate paired act of memorialisation by the Martin Estate Co. Ltd. Together, the names appear to embed contemporary Boer War memory into the urban fabric of a new residential development.
That on the application of the owners the Martin Estate Co Ltd 2 new streets on their property off Roden Street be named ‘Symons Street’ and ‘Wauchope Street’. TIC:10th January 1900.