Finding the Farset – Part I

I am standing at the base of a six-metre-tall piece of public art in the middle of a field overlooking Belfast. What looks like a large wireframe model of a teardrop is perched, or rather, rooted to, a thick steel pole ­– visually too thick a support for the more delicate lines of metal tracery above. From certain angles it looks like a comet about to vaporise Belfast. A nearby information board (inexplicably in the shape of a bottle opener) informs me that the work is called ‘Origin’ and ‘signifies the origin of the water which forms the River Farset, which springs from the hills directly behind the sculpture and runs all the way into the River Lagan where the ‘Big Fish’ is located.’ It claims that the raindrop ‘seems to hover [no comment] six metres above the ground’ and ‘nestled inside the raindrop, is a fin of Narima glass, giving an ethereal quality and animating the external structure with elements of spectral colour, movement, texture, reflection and refraction which continuously shifts with the changing light and creates an arc of energy reflected back to the viewer’. Apparently four square metres of ‘toughened Narima glass’ were used in the construction of the piece but only two small panels remain, one of which is shattered. Not toughened enough apparently.

I am here because after an ill-prepared first attempt at finding the Farset, the river to which Belfast owes its name (that saw me not finding the Farset at all) I’ve decided to give it another go. This time I devote an entire day – it turns out to be the hottest day of the year so far – and I do research, and I bring a car. Well, research is a rather grand title – I have two web pages open on my phone to guide me. One is a 2013 article in the Belfast Telegraph called The lost river that gave Belfast its name – an evocative, charming and well-researched piece by one Linda Stewart, who seems now to write for a more arcane publication titled The Microbiologist. The second is a blog post called Mapping Belfast’s Hidden River Farset in which an unnamed blogger from Bradford also begins at the Origin sculpture – which she describes as ‘not very well received’. She is not doing it justice though – it in fact won first prize in The Spectator’s award for bad public art in 2017. The publication even adds another five metres to the piece in the opening line of an article regarding the award: ‘Imagine climbing the hills that surround Belfast and stumbling upon this 11-metre-high steel bollock’. A bit harsh?

The text of the blog post is quite short, the main attraction of this particular piece being a custom Google map in which the author has pinned markers at all points of potential significance over the Farset’s course. I get the impression that she used the Bel Tel article as a guide, and then examined Google Maps’ aerial photo view to look for places that fitted the description, and then proceeded to add waypoints with titles like: ‘Wet area’, ‘Looks like it could be a watercourse’ etc., followed by some rather more obscure pins entitled: ‘What are they looking at?’ and ‘Suggestive hedgerow’. However, it is a map and it is, I believe, a very accurate one because this time – spoiler alert – I do find the Farset.

Back to Linda: ‘According to the Belfast Hills Partnership, the source of the Farset is to be found just above the Horseshoe Bend, where the Crumlin Road turns into Ballyutoag Road.’ After several drive-bys, I find a place to park near the Horseshoe Bend. It is an aptly named bend near Squire’s Hill, an area historically populated with limestone quarries, some of which still remain. I hop into the field where supposedly the Farset source is situated and begin searching, however, as I have never located a river source before, I am not sure what I am looking out for. The grass is high, up to my knees. Moving towards the centre of the field, it is soon up to my elbows and I start stumbling as the ground underfoot becomes more uneven and thicker with vegetation. The article describes the river ‘rising from a bed of watercress and nettles in a field yellow with ragwort and flickering with white butterflies [and] horses […] dipping their noses deep into the watercress bed as they search for a refreshing drink of water’. The only animal I come across is a large ginger cat which I almost step on – I don’t know who gets a bigger fright. I go deeper into the field – the green stuff is now shoulder high – but I do not see any horses or butterflies or sources. I make for an area of darker green, thick with tall rushes and suddenly my feet feel wet in the now-squelchy ground. This is good enough for me. Hello source of the Farset - finally!

It is not obvious where the source goes from here so I return to the article. I find the next part tricky and I lose Linda as she plunges beneath the Ballyutoag Road and through ‘a tree-cloaked gully’ and then ‘into a litter-strewn grille beneath the Crumlin Road and down into Ballysillan’ – hope you’re ok Linda… The next section of the Farset above ground is in a residential area encompassed by Ballysillan Park and Benview Park but it is inaccessible; that is to say, it is uncovered and flowing among greenery and tall trees but at the backs of residential gardens. Looking longingly at it via the aerial photo custom map on my phone, I see that it is quite a sizeable area. There seem to be a couple of potential access points i.e. gaps in the rows of semi-detached houses, but the Dept for Infrastructure or Belfast City Council or the Rivers Agency or some other meddler in my affairs has got there before me, erecting tall fences. I enter the grounds of the Ballysillan Gospel Hall, past a giant broken TV with a note for the binmen saying ‘this is not ours, someone left it here’ and peep over the back wall… but I can’t see much. I feel even more exposed creeping around housing estates today; everyone is out in the fine weather. This time I do not even have the dog with me to take the weirdo edge off, so, after thinking better of asking one of the neighbours if they have access via their back garden to this Farset garden of Eden, I head down the hill to where, apparently, the river rushes ‘deep into a tunnel beneath the Happy Choice Chinese takeaway’. I like the idea of it also rushing under the local chipper opposite. It is called Cod Almighty.

In Ballysillan Park I hear the Farset for the first time, and then shortly afterwards I finally see it, running along the backs of the gardens on Oldpark Avenue. It then emerges into the park proper and I can touch it too. It is still very much a stream at this point, ducking and diving through concrete pipes and into areas marked with warning notices that read ‘NO UNAUTHORISED ENTRY’, ‘DANGER Fast Flowing Water’, ‘DANGER Confined Space’ and ‘DANGER Deep Water’. One such area is protected by a chain link fence, topped with barbed wire, behind a galvanised steel fence topped with spikes. Bloody hell; the Farset might look like an ankle-deep, one-metre-wide stream but do not be fooled – it is apparently deadly. A final sealed-off area marks the point where the Farset disappears underground again. A brief section is visible near Alliance Gardens but again it is fenced off and protected by ‘Hidden CCTV cameras’ (and infrared lasers and hidden pits filled with poison-tipped bamboo spikes no doubt…)

‘The next part of the route can be traced by the old mills that once relied heavily on the Farset's water’ says our Linda. It is true: Brookfield Mill sits almost opposite Edenderry Lofts, also a former mill. Here the Farset runs in a dead straight line behind Tennent Street, a thoroughfare of houses originally built for mill workers. Ciaran Carson, whose name one must invoke when speaking about the Farset, writes about the river and the mills: ‘Serendipitously, the Farset is an axis between the Catholic Falls and the Protestant Shankill, as its power source was responsible for a string of mills in which both denominations were employed, with separate entrances for Prods and Taigs from North and South of the divide, notwithstanding the same terrible conditions, producing linen which they could never afford to buy. Instead, the women who wrought in the mills made underwear for their children out of flour-bags’.

I duck behind a washing line at the back of Tennent Street and into the undergrowth to find the river again – another short and uncovered section that flows as far as the next culvert on Sydney Street West. In these little pockets of wilderness, I sometimes feel like I’m entering the world of children; the patrin of lost footballs and tyre swings marking trails and entire play worlds invisible to the uninitiated. The river reflects a rippling light on the underside of the sycamore leaves that arch over the swishing gurgling watercourse. A small dog barks, snapping me out of my reverie. Time to move on…

To be continued…