"The street which runs from North Street into Smithfield, called indifferently in past times Pipe Lane or Wine Tavern Street, was supposed to have got its former name from being the seat of the pipe manufactory, which, according to the Presbyterian Burial Register, existed in the town in the beginning of the last [18th] century. Such manufacture, however, must have been somewhere else at first; it could not have been in this place at that time, as in the map of 1792 it would appear not to have been formed, there being no opening in that year leading from North Street into Smithfield from Hudson's Entry to the end of the street (George Benn, A History of the Town of Belfast, vol. i, 1877, p. 530).
The name Pipe Lane was first recorded in 1800.
"It was in Winetavern Street that Thomas and Andrew Mulholland first started in cotton manufacturing and laid the foundations of the York Street Flax Spinning Co. They removed to new premises in North Queen Street (York Street) in 1824, their mill being burned down in 1828. Winetavern Street got its name of Pipe Lane from the manufacture of tobacco pipes carried on there. There was a solitary clay-pipe maker in the street as late as 1930" (John J Marshall, Belfast Telegraph, 24/02/1941).
Winetavern Street is included in the list of streets in the Belfast Directory 1831-1832.