The Blitz - Belfast

Part of a series of programmes exploring how different UK cities experienced the Blitz. Former Blue Peter presenter Zoe Salmon goes back home to Belfast in Northern Ireland to find out about how people there coped with the air raids and bombing. At the start of the Second World War, Belfast was uniquely ill-prepared for the threat of air raids. The Government in Stormont did not expect their city to be a target, and civil defence was far less advanced than in other parts of the nation. Efforts to ensure that the city's people were adequately prepared were made more complicated by Northern Ireland's divide between the Protestant and Catholic communities. Belfast's Blitz came in April and May of 1941. In the course of four nights of bombing more than a thousand people were killed and around half of the city's housing was damaged. Zoe visits Clonard Monastery and finds out about one remarkable story of how the threat of the raids led to the breakdown of the some of the divisions between the city's Protestants and Catholics. On the night of the second major attack on Belfast, the Monastery's crypt was opened up as an air raid shelter for local women and children. Clonard's Chronicle tells how people from the local Catholic and Protestant communities alike spent the night together there, saying prayers and singing hymns. It was a moment, as the Chronicle records, which was "very much appreciated by all". Producer: Louise Adamson A Juniper production for BBC Radio 4.