Editorial: The new alleyway in Cathedral Quarter is a link to Belfast's ancient past

​Waring Street is in one of the oldest parts of Belfast, yet it is now part of one of the newest areas too.​

It is in the rejuvenated Cathedral Quarter, which is popular now for night life and hotels.

The News Letter was founded nearby almost 300 years ago, around what is now Bridge Street and High Street, and later – in the 1800s – moved to its long headquarters in Donegall Street.

Places in the area were damaged first in the German blitz of 1941 and later in the Troubles, with the News Letter itself bombed in 1972, when seven people were killed. It was for years after that a depressed and run-down part of Belfast.

When night life began to resume in the city in the early 1980s, it did so in the ‘Golden Mile’ of Great Victoria Street.

Now much of the buzz is in the area around Albert Clock, which is also more connected to the River Lagan and the easy footbridge access to the Titanic Quarter, passing high-rise riverside apartments.

Whatever problems there are in NI, apparent in the disturbances since the weekend, are now mostly transcended by its lively capital city that is popular with cruises and visitors. One of the urban landscape’s most charming features is the Entries, narrow allies that run between High Street and the pedestrianised Ann Street, among them Joy’s Entry, named after the News Letter founder Francis Joy, a connection to the 1600s.

A new alley, Sugarhouse Entry, now further opens up this ancient part of the city, linking High Street to Waring St. It is yet another new public space in a city that gets ever more accessible than it was in the 1970s, when it seemed destined to be like one of those apparently doomed American cities in which everyone flees to the suburbs. It is also a fresh connection to our fascinating past.