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This story is taken from an interview with Mrs Mary Stokes, and has been added to the site with their permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interview was by Bruce Logan.
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I lived in one of the streets off Botanic Avenue from 9 years of age.
The war was 1939-45. It was terrible. Just one of these things.

I had a sister, and she wasn’t too good.

[The ARP] used to come round during the blackout. They put in a Morrison shelter.

Some of the family were under it on the Easter Tuesday, because it was powerful. I was at a Ceilidh at the Ulster Hall that night. We were there till morning. It was grand.
She played the whole night through. A bomb went off, and the whole Hall shook. We got out about 5am. In the streets, it was awful. You’d see one or 2 coming out. Muck and dirt and papers … the bombs.

Later on the big ships were at Bangor.

I was too young to serve. I had a brother in the RAF. He was away in all the places.

There was coupons for all. You used to get them. Go down to the Post Office. We got them anyway. I never had half the stuff.

We were very lucky on Botanic Avenue. It was quiet at that time. There was nothing more. Our friends went down the next day to Bangor.
There was plenty of damage all round the town.
I was never under the Morrison shelter, but my sister did. It was a huge big monstrosity, it was awful. But it was useful, right enough.

I was too young to take much interest.
My sister, she didn’t like it much at all.

Maybe you’d be out and you’d hear the sirens and you’d have to come in.
It was the same at the beginning, the blackout and all. You can’t leave lights on or anything.

It turned out well enough. There were friends lost and all, but still.
Bombs would go off.

VE Day. There was a lot of excitement, music all over the place.

The coupons and all these things were the worst. Our groceries and whatever, you had to …

[There used to be smuggling near the border.]
They had it taken off them. An awful lot used to do it. I didn’t know anyone who did it. I knew a couple who went down, but when they saw what people were getting done to them they turned back.

Live down in Dublin? No, I’d rather live here. It’s nice enough and all that, I’d go down there, but …

It was a builder that used to come to us. Mum was living there at the time.

Lots of very nice people lost their sons and all.

[What about the 1945 elections?]
Churchill was a great man. But I never took very much interest in it.

I mind them talking about the atomic bomb, but that was it.

The ceilidh was just at Easter.
We had no television then. We didn’t bother going out at night. Very few bothered going out at night. There was papers and wireless.
We had a wireless. Just the news. It wasn’t so bad. They announced there was a bombing, and a siren would go out …

[Was it only Morrison Shelters on Botanic Avenue?]
That was all. There was no air-raid shelters.
There was India Street and University Street. Anybody that had an invalid in the houses, and young children.
A terrific size they were. Like a big table. Very square.

They took away the garden. We had a lovely wee garden at the front.

You know what you take the train to Bangor? There was a piece of waste ground there, and they took the railings off the front of the houses and put them down there. Just lay there and rusted for years and years.

My daddy was dead. He died in 1935. My brother was in the RAF, ground crew. We hoped he was all right.

It was desperate, all the suffering.

Shaftsbury Square didn’t get a bomb shelter. We were in south Belfast, it was quiet. It used to be the nicest part of the city.

QUB wasn’t a student area. They just had to travel or stay with friends or in digs. They never lived in our area. You used to see them getting off the trams.
The university used to run as usual. It was nice. I didn’t go to university there myself.

I used to get the bus, the tram. There was one on the far side, too you up as far as the Ulster Cricket ground.
On Saturday, the trams used to go up and down Botanic Avenue. They stopped it before the war, I think.
There wasn’t as many houses. It’s all built up with houses.
All the shops and pictures houses, everything went. There used to be a wee picture house on the Ormeau road, and then there was the Curzon. They’re all gone. I would have went down to the Hippodrome. It was handy. You could get in for a Tanner, before 4pm, and if it was good you could sit all day.
It wasn’t rationed.
A tanner was 6p. If you get in before 4 … and if there was something after … you went back to the pictures again.

There was a bomb hit along Donegal place.
There’s a landmark just at the corner. It was lovely. But the raid … they destroyed it. It used to be beautiful.

The horse trams were gone. We were down in Dublin one day, and saw horse trams.

The bakers used to come round the doors, and the vegetable man used to come round.
There used to be a big store at the corner of the northern bank, next to it.

There was no railway there [on Botanic Avenue]. It used to be a bridge.
There used to be houses right to the corner of Cameron St, and there was a Hall, a Church Hall. There used to be a church. They took it down. It’s at the far end of Ormeau Road.

[There was no Botanic station?]
No. It only came lately. When they started the building in the town, the Great Northern, they built the station there. It used to only go to 1 or 2 places, but now it goes all over the place. It’s very handy.

[Where was the old station?]
Great Victoria St. The Great Northern. That’s where you had to go to. Or the County Down. If you wanted to go to Bangor or Donaghadee, you had to get the … or you could get the bus. It used to go at the bridge. Or Oxford Street. That’s where the buses …
Or the railway. The other end of the town for Portrush and that. And the Great Northern for Dublin
There was no shops at all. Just a wee confectioners. As years went on we got butchers and chemists and all.

[Did you do all your shopping in the city centre?]
Oh, I used to have to go. If you wanted something, you used to have to go to the town. It was awful. It was lovely right enough after the war.

There was lovely gates on it. But then they took it all off.
We used to feel secure, even without the gates.

The shops started. And then the put the railway in. And they put up all these flats, but nobody moved in.

You wouldn’t have got a telephone for love nor money. No telephones. The only one who would have got a telephone was my brother.

County Down Railways. You would have seen them. I haven’t been down that way in years and years. But they were down there for a long while, years and years. When the Tall Ships came. The trains were going, I know.
In the waste ground, they were all lying in a big heap.

[did you get compensation for your railings?]
I think we got so much after it was all over. 7 and 6, I’m not sure. That would have been 12-3 years ago. But sure we were helping the war. We were there too.

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