About the park
Belfast Corporation bought this hillside in 1866, from land that had been in the hands of the Sinclair family. Most of what they bought became Belfast City Cemetery. What was left over — the heavier clay ground that would not suit burials — became Falls Park, which opened in 1873.
It was laid out in the confident Victorian style: undulating paths, formal bedding, a bowling green and, from about 1879, a ranger's lodge. Robert G. Dunville, of the Dunville distilling family, is said to have given land towards the park and £5,000 towards laying it out — a substantial sum at the time, and one reason the park was finished to a standard rather than done cheaply.
In 1924 an outdoor swimming pool was added at a cost of around £3,000, fed by the Ballymurphy stream. Generations of west Belfast children swam in it and called it, with feeling, the Cooler — the water came off the mountain and never warmed up. The pool is long gone, but the stream that filled it still runs through the trees.
The park has been improved steadily in the modern era, alongside work at the City Cemetery and at Whiterock, and it has held a Green Flag award almost every year since 2011 — the mark of a well-run open space. On a Saturday morning the parkrun goes past the beds, the outdoor gym is busy, and the mountain sits over all of it exactly as it always has.